Management of Internal and External Resources - Term Paper Example

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1. Identification of resources to meet objectives 3 2. Process of Resource planning forObjective Achievement 4 1.3. Cost associated for objective achievement 5 2.1. Evaluation of the supply sources for Objective fulfilment 6 2.2. Process to manage Supply continuity and Quality 7 2.3. Strategies to predict and manage disruption in resource supply and associated cost 8 3.1. Review progress of actual resource used against planned resources 9 3.2. Methods of recording, monitoring and reporting on the resource use 9 Conclusion 11 Works Cited 12 Name of the Student Name of the Professor Course No. Date Introduction Resources for the business like people, equipments, finance, material etc are used to achieve the objectives for the business. The organization set its goals to achieve certain objectives and thus regulates the maximum utilization of its resources. However, each resource is cost effective therefore planning of resources and their implications are considered by business to get the best of resources available. Pharmacy supervisor’s role in resource planning, maintenance, supply chain management would be critically evaluated in the paper. The internal and external resources would be identified and the role of those resources in business planning and implementation would also be critically evaluated. 1.1. Identification of resources to meet objectives The resources are elements used by the business to meet its goals. Thus the strategic planning needs optimum resource planning and implementation to meet the objectives. For the pharmacy, resources would be its people, facility, equipments, materials and supply etc those are used to run the business. The objectives for the pharmacy are on the other hand to deliver the best possible services for users within ethical and legal framework and achieve maximum social recognition among the service audience. The resources are accessed based upon the program and performance objectives. Thus the performance objectives of a pharmacy need to have resources to suitable help the business meet its objectives. The resources for the pharmacy would be every item that is needed to run a commercial outlet. People to operate, finance to regulate the daily functions, measuring tools for calculation of product weight etc are few to name the resources for business operations. Mandatory licences, pharmacy management systems and software, pharmacy practice guidelines are other few tools used by the operators in day to day pharmacy operations. The identified resources are developed into inputs for the processes in the pharmacy that gives the output to develop satisfied consumers. The resources however like manpower in the pharmacy is one resource that needs special operations and legal knowledge skills. The pharmacy industry is guided by legal and social norms which need to be known and followed in the pharmacy operations. The knowledge of each drug group like A, B, C and D category drugs and competent authority to prescribe each of them is a mandatory need. Hygiene, public relations, good knowledge of prescription reading, analytical skills are few of the required job skills that the pharmacy needs. However, the spaces for medicine stocking, software to identify the old from new stock along with date of expiry, software to maintain the stocks are needed. 1.2. Process of Resource planning for Objective Achievement The operations of Pharmacy are to serve the users or patients with a valid prescription, the drugs suggested by the competent authority. The business administration of Pharmacy is based upon supply chain, stock and operations management. The objectives of the pharmacy is like any other service outlet is to give services required for patients well being and along with it profit maximization, where sales and revenue management plays a distinct role. The operations however is dependent upon the availability of the requested drug at store, so the inventory management and resource planning for future needs to be done along with. The variables in the operation sphere of Pharmacy would need to have: The required quantity of product needed at the beginning of a period The constrained quantity of product availability at the start of the period Recommended or forecasted order quantity at the initial phase of the period Track back orders at the end of the period In hand inventory at the end of the period. The mission and objectives of the Pharmacy would guide its operations in the process that achieves them. The business analyzes the environment that it operates in and strategizes the future focus of developing the strengths and reducing the internal weaknesses. A continuous evaluation process is part of the strategic process planning as it gives the scope to the business to rectify what went wrong. To achieve the aforesaid, the process needs to have a good forecasting measure that is based upon the business environment dependent upon the season, locality or availability. However, demand for future cannot be predicted with a great degree of certainty but the past records of previous 5 years can be taken into account before the beginning of a certain period, for forecasting. A buffer or safety stock is kept for a period to run the operations without much ado. The supply chain and inventory management is an integral part of the pharmacy operations to ensure stock building and on time delivery. 