Overview of Zenefits

1. Provide a succinct description of the business, the industry in which it operates, the market or markets it serves, and the products and services it provides.

2. Explain the key relationships that exist across the nine building blocks.

3. Identify and discuss the critical success factors the business has to get right to achieve sustainable success.

3. Evaluate what will contribute to downside risk.

4. Discuss the changes you would make to the business model if this was your business.

Zenefits is a company that tries to extend their hands to all those corporate organizations who suffer from the HR problem. It realizes that HR is a very complicated problem and it help the employees to get more organized and carry on their work properly (Kenney & Zysman, 2016).

This company mainly operates to extend their help to all the HR oriented services. It helps the workers to work and develop their work expertise and channelize their works in a better and organized manner. It renders their services to different kinds of employees like brokers, admins, HR executives, consultant or even the employees (Jesinoski, Miller & Volker, 2016). It believes in rendering their knowledge and expertise to these companies so that it can perform better. It believes in the customer welfare and want to serve their customers with all the possible resources that it has. It not only provides the companies with the knowledge but also with technology (Romeike, 2018). It is only way it can contribute towards building companies. This is because companies do not make people but people make companies and also move them forward (Davison et al., 2016). It renders their help in almost every sectors like payroll, education, health sectors and many other such community welfare services. It provides useful services like getting in touch with the licensed brokers and then helping the people to get thoroughly informed and then take the decisions as per their needs (Chernev, 2017). It also helps in keeping people informed through the technological needs through different mobile apps. It helps in providing a large number of FAQs, articles, facts, video, and news. Benefits keep on updating them constantly so that it can keep the readers updated with the most recent and correct information (Davison et al., 2016).

 

Zenefits mainly enters into partnerships with those companies that render customer-oriented services. It believes that these are not just a platform but they are partners as well. It measures their success through the success of their clients. It wants to empower their customers. It enters into partnerships with companies that are into travel and tourism, productivity, software and technology, expense management , education and other such services. It partnered with Expensify that helps the customers to get instant services regarding different policies right at a single click or a button on their mobile apps rather than traveling from one place to the other for creating and stopping their policies and memberships. It makes use of the highly advanced technology called Smart Scan. Another such partnership is with Uber. The customers taking the Uber rides can easily pay the fare through the Zenefits computer cards. There are also many added costs and benefits (Payroll, Benefits & Compliance Apps | HR Software | Zenefits., 2018).

Partnerships and Operations

Zenefits mainly carries on its activities in the fields of customer success and customer relationships. Their main activities include developing software and other technological tools that will help the HR works to be channelized and performed in the best way possible. Often the MNCs and other corporate houses face a problem in maintaining the payroll of so many employees or in keeping a constant track of their employees and connection with their employees (Chiaroni et al., 2016). So, Officevibe is software that helps the managers to keep a contact with their team through many surveys and feedbacks.

The value proposition is in this way that Zenefits wants to add value to the lives of their customers. It helps the companies to carry on their employee management, performance management, payroll and also many other such activities in a very easy, instant and organized way. One example can be YouEarnedIt, which helps in improving the company culture in the best way possible (Kenney & Zysman, 2016). It helps in creating employee engagement and uplifting the bottom level performance as well. This app helps in connecting the employee data directly from Zenefits to the YouEarnedIt app that will help in peer to peer recognition as well. The managers will also be able to keep a track of their company y culture and the current and past status of their employees and also their achievements. This will help in making the managers reward the employees accordingly (Cohan, 2017). Lessonly is a very good learning app that is used by almost 900000 learners in about 400 companies that helps in translating the important team goals into lessons that can be learned by all the employees easily.

