To minimize confusion, it helps to understand your agency's structural components, which must work in harmony if the agency is to function properly. External factors relate to influences from external sources such as regulatory authority, insurance carriers, vendors, associations, the marketplace and any other external entity having an impact on your agency. External factors are probably the least understood of the structural components of your business. They are usually blamed for more than their share of problems. Properly understood however, external factors offer agencies opportunity and advantage over competition.
External factors create both constraints and opportunities for success.
Resources consist of people, facilities, equipment, tools, time and money. People apply their knowledge and skills, using equipment and tools, to get things done in the facility where they work. All of this takes time and money. But resources are often taken for granted. Employees frequently assume them as a given.