Products and Services Offered by The Handy Company
What Is The Business Models And Technological Innovation?
The Handy Company is an American company which is involved in providing services relating to the cleaning of homes and offices. This report aims to understand the business canvas model of the handy company by putting emphasis on the various products and services that are offered by the company. The understanding of these factors would be helpful in significantly lowering the risks faced by the company and also allow a better facilitation of sales and services.
The Handy Company started out as an online two way service provider, and quickly spread its operations to UK, Canada as well as Australia. The company focuses on providing housekeeping services involved in the cleaning of homes, offices as well as various forms of carpets.
Oisin Hanrahan is currently the CEO of the Handy Company as well as its co-founder. He is mostly responsible for the various activities that are conducted by the company. The other important members of the company include Umang Dua (Co-founder and COO), Ignacio Leonhardt (Co-founder) and Weina Scott (Co-founder). The company is estimated to have around 160 employees working under it (Home Cleaning & Handyman Services. 2018).
The Handy Company enjoys a good reputation due to the uniqueness of the products and services provided by them. Their service leaves behind an impression in terms of the good smell, freshness and ability to make old items feel new again. The company prioritizes in providing a variety of cleaning services and is currently looking to expand its overall consumer base. The company aims to provide more diversity in its cleaning services, particularly industrial services that involve the cleaning and maintaining of different floors and also degreasing of different types of walls (Rese, Meier, Gesing & Boßlau, 2013). The company is in need of rethinking its current pricing and forming a new pricing strategy that is favourable and affordable to all sections of the crowd. Apart from this, the company also needs to introduce new innovative products into the market to bring in more customers, leading to an increase in sales.
The services that are provided by the company involve the cleaning of carpets, offices, homes, industrial cleaning and carpet cleaning. In order to provide these services, the employees are required to be properly trained, keeping in mind that all health and safety protocols as well as regulations are followed (Reim, Parida & Örtqvist, 2015). The company is required to solve the various issues that may arise and effectively solving them. This would also allow more consumers to choose the Handy services over other service providers.
Key Members of the Handy Company
The nine building blocks of BMC require the presence of a proper connections among each other since this would allow the Handy Company to conduct their business operations in an effective manner (Wirtz, Pistoia, Ullrich & Göttel, 2016). Therefore the company should also focus on bringing in targeting more potential consumers and ultimately gaining a competitive edge in the market. The company also provides different services to different consumers, that is it emphasizes on customer preferences and acts as one of the most important elements of the BMC model of the company (Souto, 2015). It is vital for the company therefore, to understand the needs of the consumers and provide services in accordance to them (Schaltegger, Hansen & Lüdeke-Freund, 2016).
In terms of revenue, the company needs to pay brokerage fees, and the operations conducted by the company are cost and value driven in nature. Apart from this, the company also offers special schemes and discount packages to its consumers.
Firstly, the company is in need of increasing its current number of consumers in order to generate more profits as well as gain a competitive edge in the market. Secondly, the company needs to bring more diversity in the services it provides so that it caters to the preferences of all forms of consumers. Thirdly the company needs to understand and identify the essential requirements and changes that need to be brought on in order to achieve more uniqueness and diversity in its services. And lastly, the company may reward its employees on the basis of a job well done or for excellent performance as this would help motivate the employees in performing better work. Skilled and motivated employees would provide better services and would lead to an increase in the levels of customer satisfaction. With an increase in the number of satisfied and happy consumers, it would be possible to bring in more potential consumers and this would ultimately lead to the increase in the goodwill of the company as well as its profits. Maintaining a good company image and good reputation regarding its services would help the company to survive longer in the current competitive market and would go a long way in establishing a loyal consumer base (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou & Venkatraman, 2013). Apart from this it would also allow the company to provide tough competition to its present rivals in the market and allow the Handy Company to expand its area of business operations on to new markets which had been left untapped before. Thus the consideration of these factors not only allow the Handy Company to experience an increase in sales and consumers, but would also allow the company to grow into a more complex business organization which operates at a greater cost and brings in more revenue than the total amount that is generated at present (Baden-Fuller & Haefliger, 2013).
The Handy Company’s Competitive Edge
The Handy Company faces a number of threats of different levels that need to be identified and analyzed. Doing so, would help the company to overcome various problems and unfavourable situations that it may face while conducting its operations or services. The risks need to be managed effectively with the proper utilization of diversity management. This would allow the company to bring about changes relating to various issues as well as easily coping with the changing demands of the consumers as well as the market as a whole. Time management is crucial as most of the company’s services are to be conducted and concluded within a given time frame, and any risks that arise during this time frame need to be dealt with swiftly and strategically.
As a service providing company, the Handy Company has a great opportunity to tap into areas like providing cleaning services for hostels, schools, colleges, dorms and so on. Adding these places to its list of providing cleaning services would not only help increase the total number of consumers, but also gaining a favourable position in the market, ahead of its competitors.
The company is experienced and well established in the field of cleaning services. The company already has gained some goodwill and there is reputation of the company among the customers. The company has enough capital to increase the number of its employee, and increasing the number of the employees would be productive as well because then the company can venture into the field of cleaning services for hostels, schools, colleges, dorms and so on. It is a very essential service needed for the hostels and dorms as the students living in these places have little time for cleaning purpose after their educational activities..
Conclusion
Thus the conclusion can be drawn stating that the analysis of the BMC model reveals the necessary changes that are required to be implemented by the Handy Company in order to experience an increase in the consumer base as well as the sales figures. Different issues are required to be dealt with carefully planned strategies and policies. Apart from the increase in the number of consumers, the employees need to be retained as well and imparted proper training in order to make them more effective in performing their task. Employee training is a time consuming process and inability to retain employees would prove to be a loss of time, money and resources for the company hindering its growth process. Hence proper emphasis is to be given to both the employees as well as the consumers with a focus on providing different forms of services according to the choice of the consumers. The proper implementation and following of these strategies is crucial for the increase in consumers and sales of the Handy Company.
It is very important for the management to brainstorm before finalising any decisions that may have permanent effect on the business. The innovations suggested above are permanent and they will have implications over the business activity. The efforts given by each team member constituted important part of the development of the business idea. There was brainstorming among the team members and each had given unique and effective ideas which were listed. Then the more feasible business ideas were used after group discussion.
References
Baden-Fuller, C., & Haefliger, S. (2013). Business models and technological innovation. Long range planning, 46(6), 419-426.
Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights.
Home Cleaning & Handyman Services | Handy. (2018). Handy.com. Retrieved 27 March 2018, from https://www.handy.com/
Reim, W., Parida, V., & Örtqvist, D. (2015). Product–Service Systems (PSS) business models and tactics–a systematic literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 97, 61-75.
Rese, M., Meier, H., Gesing, J., & Boßlau, M. (2013). An ontology of business models for industrial product-service systems. In The Philosopher’s Stone for Sustainability (pp. 191-196). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Schaltegger, S., Hansen, E. G., & Lüdeke-Freund, F. (2016). Business models for sustainability: Origins, present research, and future avenues.
Souto, J. E. (2015). Business model innovation and business concept innovation as the context of incremental innovation and radical innovation. Tourism Management, 51, 142-155.
Wirtz, B. W., Pistoia, A., Ullrich, S., & Göttel, V. (2016). Business models: Origin, development and future research perspectives. Long Range Planning, 49(1), 36-54.