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Expectations of clients regarding HR administration: research among the clients of Ten Kate Huizinga

Walsweer, K. (2013) Expectations of clients regarding HR administration: research among the clients of Ten Kate Huizinga.

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Abstract:SME entrepreneurs require more and more of their accountant or advisor. They want strategic advice, and an advisor who is proactive, with understanding of the industry, and who offers a diverse range of services at a reasonable and transparent price. SME entrepreneurs need several and different kinds of aspects of business services, for which they are willing to pay. The requirements often remain unfulfilled, so there are the opportunities for accounting firms. Referring to this, it is important for Ten Kate Huizinga to investigate what their specific clients want. The risks involved are an important aspect in this. Payroll mainly consists of providing monthly income tax declarations which need to meet legal requirements. These contain employee insurance, payroll tax, and health insurance, which are needed to calculate the net wage. All the data that is needed for this has to be delivered by the clients of Ten Kate Huizinga. Ten Kate Huizinga can also provide other services for which these data is needed. With a new system, NMBRS, they want to complement the services they already had with overviews of absence and vacation, competence management, and personnel dossiers. It is important for Ten Kate Huizinga that the services they offer correspond to the services their clients expect or desire regarding HR administration. If it does not entirely correspond, the question raises what can be done about it and how this can affect Ten Kate Huizinga. At the moment, they do not know whether the services correspond with the requirements of the clients. They also want to know if there is a need for the additional services. Therefore the goal of this study is to give an advice about developing a strategy for the service portfolio of Ten Kate Huizinga. This has to be done to enhance the quality of the services of such providers. If they adapt to the needs of the clients, they are more likely to retain their clients and therefore maintain and increase income. In order to carry this out, a conceptual model is drawn based on the most important concepts from the literature. This model describes the process of making an outsourcing decision for HR administration with four important concepts: the propensity to outsource, the decision to outsource, vendor selection, and satisfaction. This model suggests that, first; the propensity to outsource implies that a company thinks about making a decision to outsource. Then, it has to examine the pros, cons, and the risks of it, which can provide a thought-out decision whether the company is going to outsource its HR administration or not. The firm characteristics can influence the decision. After the decision to outsource is made, the company has to choose a service provider, which is dependent on critical factors. Lastly, the satisfaction is formed by the expectations and the perceived performance. If the expectations are met or outperformed, there is satisfaction. Based on this conceptual model a questionnaire is formed which is used for research among the clients of the ESD, clients of Ten Kate Huizinga, but not of the ESD, and companies who are similar to the clients as regards size and industry. Currently, the ESD offers: payroll, recruitment & selection, writing of regulations and documents, remuneration issues, advice about employee insurance, and firing of personnel. With NMBRS, also competence management, absence and vacation management, and digital personnel dossiers can be provided. Examination confirms that a large part of activities is offered and required. What is offered, but not required is competence management. Therefore, Ten Kate Huizinga can consider not doing this service. What is required, but not offered is performance evaluation, training & education, policy making, and teambuilding activities. It is also reflected in the scatter plot that performance evaluation and training & education are important. These activities can be added to the service portfolio. Because policy making and teambuilding activities are raised by the respondents, it is important to consider adding these services. NMBRS seems to be a good program for providing services. Perhaps, the provider of this program has already investigated the needs of companies. This is what the market needs, so this is offered in the program. The market needs have to be monitored, because the market is always changing. A business development task can be created to keep up with the movements in the markets and in the needs of (potential) clients. This covers four functions: finding profitable opportunities, developing and maintaining partnerships, providing support for new service development, and recognizing and responding to customer needs (Davis & Sun, 2006). Especially the last two functions are important for Ten Kate Huizinga. This function will constantly seek to new opportunities which Ten Kate Huizinga can take. A recommendation for developing a strategy for the service portfolio is to look to what the respondents have raised and determine whether the benefits outweigh the costs when implementing the services. If so, then Ten Kate Huizinga can add this service. New service development (NSD) is a different process than the development of a tangible product. A major difference is the involvement of customers in services. Customer orientation plays a more important role in service firms, because there is a more intimate relationship with customers. Alam & Perry (2002) have identified ten key stages of the development process and they tie them to customer involvement: (1) Strategic planning; (2) Idea generation; (3) Idea screening; (4) Business analysis; (5) Formation of cross-functional team; (6) Service design and process/system design; (7) Personnel training; (8) Service testing and pilot run; (9) Test marketing; and (10) Commercialization. Ideally a manager should create a linear process, but some stages can be performed parallel if there is a need to develop a new service quickly, for example in a competitive market. The stages that can be performed concurrently are: strategic planning and idea generation; idea screening and business analysis; and personnel training and service testing. This is shown in Appendix 6. There should be more attention to the idea generation stage, because this is the most important development stage. Other key stages are idea screening and the formation of a cross-functional team. In addition, there should be more emphasis on developing services that match customers’ needs. Customer interaction can increase service success, so customer input has to be included in the various stages of the NSD process. This is shown in Appendix 7. Concluding, Ten Kate Huizinga should look further than simple market research and develop a process of acquiring input from customers. To do this, they should be proactive in developing long-term relationships with customers and treat them as partners (Alam & Perry, 2002). In the literature about the development of outsourcing there is said that there will be a greater importance of efficiently managing relationships as well (Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2005). At last, it is best to stay focused on SMEs, because large companies often have an own HR department and they have more specialized knowledge.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
Ten Kate Huizinga, the Netherlands
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/63847
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