Discuss about the case study Strategic Resource Management for Skills, Technology, Funding and Human Resource.
Strategic resource management is referred to the management of skills, technology, funding and human resource for achieving the prime goal of an organization. The key function of the strategic resource management is the effective planning, development and distribution of the organizational resources at the time of requirement. In a strategic way, it leads to a better utilization of resources, reduction of waste and getting high productivity. Strategic resource management also makes the organization smarter in spite of investing longer hours to get jobs done separately (Hitt et al. 2012). In this assignment, the focus is the strategic resource management analysis of ASO Savings & Loans Plc. The human resource management, physical resource management, marketing management and the management of information system in the ASO Savings & Loans Plc. would be discussed here. Therefore, the role of all important resources would be discussed here, which would have a significant contribution in the organizational operations. The current vision of the bank is “to be the Mortgage bank of Choice”. On the other hand, the mission of the bank is “to build mutually profitable relationships, anchored on a passion for excellence”.
Human resource management occupies a wide area in a successful business. According to Dessler (2013) there are three key points in a business, i) achievement of business goals with ii) limited resources, while managing the efforts given by iii) workforce. In these three basics, workforce is the most challenging thing. In current business world, effective HRM is referred the effective utilization of a workforce in realizing the overall strategy and meet the corporate objectives. The analysis of the characteristics of human resource in ASO would help to identify its role in achieving organizational goals. ASO use variable payment scale for motivating staffs to meet their individual target. It helps the organization to meet their individual target. The payment scale for individual employee is decided at the end of appraisal period, which is done quarterly. The key performance indicators are measured in such a way that the human capital initiatives successfully support the corporate objectives of the bank. The organizational management reviews the human capital strategies periodically for ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with the business goals of the Bank. In strategic human resource management, reliable, capable and committed workforce is built (Mullins et al. 2012). The organization is commitment oriented in nature. The ASO commission and incentives are decided on the sale of funded properties of bank to customers and the staff recovery of bad loans. The organization also provides long service awards to the employees working more than 5 years with the company. All of these facilities help employees to be more committed towards organizational goals along with the development of a strong sense of responsibility and ownership towards the bank.
The HRM has significant role in shaping the performance of a business organization. The roe of HRM can be referred to a strategic partner along with dynamic and technological approaches, which helps to boost cost effectiveness and highest productivity. The important roles of HRM in the organization include recruitment and selection, career development, performance management, promotions, pay and compensation, tracking employees’ hours, career development and handling redundancy related issues (Hutt and Speh 2012). With the help of models, the HRM roes of ASO Plc. would be analyzed. The model provided by Karen Legge, two types of HR managers were identified; the conformist innovators seek to allow organizational goals for justifying their means of achieving, in contrast, deviant innovators initially propose different objectives and then seek for approval, as its contribution to the organizational success. On the other hand, Tyson and Fell model identified three types of HR practitioners (Mondy and Mondy 2012). The ‘contracts manager’ usually works for ensuring the implementation of traditional/fundamental HR policies, in spite of being oriented towards innovation. The ‘clerk of works’ carries routine employee relation and others related functions. The final one is the ‘architect’; these kinds of HR practitioners align the HR policies with the corporate strategies. The HR head is very professional and solely contributes towards the achievement of organizational goals. ASO Savings & Loans employs the role of ‘Architect’ in the HRM practices.
The organizational human resource is the management is planned based on the organization’s business plan for that particular period. The requirements can include a need to open doors for recruitment, downsize, right size of reshuffling job functions through deployments. According to Werner et al. (2012) there are three basic phases in human resource planning, including identifying the required skills and other needs for the human resource, determining the availability of skilled staffs for meeting organizational goals and designing specific course for ensuring the availability of required number of staffs to meet organizational objectives.
There are two types of recruitment. In the first one, organizations post vacancies on their websites and the HR department takes the responsibilities to pick qualified candidates. On the other hand, the ASO Savings uses the recruitment strategy of ‘We find You’. They find top achievers through the public websites. This is an efficient strategy, as it is less time consuming, more focused and maximizes quality (Buller and McEvoy 2012).
