Business Resources and Efficiency

This assignment explores the concept of efficient business resources and their impact on a firm's success. It examines various sources of financing available to businesses and delves into different types of budgets used for effective resource allocation. The analysis is supported by relevant references from books, journals, and online sources.

Business Resources

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Recruitment documentation used in a organisation...............................................................1
P2 Employability, personal and communication skills required for a specific job role............2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................2
P3 Main physical and technological resources required in the operation...................................2
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................3
P4 Sources of internal and external finance...............................................................................3
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................4
P5 Contents of a trading and profit and loss account and balance sheet.....................................4
P6 Use of budgets as a means of exercising financial control....................................................5
P7 Illustrate the financial state....................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Business resources includes all those resources from which a business collect finance in
order to complete its large number of operations. In absence of resources firm can not achieve
smoothness in its business operations (Chaffey and White, 2010). Asda Stores Ltd. is a British
supermarket retailer, headquartered in Leeds West Yorkshire. The company was founded in 1965
when the supermarket owning Asquith family merged with the Associated Dairies company of
Yorkshire. Present report include information about various documents needed during the
process of recruitment and various and internal sources of finance available to a firm.
TASK 1
P1 Recruitment documentation used in a organisation
The selected organisation is Asda. Asda is one of the world’s most well known and
valuable brands and commands a leading market share in the world’s supermarket business.
Asda produces food and general household products and it also has a cafeteria McCafe which
produces hot drinks, sweets and snacks (Montgomery, 2011). The restaurant employs about 130
people. Its structure is a tall hierarchal structure. On top there is Head Office which consists of
the owner of Asda and the board of directors, after that CEO of the restaurant then the
Administrator. After that administrator,first assistant manager, then the second assistant manager
and after that swing managers. After the managers there are the crew trainers and then the crew
members. If Asda wants to recruit a chief manager for managing their business business
operations than it will include the following:
Job Description: A job description sets out the purpose of a job,where the job fits into the
organisation structure, the main responsibilities of the job and the key tasks to be performed. A
job description will set out how a particular employee will fit into the organization. It will
therefore need to set out:the title of the job to whom the employee is responsible for whom the
employee is responsible a simple description of the role and duties of the employee within the
organization.
Person Specification: A person specification is a profile of the ideal candidate for the job. It
enables potential candidate to determine whether they meet the required experience and
qualifications. It also helps employees to identify requirements for the job. A person
specification will help during interviews and it will also help to be used as a basis for staff
development, appraisals and promotions.
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Application Form: An application form sets out information on a candidate in standard format
(Breton‐Miller and Miller, 2013). It provides a structured basis or drawing up shortlists, the
interview itself and the following actions required in offering an employment and in setting
personnel records.
P2 Employability, personal and communication skills required for a specific job role
Initially an employer will look at the qualifications a candidate has and whether it is
suitable and fitting to the "vacant job position. Even though education & qualification is only a
part of the requirement an employee looks at while hiring but it is a vital part. Having
educational qualification shows that one has placed in an enormous amount of effort and is
concerned for a prosperous future (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010). But sometimes the
qualification don't matter depending on the particular job considering this case asda does not
require too much educational qualification rather what they tend to look in to a candidate is their
personal skills as to how they deal with employees as this is their prime work and on a daily
basis they would be dealing with numerous amount of workers and each of them variant to the
other. So the way they deal and handle subordinates for achieving the desired results is the most
important factor to prioritize on.
Another vital and effective quality an employer looks for in a candidate is their
experience in the relevant field. Infact to some employers this is the sole requirement to employ
a candidate and ignores the fact whether they have much educational qualification but still a
minimum standard is set (Meyer, Ruppen and Magerkurth, 2013). In this case what asda will
look into is whether the candidate has experience in working in other departmental store.
TASK 2
P3 Main physical and technological resources required in the operation
Asda and Resources
Asda use both physical and technological resources. Physical resources are resources that are
available to business organisations in the form of buildings and other machineries needed for the
day to day running of the organisation. A few examples would be:
Buildings and Facilities: All businesses need buildings which they control from, this can range
from someone’s front room, or tower blocks all over the world, buildings play an important role
in the image of a business and can influence different types of customers, many financial
institutions such as banks like Lloyds TSB and HSBC have very famous buildings as their
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headquarters and are still located in central London near the stock exchange so that they can
maintain links with clients in person as well as online.