1.3. Cost associated for objective achievement The cost of the supplies and resources to maintain the operations of the Pharmacy is of utmost need. Preparing the budget for pharmacy operations is the job of the supervisor where the cost of all the resources are taken together to project the operational budgets (Dietrich et al. 2008). Financial strategies are integral part of the organizational strategic planning. The return on capital, target setting, profits and viability is projected in the budget. The operations may be further being subdivided in to different operational functions like store and inventory, housekeeping, reception etc. Each of these independent functions would have its own budget for a certain period of time and all processes would be compiled to form the operations budget. Operations however has its objectives to serve the users with efficiency such as on time delivery, right prescribed drug disposal with a good knowledge of stock management processes. Therefore the objective of profit earning in the service offerings of the pharmacy would include the Capital expenditure budget for fixed assets, Operational budget and Cash flow budget, to start the period with for operations. Fixed costs, variable costs, wages and salaries of the staffs are all part of the budget for the pharmacy operations. Hence the focus stays upon the revenue that the periodic strategy has set for the outlet to receive the volume of sale needed to be done as per the planned course. 2.1. Evaluation of the supply sources for Objective fulfilment From the previous section the idea of input, process and output is in direct relation with suppliers and supply chain. Outputs of the pharmacy are the satisfactory services and pharmaceutical offerings to the users. However, it is also evident that each process in the pharmacy outlet is attached with each other so the output of one is the input for another within the pharmacy. The medicines issued by the stock would be stock or inventory controllers output while input for the service provider. The business has internal and external suppliers in the business perspective. The internal suppliers are the process chain owners where the end one process would lead to another process commencement. The counter sales would depend upon the housekeeping to clean the space viable for operations, as observed in the pharmacy. Therefore the housekeeping ends the process for the other internal process to start. The planned objective is to minimize the cost of acquiring the product to keep the best possible revenue on sales and to have the continuous supply to satisfy the consumers. Therefore the supply chain is an essential part of the objective fulfilment for the pharmacy’s objective. The supplier who gives the most competitive pricing while keeps the flow of goods like pharmacy products for retail sales to the store at the right time. Therefore the planned objective of giving the consumers the right supply at a competitive price and sufficient valid stock is the key to maintain the consumer’s satisfaction and business profitability. 2.2. Process to manage Supply continuity and Quality The external supply chain management is a very important for the pharmacy management, as it creates the basis for on time delivery of the retail goods like medicines at the minimal cost for the retailer to have their own share of profit on sales (Cui, 2005). The single or multi sourcing model of the suppliers is based on the availability of the products from the market. The single sourcing is from a single supplier while the multiple sourcing from different suppliers for a similar product. Stringfellow et al. (2008) suggested that the supply chain needs to identified by the business as the location, price, delivery schedules, location like elements involved in the process needs to be in context to the business and must give the best of value to the business. The single of multiple supply chain comes with their own disadvantages as the single sources may default where the stock can be affected while the multiple sources makes the process complex in terms of book keeping and such operation complexity. However, the multiple sources bring in the competitive pricing for the product available to the retailer to choose from (Coates and Schwester, 2009). The quality and continuity of product quality is however a process of time tested supply chain management process dealing experience. The process needs the flow where the pharmacy generates the purchase order and the supplier chain supplies the product on time based upon the purchase orders generated. The plans of the pharmacy are based upon the seasonal demands projected with a 5 years average for each specific drug. This average is brought in by the supply continuity by indenting those in a certain time to let the supplier deliver on time. For the supplies those may be urgent or emergency can be ordered for a swift delivery by the suppliers. Nevertheless, the process needs to encompass suppliers with the capability to deliver swiftly at a projected cost. The continuity and quality of resources are maintained by proper selection of suppliers, on time indenting and forecasting ability for future sales and consumption. 2.3. Strategies to predict and manage disruption in resource supply and associated cost The strategy formulations for the operations always take the emergency factors in mind where the disruption or breakage in distribution is kept in the process. The strategies are thus set on a 3 month wise period which predicts the probable disruption that may occur and take measures to counter them as much as it can to have no effects on business. However the PESTEL analysis is suggested as the best tool to build a strategy as the external factors those may interrupt the supply chain processes would be dependent upon the factors of PESTLE. Political, social, economic, technological, legal and environmental concerns and its reaction on the business is assessed to predict the business curbs as much as possible. Varlotta (2010) suggested that the predictability of external market factors is not possible to a greater extend due to its ambiguity of nature. The extent to which these may affect the business from a financial perspective or from supply side can be assessed by studying the factors of external environment. The longer the duration the bigger would be the cost of resource supply giving the business lesser space to manoeuvre profits. Hence identifying the costs and the benefits with its ability to outweigh the cost by benefits is key to predict future. The pharmacy can take the break of one week as the emergency blockage of supply chain line. This one week’s stock thus can be kept aside in store and replenished from time to time to manage the business flow without any break. The cost of sales would thus go up as the competitive pricing would not let the