University Assignment: Zenefits Business Model and Strategic Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Zenefits, a company specializing in HR solutions. It begins with a description of the business, its industry, market, and services, followed by a detailed examination of its business model canvas, including customer relationships, value propositions, and key partnerships. The report then explores the key relationships across the nine building blocks of the canvas, identifies critical success factors for sustainable success, and evaluates potential downside risks. Finally, it discusses proposed changes to the business model and offers concluding remarks on Zenefits' strategic positioning and future prospects. The analysis incorporates relevant academic sources to support its findings and recommendations.

Running head: THINK BIG ASSIGNMENT
Think Big
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
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.......................................................3
2. Describe the business model canvas of the selected business using the nine building blocks.5
3. Explain the key relationships that exist across the nine building blocks.................................6
4. Identify and discuss the critical success factors the business has to get right to achieve
sustainable success...........................................................................................................................8
5. Evaluate what will contribute to downside risk.......................................................................8
6. Discuss the changes you would make to the business model if this was your business..........9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
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).
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
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

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constantly so that it can keep the readers updated with the most recent and correct information
(Davison et al., 2016).

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2. Describe the business model canvas of the selected business using the nine building
blocks
Customer
relationship
Maximum priority is
given to the
customers. It wants
to empower the
customers and make
them successful.
Value
proposition
Provides best
advice to
consultants,
payroll, learning
system, customer
care, travel and
tourism, health
insurance
companies.
Customer
Segments
It mainly ties up
with those
companies that
render service to
the customers. It
wants to
empower their
customers like
the brokers, the
students who
study
information
online, MNCs
Key Partners
Zenefits believe that it
is not just a platform
but a partner. It enters
into partnerships for
enriching the customer
services. It ties up with
brokers, health
companies, and
technical consultants.
Some key partners are
Gsuite, Office 365,
Uber, Carta and many
more.
Key Activities
They help in
managing the HR
related works much
more advanced and
upgraded. They helpKey resources
They conduct many
events like SHRM
2018 annual
conference 7
exposition, HR Tech
Expo, and others.
Channels
They have different
mobile apps and the
customer app
through which they
can reach out to the
customers.Revenue streams
The revenue is mainly earned from the tie-ups or the
partnerships with the companies that get in touch
with.
Cost structure
The technology and the knowledge that is shared with the
consultants, the apps, performance management and other
such partners incur a heavy cost.

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3. Explain the key relationships that exist across the nine building blocks
Key partners
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).
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.

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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

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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.
4. Identify and discuss the critical success factors the business has to get right to
achieve sustainable success
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).
5. Evaluate what will contribute to downside risk
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

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

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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.