These resources are owned like physical resources and have to be managed in the same way as
all the others.
At Asda , technology is right at the heart of the business. Helping to improve the shopping
experience for all their customers (Sekaran and Bougie, 2016). Asda need systems which are at
the forefront of the industry and if the technology doesn't exist, they’re not afraid to innovate and
be the first globally to develop and use it.
For some businesses, the attractiveness of the building is not important as the inside
because customers are never expected to see the building itself or expected to see what goes on
there, for example Asda will have huge warehouses in industrial estates which do not necessarily
look good but are well organised on the inside, public are not allowed into these premises as they
are there to maintain efficiency and not to engage in direct selling (Zott and Amit, 2010). The
location of the building is important when a business considers its distribution network.
TASK 3
P4 Sources of internal and external finance
Internal Sources:
Personal savings: This is most often an option for small businesses where the owner has
some savings available to use as they wish.Retained profit: This is profit already made that has been set aside to reinvest in the
business. It could be used for new machinery, marketing and advertising, vehicles or a
new IT system.Working capital: This is short-term money that is reserved for day-to-day expenses such
as stationery, salaries, rent, bills and invoice payments.
Sales of assets: There may be surplus fixed assets, such as buildings and machinery that
could be sold to generate money for new areas. Decisions to sell items that are still used
should be made carefully as it could affect capacity to deliver existing products and
services.
External Sources:
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Shares: Limited companies could look to sell additional shares, to new or existing
shareholders, in exchange for a return on their investment.Loans: There are debenture loans, with fixed or variable interest, which are usually
secured against the asset being invested in, so the loan company will have a legal shared
interest in the investment (Laumer, Eckhardt and Weitzel, 2010). This means that the
company would not be able to sell the asset without the lender’s prior agreement.
Overdraft: A bank overdraft may be a good source of short-term finance to help a
business flatten seasonal dips in cash-flow, which would not justify or need a long-term
solution.
TASK 4
P5 Contents of a trading and profit and loss account and balance sheet
By law companies are expected to produce financial statements each year. These
statements appear in Company Reports. There are two main financial statements:
1. The profit and loss account: This account can be updated regularly and shows how
much profit or loss a business is making. A profit can be made in several ways, for
example: from trading, in the case of a High Street shop, i.e. buying and selling items.
From manufacturing, for example a company like Kraft produces chocolate bars and
other foodstuffs. It buys in raw materials such as cocoa and sugar which it processes to
make chocolate.
The top section of a P&L account is known as the trading account for a business that
buys and sells items e.g. a bookshop (Zachary, 2011). What is known as the gross profit is
calculated by deducting cost of sales from turnover.
2. The balance sheet: The Balance Sheet, is like a snapshot taken at a particular moment in
time giving a summary of the overall financial position of a business.
Businesses need to use assets in order to generate wealth. Assets are the things that a business
owns or sums that are owed to the business at any one moment in time.
The business obtains the finance for these assets from two main source:
1. Internally (inside the business) from capital raised from the business owners (the
shareholders in the case of a company).
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2. Externally - for example, in the form of loans, and other forms of finance which will
need to be repaid.
When one set up a business, the business become a legal body in its own right. Internal finance
(shareholders' funds) is owed to shareholders.
External finance is owed to people outside the business - liabilities.
P6 Use of budgets as a means of exercising financial control
A budget is a financial plan for the future concerning the revenues and costs of a business
(Obschonka, Silbereisen and Schmitt‐Rodermund, 2012.). However, a budget is about much
more than just financial numbers.
Budgetary control is the process by which financial control is exercised within an organisation.
Budgets for income/revenue and expenditure are prepared in advance and then compared with
actual performance to establish any variances. Managers are responsible for controllable costs
within their budgets and are required to take remedial action if the adverse variances arise and
they are considered excessive.
