TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY MAIN FINDINGS: To this end, QPM has conducted five executive interviews and two business process workshops with the individual HR leaders from five existing SME end users and obtained data from online survey covering 47 other companies coming from all over Europe. A key survey discovery was that most organizations (more than 60%) use numerous standalone systems to report and gather HR data, whereas 23% of organizations use three or more HR platforms simultaneously, resulting in not streamlined access to information. With data fragmented and residing in multiple, non-integrated or networked systems, most notably in job evaluation and payroll functions, aggregated reports require substantial manual effort to prepare and reconcile. Overall, the majority of the unmet needs that are listed above could be met by a Gradar® SaaS system with a common database. What we have also confirmed is that Gradar® SaaS can be useful for companies of every size, but we will specifically target SMEs with number of employees between 50-250 (e.g. medium-sized to large SMEs) as our main customers as there the need for professionalised HR processes is the highest. Alternative 3C, the SaaS delivery model, has the lowest total costs and can be implemented in the shortest amount of time, thereby delivering important intangible benefits sooner than other alternatives.
COMMERCIAL FEASIBILITY MAIN FINDINGS:• Based on all dimensions, QPM will be focusing on SMEs and countries such as BE-NE-LUX, Germany, Spain, Italy as well as Turkey and the UK.
• We will be further narrowing our targeting scope around job function and company size
• Switching to a 5-tier pricing model that accounts for purchasing power parity will find a great acceptability by the end users.
• Based on input from our implementation partners, we created a list of KPIs on first-year returns on investment from Gradar® SaaS. In order to ensure market success, QPM will implement the following:
• Explain customers’ existing (IT) costs and build a strong argument for switching to our cloud-based solution
• Plans to working more closely with third party vendors to avoid vendor conflicts and help customers with implementation and consulting services, which may involve training or retraining staff
FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY MAIN FINDINGS: An investment amount of 1.9 mil. EUR is needed at the beginning of 2020. For year five (2025), financial planning calculations project a return on equity (ROE) of more than 110 % and a return on sales (ROS) of more than 70 %, furthermore an EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) of 6.9 mil. EUR, and cash equivalents at the end of the year of almost 14 mil. EUR.
Once the required funding amount of approx. 1.9 mil. EUR is secured, QPM will start immediately further developing the software and system architecture. Upon completion, the software applications and systems need to be tested and validated for quality assurance purposes. Development, testing, and validation activities will take about 1.5 – 2 years.
Once the reliability and cost efficiency have been proven, it should not be too difficult to have Gradar® widely adopted in Europe. At only 5% take-up of the new SaaS by all concerned SMEs this could lead to around €1.1 billion savings and over 2,000 new jobs across the SME sector.