business earn the planned profits Verma and Young (2000). The lesser margin may affect the other operational functions too. However, the economy of scale for a pharmacy is not to larger extend possible due to space, consumption patterns, date of expiry of products, quality factors associated in bulk purchases. This investment to reduce cost can be however made for the products which are supposed to have longer shelf life and have change of price fluctuations near. 3.1. Review progress of actual resource used against planned resources The review of progress is the integral part of the strategic success and failure. The planned jobs for the period started with a budgeted cost while the progresses made with the strategized plans are compared to find the resource used to resource planning done. This would start with identifying the amount spent on each cost heads while measure the actual progress done in the works and identify the gap between projected and actual. The gap would suggest the progresses made and also give the Pharmacy supervisor an idea of what went wrong in strategising and budgeting that needs to be relooked into. However, a sudden change in price or a delay or unavailability of the goods for the progress can be another factor that may cause the delay in actual outputs. The cash flow of the period would also give the review of the cost incurred for a particular project and the budgeted cost for the project. It may so happen that the emergency takes the funds from the allocated heads causing a fund gap for the time being that in turn may affect the process progress. The right allocation and distribution and timely execution of a project is the base to build the review. The plan to buy the amount of medical supply targeted and purchased would therefore give the gap in the pharmacy budgetary plans. 3.2. Methods of recording, monitoring and reporting on the resource use The budget was built upon a targeted volume for a specific period. The volume can be product purchase, inventory control, operational progress, wages and salary of a particular targeted job in a certain period. The table below is an example of the cost measuring, recording and reporting. The example of the Housekeeping cost for the Pharmacies operations was considered 1000 USD. The Annual cleaning job was completed up to 75% where the housekeeping has spent 900 USD within the scheduled quarter. Therefore the gap in the projected job amount and achieved volume is 25%, the spending target and actual spending is differing by 100 USD after the end of the period. Budgeted Cost Actual Spending Work Progress Gap in Actual performance Monitoring progress Annual Housekeeping 1000 USD 900 USD 75% 1. 25% of the targeted job needs to be completed of the targeted volume 2. 100 USD left to spend (In hand for next budgeted period) Table depicting the projected budget with actual job done Thus the difference between budgeted cost and actual spending would be found out once the budget is recorded, the progress monitored and the actual achievements are reported as in the table above for Housekeeping. 3.3. Methods of using resource information to inform future actions The resource information of the present time can be further used in the future use for calculating the trends over a period of over five years to predict the seasonal consumption patterns. Pricing over the years and average increase in the pricing can be followed with the data collected here to forecast in the future. The rate of progress in a particular job and the reasons that can be allocated for the slow performance, information for future prediction and forecasting and along with analysis of the factors that caused the action to happen the way it happened like information can be stored. All these can be stored and used for future use and predictions for actions. Another way that this helps in business is by giving the source and reasons for deviation from the actual performance. This gives the future predictability and strategy formulation the strength of precision to a larger extend. The record keeping, descriptive job targets and reasons of delay or deviation with their analysis are noted for future actions. Conclusion The operations of the pharmacy with its manpower, retail goods for sale, service maintenance and capacity to forecast future developments help in future planning. The supply chain management, operations and service for a pharmacy is been described for budgetary preparations. The monitoring of the information along with proper interpretation of the various factors associated with operations gives the future a better outlook to build upon the past information. The prediction not only gives an edge over others but also helps the business to develop upon the weaknesses and build upon its strengths. The economy of scale for future benefits along with competitive pricing with multiple use of the information to build stock and prepare the best supply chain lines for the pharmacy is developed. The cost savings and the ease of business can be achieved by utilizing the business information in a way that can help future business decision making. The success and failure of the future business can be predicted with an efficient forecasting giving the business time to strategise the future actions. Works Cited Coates, Douglas. and Richard W. Schwester. “Use Of State Police Services For Local Policing: The Case Of New Jersey”. Public Budgeting & Finance 29.3 (2009): 97-109. Cui, Jingsong. “The Demand For International Message Telephone Services: A Two-Stage Budgeting Model”. Rev Ind Organ 27.2 (2005): 167-183. Dietrich, Brenda, Giuseppe A. Paleologo. and Laura Wynter. “Revenue Management in Business Services”. Production and Operations Management 17.4 (2008): 475-480. Stringfellow, Anne, Mary B. Teagarden, and Winter Nie. “Invisible Costs In Offshoring Services Work”. Journal of Operations Management 26.2 (2008): 164-179. Web. Varlotta, Lori E. “Becoming A Leader in University Budgeting”. New Directions for Student Services 2010.129 (2010): 5-20. Web. Verma, Rohit, and Scott T. Young. “Configurations Of Low-Contact Services”. Journal of Operations Management 18.6 (2000): 643-661. Web. Read More