Washington State University Porsche Company Resources and Capabilities Paper

4.1. Company Resources

Financial Resources: Quantitatively/qualitatively assess the company’s current assets, borrowing capacity, and its ability to generate funds quickly either internally (e.g., move money from one business to another) or externally (e.g., additional borrowing or stock sale).

Physical Resources: Quantitatively/qualitatively assess the company’s physical resources including building and property assets (owned or leased), its business locations, geographic access to product markets, geographic access to supply markets, and/or plants and equipment.

Human Resources: Qualitatively assess the management expertise and experience of the company’s top management team. Compare the expertise and experience of your company’s top management team (i.e., Chairman, CEO, and COO, if applicable) to those of its top three rivals.

Organizational Resources: Qualitatively assess the company’s culture, reputation, brand identity, trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets, other intellectual property, etc.

4.2. Company Capabilities

Operations and Distribution Capabilities: Quantitatively/qualitatively assess your company’s use and management of supply chain, distribution channels, and general logistics. For example, you might look for information on inventory costs/turnover ratios, supply chain bottlenecks, and efficiency.

Human Resource Capabilities: Quantitatively/qualitatively assess your company’s ability to attract, retain, empower, motivate and train employees. For example, you might look for information on employee turnover, workforce training programs, salary comparisons, and education benefits.

Management Information Systems: Quantitatively/qualitatively assess your company’s ability to use and deploy MIS/IT technologies for point-of-sales data collection, inventory management, customer service, etc. For example, see if you can information on IT expenditures.

Marketing Capabilities: Quantitatively/qualitatively assess your company’s ability to build and promote its brand(s), customer service abilities, merchandising, etc. For example, see if you can calculate an annual Advertising Intensity ratio (advertising expenditures / divided by total sales).

Product/Technology Development: Quantitatively/qualitatively assess your company’s ability to “see the future” of the market and/or develop new technology or products quickly. For example, see if you can calculate an R&D Intensity ratio (R&D expenditures / divided by total sales).

4.3. Strengths and Weaknesses Summary

Use the VRIN framework to identify the company’s (1) strengths and (2) distinctive competences. Thoroughly assess the value, rarity, and imitability of each set of resources and capabilities. Strengths: In a single paragraph, based on the VRIN assessment, clearly identify and summarize the top three resource strengths and the top three capability strengths.

Weaknesses: In a single paragraph, based on the VRIN assessment, clearly identify and summarize the top three resource weaknesses and the top three capability weaknesses.