Executive Summary
Many businesses globally, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, find it difficult to manage their human resources. Much of the work is conducted manually, which might result in errors. Employment Hero is a brand that is involved in providing solutions to such problems. Its technological tools improve how these businesses recruit, hire, and manage human resources. With continuous efforts to create differentiation in the market and gain a competitive advantage, the firm has attracted more than seven hundred thousand active users on its platforms (Bueno et al., 2019). The latter has enabled the organization to accomplish greater margins when compared with competitors. It has allowed them as well to produce value for themselves and their shareholders.
Introduction
A competitive advantage allows an organization to outperform its rivals in the same or different industries. This enables the company to accomplish superior margins in contrast to its competitors and produces value for them and shareholders. Examples of competitive advantage include a highly skilled workforce, access to new technology, brand image recognition, customer experience, and openness to engagement. It must be hard to imitate so that one can thrive in the market, or else if another brand can duplicate it, it cannot be termed an edge.
Before establishing a competitive advantage, it is essential to understand the benefit, target market, and rivals. For instance, an organization needs to be clear on the services’ benefits. Regarding the brand in the discussion, Employment Hero, one of the customers, claims that they lacked a method of tracking employees on leave until they started utilizing MYOB from the company. The firm has differentiated itself from the competition through various strategies and tools. This paper aims to examine how Employment Hero is winning over the market in the software solutions business.
Discussion
Experience Innovation
Customer experience innovation is focused on offering customized, fun-filled, original, and useful services that can aid companies in differentiating their services and products and seem peculiar. Employment Hero is a firm that provides software solutions for other organizations regarding their recruitment and hiring processes. They give technological tools to easily hire new staff, quickly scale, and better compliance (Bueno et al., 2019). Businesses realize the importance of customer experience, as seen in figure 1.0 (Dugar, 2017). The most sustainable form of differentiation is creating a unique customer experience.
To date, the design has centered on offering seamless as well as frictionless experiences across various channels. Nevertheless, the approach has appeared to be ineffective in today’s market. To increase the effectiveness of marketing strategies, businesses need to create innovative experiences that are memorable and different. For example, APD Projects is one of its clients, had claimed that before Employment Hero, its processes were manually implemented. The firm connects and empowers more than eighty thousand businesses worldwide with a collection of employment features. It is launching employers toward their objectives, powering more productivity, and taking employment to different heights (Sjödin et al., 2020).
As a growing company, APD Projects needed a better structure. The company did not have a way of tracking leave apart from noting it down through writing; thus, it was difficult to identify an employee who was on leave or when. Policies were available on paper files and not necessarily recorded or stored in one location. Leanne, a bookkeeper at the firm, required an HRIS that would solve her human resource issues and incorporate MYOB, the existing payroll software.
Convergence Innovation
With the support of resources such as webinars, blogs, research reports, templates, and guides, Employment Hero continues to offer the Saas services. A blog, for instance, helps the customers understand that the firm is open for engagement. Through these, the firm eases clients’ workload, makes them feel less stressed, and increases efficiency. One without current posts is questioned whether or not they are still relevant. Webinars are used in the same manner as they improve engagement and aid in increasing brand awareness and letting consumers familiarize themselves with or learn more about the services the business in discussion is offering. Employment Hero uses templates as well to help the clients find it easy to use the services they offer (Hawari-Latter et al., 2021). These are pre-formatted documents tailored to assist in saving money and time. Additionally, they help boost customer satisfaction, thus retaining clients, as seen in figure 2.0 (swiftadmin, 2021).
Design Thinking
A great customer experience significantly influences brand loyalty, preference, and the sales rates of a business, as seen in figure 3.0 (Kriss, 2014). The secret to the success in their marketing approach is developing engagement initiatives as well as customer-oriented brand experiences. This is where they now integrate design thinking, as Wrigley et al. (2018) suggested. Design thinking allows the company to become more empathetic in engaging with clients. It refers to a methodology utilized to solve human-related issues. For Employment Hero, it is not about making their brand or services appear trendy in the target audience’s eyes.
Design thinking is an approach that is beyond conventional business models and seeks to focus on consumer empathy and actual trials. Rather, it is a systematic strategy for problem-solving that enables the brand to develop new as well as exciting ideas that speak to its consumers. It empowers Employment Hero to produce quality marketing mechanisms that are successful by acquiring the ideal content in front of the right collection of eyes. In addition to customer innovation and convergence innovation, the company continues to satisfy, retain and gain new clients through design thinking.
Covert and Overt Approach to Business
The organization’s entrepreneurs show both overt and covert approaches to the business. Regarding the former, they utilize convergence innovation, as suggested by Hawari-Latter et al. (2021). As suggested earlier, this strategy aims to show the consumer that the company is open to engagement (Kopper et al., 2018). This assures the client that they can reach the top leaders if they are not satisfied with the services they receive from other individuals in the company, such as technicians or software developers. They as well demonstrate a covert approach towards business, as when one glance at their website, it is difficult to identify the particular leaders in the organization.
Conclusion
The paper looks at Employment Hero, a firm that offers software solutions for other organizations in recruitment, hiring, and managing human resources. They utilize technological tools to easily find new employees and scale when necessary. It has been able to support eighty thousand small and medium-sized enterprises worldwide and has more than seven hundred and fifty thousand active users on its platforms. This is a success that has only happened due to its approaches toward competitive advantage. Through creativity and innovation, the company has differentiated itself from others in the same line of business. For instance, it uses tools such as blogs and webinars to boost engagement and openness to customers.
References
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Dugar, J. (2017). Why is customer experience important? Medium.
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Kopper, A., Fuerstenau, D., Zimmermann, S., Rentrop, C., Rothe, H., Strahringer, S., & Westner, M. (2018). Business-managed IT: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Illustration. In ECIS (p. 77).
Kriss, P. (2014). The Value of Customer Experience, Quantified. Harvard Business Review.
Sjödin, D., Parida, V., Jovanovic, M., & Visnjic, I. (2020). Value creation and value capture alignment in business model innovation: A process view on outcome‐based business models. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 37(2), 158-183.
Swiftadmin. (2021). The importance of customer engagement. SwiftERM.
Wrigley, C., Mosely, G., & Tomitsch, M. (2018). Design thinking education: a comparison of massive open online courses. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 4(3), 275-292.