There are many management uses for budgets. For example, budgets are used to:
 Control income and expenditure (the traditional use)
 Establish priorities and set targets in numerical terms
 Provide direction and co-ordination, so that business objectives can be turned into
practical reality
 Assign responsibilities to budget holders (managers) and allocate resource
 Communicate targets from management to employees
 Motivate staff
 Improve efficiency
 Monitor performance
Whilst there are many uses of budgets, there are a set of guiding principles for good
budgetary control in a business.
P7 Illustrate the financial state
Asda outperformed rivals Tesco and Morrions last year, reporting a rise profits despite a
difficult trading environment and falling food prices.
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The Walmart-owned grocer reported a 2.3pc rise in post-tax profits to £780m in the 12
months to December 31.
That meant that the supermarket fared better than Tesco, which posted the biggest annual
corporate loss in history, and outshone Morrisons, where profits halved on the back of property
write-downs.
Excluding the share options, expenses and royalties worth £225.2m paid to Walmart,
underlying operating profit at Asda rose by 4pc, according to accounts filed with Companies
House.
However, sales during the year fell by 0.4pc to £23.2bn compared to 2pc growth in 2013 to
£23.3bn.
That decline in sales and small rise in profits preceded what has turned out to be the most
challenging year for Britain’s second biggest supermarket.
In August, Asda said it had reached a "nadir" after reporting a 4.7pc slide in revenue - its worst
ever quarterly sales decline, prompting chief executive Andy Clarke to call it "the worst storm in
retail history" (Zikmund and et. al., 2013.).
But Alex Russo, Asda’s finance director, said that Asda had the strongest balance sheet
out of all its supermarket rivals and that profits were holding up despite the sales slump.
That decline in sales and small rise in profits preceded what has turned out to be the most
challenging year for Britain’s second biggest supermarket.
In August, Asda said it had reached a "nadir" after reporting a 4.7pc slide in revenue - its worst
ever quarterly sales decline, prompting chief executive Andy Clarke to call it "the worst storm in
retail history".
But Alex Russo, Asda’s finance director, said that Asda had the strongest balance sheet
out of all its supermarket rivals and that profits were holding up despite the sales slump.
CONCLUSION
From the above information it can be concluded it is important to manage various
business resources for a company like Asda. Efficient business resources helps a firm in
completing its various business activities without any hurdle. Various sources of finance and use
of various types of budgets is included under this report.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Breton‐Miller, L. and Miller, D., 2013. Socioemotional wealth across the family firm life cycle:
A commentary on “Family Business Survival and the Role of Boards”.
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. 37(6). pp.1391-1397.
Chaffey, D. and White, G., 2010. Business information management: Improving performance
using information systems. Pearson Education.
Laumer, S., Eckhardt, A. and Weitzel, T., 2010. Electronic human resources management in an
e-business environment. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research. 11(4). p.240.
Meyer, S., Ruppen, A. and Magerkurth, C., 2013, June. Internet of things-aware process
modeling: integrating IoT devices as business process resources. In International
Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (pp. 84-98). Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg.
Montgomery, C. A. ed., 2011. Resource-based and evolutionary theories of the firm: towards a
synthesis. Springer Science & Business Media.
Obschonka, M., Silbereisen, R. K. and Schmitt‐Rodermund, E., 2012. Explaining entrepreneurial
behavior: Dispositional personality traits, growth of personal entrepreneurial resources,
and business idea generation. The Career Development Quarterly. 60(2). pp.178-190.
Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y., 2010. Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries,
game changers, and challengers. John Wiley & Sons.
Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R., 2016. Research methods for business: A skill building approach.
John Wiley & Sons.
Zachary, R. K., 2011. The importance of the family system in family business. Journal of Family
Business Management. 1(1). pp.26-36.
Zikmund, W. G and et. al., 2013. Business research methods. Cengage Learning.
Zott, C. and Amit, R., 2010. Business model design: an activity system perspective.Long range
planning. 43(2). pp.216-226.
Online
Describe the recruitment documentation used in a selected organisatio. 2015. [Online].
Available through: <http://www.markedbyteachers.com/as-and-a-level/business-
studies/unit-2-p1-describe-the-recruitment-documentation-used-in-a-selected-
organisation.html> [Accessed on 17th July 2017].
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