Business Resource P3
With Examples, you are to describe the main physical and technological resources required in the operation of your selected organisation.
In this assignment I will describe the main physical and technological resources required in the operation of Tesco.
Physical Resources
Physical resources are resources that the business needs to maintain in order to carry out its activities. They mainly include things like facilities, buildings, machinery and more. These are resources that are available to a business’s organisations in form of buildings and other machineries needed for the day to day running of the organisation.

Tesco have many physical resources such as their toilets, buildings, trolleys, CCTV’s. Toilets is a good resource to have within a good organization as it can attract more customers to not feel rushed into shopping because they need to go toilet they can shop at their own paste and use the toilet when they feel to. Another physical resource for Tesco is the car park so customers can park within Tesco’s car park and not have to worry about receiving a ticket, or checking their time to get back to the car before they get a ticket, this will also attract more customers to shop within Tesco. A recent physical resource that Tesco has brought in is the self-checkouts; this is good for customers that want to quick shop as Tesco can be quite busy on some days they don’t want to wait in the long queues so they can use the self-checkout which is much quicker.

Buildings
Permanent or temporary structure enclosed within exterior walls and a roof, and including all attached apparatus, equipment, and fixtures that cannot be removed without cutting into ceiling, floors, or walls.
Materials
The matter from which something can be made. Material can include but is not limited to raw and processed material, components, parts, assemblies, sub-assemblies, fuels, lubricants, coolants, cleaning agents, and small tools and accessories that may be consumed directly or indirectly.
Plant and machinery
Like materials and buildings, each business has specific requirements for the type of plant and machinery. As Tesco don’t own factories to where they’re products are produced they pay for another company to produce their products or have suppliers. Most of Tesco’s products are from suppliers. This means even though they may not own the factory they have to pay the right amount to the suppliers for them to produce their products for them.
Equipment
Equipment is essential for a business to operate smoothly. Equipment is critical for profit and non-profit organisations like Tesco. In some organisations lack of equipment means a job or service cannot be carried out. Equipment is crucial for Tesco as they deal with selling a range of products from fresh food to technology and more. Within Tesco they will need tills so that people will be able to purchase products from their store. Tills help them to take payments from customer, without the tills they couldn’t take payments from customers or record profit or loss within all the Tesco stores. Also within a Tesco retail store they need to provide equipment like shelves to stock the products within the store, without the shelves and equipment to put the products on the store wouldn’t appeal to customers. On a staff level they have to provide the retail store staff with uniform. For Tesco it’s essential that the customer face staff have uniforms as it looks more professional and also it is a very big store so they must be and look professional.
Technological Resources
Intellectual Property
Is the Knowledge, creative ideas, or expressions of human mind that have commercial value and are protectable under copyright, patent, trademark, or trade secret laws from imitation, infringement, and dilution. As Tesco designs different products they wouldn’t want other supermarket companies to copy what they have designed so they would hold intellectual property. It’s important that Tesco has intellectual property as the supermarket market is a big market and competition is tight. The intellectual designs aspect covers the features of decoration of products, such as colours, lines, materials, shape or texture.
Accumulated experience and skills
Accumulated experience means experience gained over a number of years when a person has to come across lots of different issues to do with the job. It’s important for Tesco to keep their employees happy as the longer they work in their position the more experience they get and become better people at their job. For Tesco to keep employees that have been working at the business for a long time and have good experience would be to pay them more. By Tesco paying the staff more they will feel more privileged and would want to stay with the business for longer. It’s important for Tesco to build employees skills but they do have to be careful not they have employees that are the only people or person to operate a piece of machinery or fix a piece of software. Key technological resources for the running of Tesco. This is because they would be unsure of what to do when in particular situations and they also wouldn’t continue to create new ideas for the organisation to ensure it continues to develop and make profit to survive.

Software
Tesco would invest a lot of money in software and its day-to-day use. Sometimes software will be spoke software will be designed for a business or they will use someone else’s software and pay a licence fee to use it. One software which some internal office staff may use would be Microsoft office, excel and maybe publisher.

http://www.tescosoftware.com/officelicenseagreement.php
M1 - explain how the management of human, physical and technological resources can improve the performance of your selected organisation.
The Human resources can improve the Tesco's performance in many ways. There are two main processes which are looked at when managing human resources. The most important is to employ they correct people for the job, people that will carry out the job role correctly. Then the correct resources have to be provided for them so that they can carry this process out to the best of their standards. Treating these employees with care and sensitivity is important. They are not like physical or technological resources; humans need to be dealt in certain ways, as they are protected by legislations and laws. For example, In TESCO there will be a constant change of different demand of products that the customers wish to purchase, for this reason the staff will have to be trained for any of these occasions. This is how they improve their human resources. They also look at how many skills the employee has when they are searching for new employees. They will check whether that person can be used in more than one job position in that store, how many skills they consist of.
Coordination of the teams in Tesco is very important in ensuring that they meet the targets that the company sets them. When all employees of the team complete their assigned roles the team will run more smoothly. It is also important that a manager is always there so that they can supervise the staff and also if there is a problem that they might not be able to handle the manager will be trained and know how to deal with the situation.
By Tesco monitoring employees punctuality they can make sure that staff are on time to work. By making sure time are on staff to work the work could be done more quickly making it easier for the employee and even Tesco. This would improve the performance of the employee as they have more time to complete the work that has been assigned to them, by Tesco also monitoring staff punctuality they can evaluate the people who have bad punctuality. From evaluating they can make a decision whether to get rid of them. This is because one person who has bad punctuality could be causing the team to be able to not get work completed etc. By having people who are always punctual it means teams and individuals can perform better which will help to improve the performance of Tesco’s customer service etc.
Physical Resources
Physical resources are resources that the business needs to maintain in order to carry out its activities. They mainly include things like facilities, buildings, machinery and more. These are resources that are available to a business’s organisations in form of buildings and other machineries needed for the day to day running of the organisation.

All businesses including Tesco need premises where they can operate from as these buildings and environment can have a strong affect on the people that work there. For Tesco having their retail stores based in local areas the amount of customers they get is going to be a problem. It’s important that retail stores are located where they can attract customers, preferably in a populated place. Also the buildings are going to be commutable for staff to get to and not in the middle of anywhere so customers find it hard to find or travel which will put them off travelling to the store. The importance of the Tesco retail store layout is vital and for them successful as they draw in customers buy having products for them to try themselves and from there customers like the product and want to buy it.
The correct equipment is essential for a business such as Tesco to operate smoothly and efficiently. Checkouts is a very important part of equipment as it re orders stock when it is running low so it saves a member of staff having to check when its running low and tick off that they need to re order. Tesco has a very good IT system, which consist of both hardware and software, which carry out their main jobs of looking after the amount of stock in the stores, the days cash intake, and many other important functions that the company needs.
Technological Resources
To make sure that the employees are happy with the software they are using to do their work would be to gain feedback from them. By gaining feedback you can see whether there things that need improving to make it easier or better for the employee to use. Also by gaining feedback from employees you are making them feel part of the organisation as they have a say into what’s going on and what may need improving so that they don’t feel left out. By keeping staff happy they are more likely to stay for longer which means for Tesco that they have people who are good and have an understanding of how to use the software. By having employees who are good with working with the software it makes the process of doing work easier for them and this will overall help to boost the performance of Tesco as they have highly trained and good staff.