Customer relationship is its topmost priority. The company makes sure that it is being able to empower the customers and make them successful in all their endeavours. It wants their customers to get the work done easily and with proper perfection. Through their highly advanced apps, the customers get a lot of time to focus on many other aspects of the business rather than focus on only the HR works (Jesinoski, Miller & Volker, 2016). The paper works that had to be done manually can now easily be done just with the help of a click. A good example can be the Chattahoochee Hills Charter School, where Zenefits helped in making the HR related works very easy and quick. The teachers earlier had to spend days on the HR related works and now she just needs a couple of hours. Payroll also becomes very easier for the businessmen. The customer segments mainly include people belonging to the HR departments, the schools, and other educational sectors, people undertaking travels, brokers. Key resources mainly come from the partnerships that it enters in with other companies. The number of users or the number of subscriptions helps in earning the revenue. The cost structure is the heavy expenses that have to be borne for the purpose of developing the modern technological apps and software that helps in making the HR works like payroll, employee management , and performance management easier and automated. The channels mainly include the advertisements done through the mobile apps that help in advertising the Zenefits features and the benefits available after using it.       

The Value Proposition of Zenefits

 Zenefits can get sustainability but it needs to utilize the opportunities of increasing the market demand. In order to make sure that it can cover a large number of employees and gain more users on all their platforms, it needs to develop and upgrade themselves and focus on the business expansion. It will have to increase the local and the overseas market demand. It will also have to look after the needs of the employees who are working for them. It will have to increase their business from the USA to other countries as well. It will have to constantly upgrade themselves to finding out more and more HR related functions (Jeyakumar, 2017).

The major risk factor can be the Government policies and regulations. It must try and find out many alternative ways that will help them in catering to the needs of people even if there are any changes (Campenon, 2016). It must follow the policy of constant improvement so that it can easily deal with the competition that might come from the entrance of some competitors. The lack of personal touch might also make the customers dissatisfied. So, Zenefits must try to make sure that it is assisting is answering each and every query of the customers.

In case, it was my business, then I would have first tried to focus on the customer relationship. I would have made sure that the customer care executes are appointed who would always be there to answer the queries of the customers (Romeike, 2018). There must be a politeness the way it deals with the customers. There must be no lack of personal touch. I would also focus on the business expansion.

Conclusion

Thus, it can be concluded that Zenefits is really doing a good work by helping all the companies to reduce their tensions and their workloads on the HR related works and focus more on the other parts of the business. However, it has to follow the policy of constant up gradation and keep on developing themselves so that it can easily give tough competition to the entry of any new competitors.

References

Campenon, B. (2016). Fintech and the future of securities services. Journal of Securities Operations & Custody, 8(2), 107-112.

Chernev, A. (2017). The Business Model: How to Develop New Products, Create Market Value and Make the Competition Irrelevant. Cerebellum Press.

Chiaroni, D., Chiesa, V., Frattini, F., & Urbinati, A. (2016). THE ROLE OF THE BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN IN THE DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION. In 17th International CINet Conference. Innovation and tradition: combining the old and the new (pp. 1-11).

Cohan, P. S. (2017). Growth via Culture. In Disciplined Growth Strategies (pp. 165-186). Apress, Berkeley, CA.

Davison, H. K., Bing, M. N., Kluemper, D. H., & Roth, P. L. (2016). Social media as a personnel selection and hiring resource: Reservations and recommendations. In Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment (pp. 15-42). Springer, Cham.

Jesinoski, T., Miller, G. J., & Volker, J. X. (2016). Entrepreneurial Human Relations And Organizational Behavior. Business Journal for Entrepreneurs, (4).

Jeyakumar, N. (2017). Analysis of the Digital Direct-to-Customer channel in Insurance (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Kenney, M., & Zysman, J. (2016). The rise of the platform economy. Issues in Science and Technology, 32(3), 61.

Payroll, Benefits & Compliance Apps | HR Software | Zenefits. (2018). Zenefits.com.

Romeike, F. (2018). Reinventing Insurance Brokerage in a Digitally Disruptive World1. Insurance & Innovation 2018: Ideen und Erfolgskonzepte von Experten aus der Praxis, 43.