For retaining the talented employees, ASO implements a number of retention strategies. They create career opportunities with good salary package, provide job rotation offers, expand training opportunities for the employees. They are implementing talent management programs, merit based promotions and convenient work environment for boosting performance.
There are several techniques of employee development; these include managerial trainings, interpersonal skill training, mentoring program, employability trainings, seminars, technical trainings, leadership training, formal succession planning processes and job rotations. While assessing the employee development techniques in ASO critically, it has been revealed that the organization is using most of the techniques (Bratton and Gold 2012). Within these, ASO savings is investing mostly in technical training, job rotations, mentoring programs, leadership training and formal career mentoring.
ASO Saving’s HRM department employs different techniques for ensuring employee engagement. Training programs set by the HRM department are one of the best ways to make employees feel valued in the organization, which enhance their retention in the organization along with enhanced engagement. On the other hand, ASO Savings implements feedback-collecting system through employee mentoring. It helps to understand employee’s needs for enhanced engagement and works as employee’s competence booster. The leadership development programs undertaken by the HR department also helps in enhancing employee engagement (Wilson and Gilligan 2012). It has been revealed that the ASO managers become more engaged and try to engage others with his new skills during leadership program.
It has revealed that HRM plays significant role in meeting organizational strategic objectives. It has been seen that in ASO Savings has three critical contributions in the organizational strategies. Firstly, HRM is responsible for building performance management capabilities, enhancing organizational change capabilities and connecting employee competencies with job requirement and career development. Secondly, HRM plays another role as business partner of ASO Savings (Lynch 2012). HRM is plays an effective role in ensuring the availability of competent and motivated staffs in the organization to support the organizational strategies. As a business partner, HRM also helps in improving the HR procedures for enhanced effectiveness of business decisions and culture. Thirdly, HRM plays the role of strategic partner for achieving organizational success. In ASO Savings, HRM has an effective role in formulating organizational strategies regarding employee recruitment, retention, training, motivation, monitoring and competency building (Mooradian et al. 2012).
According to Dess (2012) organizational success is greatly dependent on effective management of physical resource management. ASO has 25 office spaces, which are the sole property o the bank. All of these branches are located strategically at the areas having easy access to customers. The head quarter is located close to the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, which is responsible for overseeing the collection and distribution of the national housing fund. S the head quarter is located close to the statutory body, they can explore the proximate relationship with FMBN by updating the mortgage industry quickly (Morgan 2012). The other branches are located in such a way that it can attract and serve potential and long-term customers. To ensure continuous alignment with the strategic objectives, the Supply chain unit of ASO includes policy related to Branch standardization for maintenance of Office space and uniformity. ASO has paid attention on the inconsistent power supply in Nigeria and thus the management department has paid a lot on generating sets to power electricity in the office building, thereby ensuring 24 X 7 services without disturbance. On the other hand, ASO has 35 pool cars and 28 dispatch motorcycles for assisting marketers during client meeting (Asoplc.com 2016). In addition, the brand image of ASO is enhanced with the maintained physical presentation of the cars.
To meet strategic organizational objectives, every member of the organization has to contribute their best. For this, a comfortable, motivating and pleasant environment is required. The physical presentation of the office premises and ambiance reflects the high maintenance of furniture and fittings in the place, which also impose a good impression upon customers. Security is a major issue in the case of a Bank. Thus, ASO has an outsourced security agency for providing safety of its office facilities. The security personnel are trained and provided with security gadgets for improving safety concern along with CCTV camera. Bank’s software is monitored with high technology IT software (Barney and Hesterly 2012).
Through the analysis of the level of Return on turnover or ROI, the role of physical resource management in the organization can be evaluated. In addition, the impact of physical resource management upon competitive value generation, customer value generation and value generation for stakeholders. In the case of ASO, through the effective management described in the previous section, the Bank is generating value for their business in the market. The organization is investing more for physical resource management (Andrews et al. 2012).
In ASO, all plans for physical resources in the Bank are guided by the policies, budget and management approvals, backed with justifications. In the case of branch expansion, the process is related to strategic review, site location and analysis, CNB approval, legal delivery, site structure, hand over and site manpower. In ASO, every year a strategy session is held periodically, where the possible locations are proposed for branch expansion and discussed with the Branch Expansion Committee (Lasserre 2012). Then the identified location is visited and a report is submitted to the management committee. The RERM conducts a sales/rental value analysis of the selected location and the reports. Then, the identified locations have to be approved by CNB in writing. Then the legal department will be responsible for reviewing all the legal documents regarding the property. All the ASO branches have to be uniform in design, structure and service delivery. The next step is appointing skilled and efficient contractor for new construction works, which is done by the supply chain management team (Kuester 2012).
According to the report of Park (2012) in Nigeria, the Mortgage industry is unstructured and has not been explored properly. However, ASO has been recorded to be in the first position in the Nigerian Mortgage industry. The company has more 25% control of market shares and industry assets. The strong market position and brand image is a major competitive advantage for the bank.
The role of marketing operations in ASO include:
The objectives of ASO’s marketing operation include, i) focusing on the customer, ii) monitoring the competition, iii) creating innovative ideas for attracting new customers and retaining potential customers and iv) setting and planning marketing strategy and execution method. The focus of marketing activities include customer analysis, competitor analysis and company analysis for developing market segmentation scheme, identifying the core competencies of the bank and to build competitor profiles. In addition, the marketing team employs the information from market research for developing marketing strategies that can maximize ASO’s profit and revenues (Raimbault and Barr 2012). Finally, based on the marketing strategies formulated by the marketing team, integrated marketing plan is developed with the help of customer positioning and competitive information. However, for gaining success upon implementing the marketing plan, relevant marketing tactics should be used; these include advertising, promotions and marketing through TV, radio.
In ASO, for developing business, attention is paid upon the following steps of market development process:
All of the marketing procedures are supervised and monitored by the branch-marketing officer.
The information system in ASO has a wide contribution in the communication and connectivity processes, which the key to improve productivity, deliverables and turnaround time. In the current computerized world, the security of Bank’s valuable assets is solely dependent upon hardware, software and IT component. In this context, the IT assets represent a sizable monetary investment that needs protection (Shimizu 2012). If the IT assets of the bank are used in a wrong way, the chance of misallocation of bank’s valuable resources and violation of breaching legislation enhances. In the following ways, the information system contributes in ASO’s objectives:
The information system plays three major roles in ASO. The first one is, assisting in the organizational decision making process, by ensuring data security that are required for analysis and evaluations of the high quality strategic decisions. Secondly, being the prime source of sophisticated organizational information, it serves as the comprehensive database of information (Wheelen and Hunger 2012). Finally, it also helps in streamlining business processes. The information system helps employees to reduce their errors, eliminates unnecessary activities and enhances productivity by involving systematic processes. In addition, the employee security is also ensured by information system.
In ASO, the information system development include analysis of the system, designing the system, programming the system, testing, conversion, production of the system and final maintenance (Wu 2012). The process requirements of Business process automation in ASO Savings are as follows.
Objective- i) TAT reduction for cutting cost; ii) Easy access of information and promotion of information back up
Risk and controls- One risk of this process is implementation error. Thus, vendors should complete their work carefully.
The Key performance indicators include software functionality and user-friendly solutions.
The process ownership is dedicated towards software architect or designer, software developer and quality assurance officer. The architect researches and understands the requirement of business process automation along with cost benefit analysis of the solution. The software developer develops software for accomplishing solution provided by the architect. They also develop training schedule for users to make them familiar with the solution (Best 2012). The quality assurance officer makes sure that the solution is suitable for meeting user requirement and the strategic business objectives.
Conclusion
Properly managed resources helps to reduce misuse, insufficiency or underutilization of resources. Systematic management helps to gain competitive advantage in market, while helping to meet customer’s needs properly. In assignment, an in-depth analysis of strategic resources used by the bank ASO Savings & Loans Plc has been done. Through the analysis of the strategic resources, the analysis of competitive advantages has also been done in the assignment. In conclusion, it can be said that the organization is capable of employing sophisticated machineries and access cheaper funding resources for getting success in the competitive market. Through the critical evaluation of every resource, it has been reveled that the organization is using both tangible and intangible resources aligning with the organizational strategic objectives.
Reference List
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