- HR Consultancy
AIMS Human Capital Bulgaria is an experienced Human Resources Consultancy company, offering services aimed at supporting the strategic initiatives, and analyzing organizational development options open to clients. The focus of AIMS work is to help business be more effective at managing the human dimension of work.
They provide comprehensive analysis and integrated Human Resources solutions to enable clients accomplish their objectives on a long-term basis through on-going support.
AIMS provide the best learning and development solutions, from the initial assessment to defining the strategy, developing and implementing the solution, and measuring the results.
- Training and Coaching
The training programs of AIMS are highly interactive and include guided discussions, video case studies, small and large groups activities, role plays, simulations and skill practice accompanies by simultaneous feedback.
AIMS Training Packages:
- Effective Leadership
- Team Power
- Customer Management
- Professional Skills
- Effective Sales
- Power Package for Administrative Assistants
- Target Markets
Aims Human Capital Bulgaria focuses on providing executive search solutions, HR consultancy and training and coaching services. The most important clients are executives in larger companies. They are marketing managers, general managers, sales managers, etc.
Target Markets
The most important clients of Aims are the Leading Bulgarian Companies and the Multinational Companies, like Balkanpharma, Globul, Allianz Bulgaria, Bristol Myers Squibb, DHL International, Danone, etc. They are most willing and capable of investing in the HR services. The market share of small businesses it’s not so big because most of them can’t afford this service or are unaware of it.
- SWOT Analysis
The SWOT Analysis covers strengths (what an organization can do), weaknesses (what an organization cannot do), opportunities (potential favorable conditions for an organization) and threats (potential unfavorable conditions for an organization). Strengths and weaknesses are generally internal attributes and opportunities and threats are external.
We live in an age of growth, change, and business revolution. The HR business is risky, it offers us a lot of opportunities and threats, but we need to make the dealing with HR one of the biggest strengths, to minimize the weaknesses.
Strengths
- True Expertise: The area of the business is known very well. The AIMS experience and expertise is better than anybody else is in the same field.
- Skilled Workforce: The team is small (only 15 employees), but they’ve been chosen very carefully, and as a consequence they’re loyal to the company, highly qualified, they’re hard workers and everybody knows what their duties include.
- Company’s Name Recognition: AIMS is a very well known name in the HR market, its professional reputation is confirmed over the years.
Weaknesses
- Machinery not up to date: There are very few new computers. Most of them are being up dated, but this is not enough for some of the applications used.
- Suspicion: Still some of the Bulgarian companies are not familiar with the services AIMS provides, so they are a little uncertain when investing in them.
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Marketing: It can be considered as both Strength and Weakness, because marketing strategy is almost entirely focused on the people and the companies that were already clients of AIMS Human Capital Bulgaria. Brochures have been sent to them and they’ve been up to dated with information concerning new changes in the company, BUT there are no advertisements in the media, so AIMS can rally only on word of month ads for attracting new clients.
Opportunities:
- The present financial position of AIMS is very good, which creates a good reputation for future bank loans and borrowings.
- The skilled workforce means that they can be moved and trained for other areas in the business.
- The HR Business is still not very well developed in Bulgaria so the clients that need such services have a limited resource.
Threats:
- Though the HR services are something new on the Bulgarian market, this is a fast growing area and a lot of small HR companies pop up.
- The better advertising of the competitors.
How some changes can affect the company’s behavior:
- Changes in the Competitive Environment
One of the largest trends in the Bulgarian economy in recent years has been the rapid increase of small businesses. While in 1994 AIMS was one of the few HR companies, today there are hundreds of them on the Bulgarian market, most of them are too small and still not trust-worthy, but anyway they are potential big competitors.
- Changes in the Sociocultural Environment
Social and cultural influences cause changes in the attitudes, beliefs, norms, customs, and lifestyles. A firm’s ability to foresee changes in this area can prove beneficial, while failure to react to these changes can be devastating.
- Changes in the Political/Legal Environment
Regulatory actions by government agencies often restrict the activities of companies in affected industries. It is important to identify political/legal threats and opportunities in order to keep an edge on the market (Austainer, 1999)
- Changes in the Internal Organizational Environment
Various elements within an organization’s internal environment can also have impact on marketing activities. Changes in the structuring of departments, lines of authority, top management, or internal political climate can all create internal weaknesses that must be considered. It is good to up-date the employees with the changes in the company.
It is not simply enough to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a company. Weaknesses should be looked at in order to convert them into strengths. Likewise, threats should be converted into opportunities. And the strengths and opportunities should be matched to optimize the potential of the firm.
5. Price, Financials and Future Predictions
Price:
AIMS services are adequately priced. Its positioning, as well as its finances, demands high pricing. When a job is exactly their expertise a high pricing is expected. The prices are fixed and they rarely change, of course there are some exceptions depending on the service provided.
Ultimately, the clients will risk less with a company with high reputation as AIMS, than with another one that’s been just invented. There’s more security when working with world recognized company.
Financials:
The business plan of the company calls for sales of nearly $2.6 million this year growing to $3.8 million by 2004, on marketing expenses of slightly more than $300,000.
It includes two very important things:
1. A steady decline in cost of sales and growth in gross margin percentage as more of their resources are build, as full-time personnel and fixed costs instead of contractors and outside consultants.
- A decline in marketing expenses.
For consultants, AIMS has a high variable cost of 30% of sales. Turning to experts on a permanent job basis, reduces the risk of fixed costs.
This break-even is a reflection of the last year, in which AIMS has built its fulfillment mainly based on variable cost people instead of fixed-cost people.
Break-even Analysis
Monthly break-even point
AIMS sales for this year grow from $100,000 per month to $800,000 next fall. The sales forecast is aggressive, assuming financing for the marketing expenses and hiring permanent personnel.
AIMS projects sales and marketing expenses from $320,000 this year to $450,000 in the next year. This compares to sales increasing in the same period. AIMS believes that effective marketing requires a very high percentage of sales, but over the time they can bring that percentage down to more acceptable levels.
The expenses are divided over the two main departments – the training department and the consultancy department. Each one of them has its own budget, which includes advertising, public relations, travel, internet traffic, coping and printing expenses and office materials. There’s also a substantial additional budget for contingencies.
As we see from the chart most of the expenses are managed by marketing (the advertising or the public relations). The coping and printing expenses are not low too. That’s because a lot of materials are copied and printed for the training seminars, that’s why it is known that the AIMS seminars are one of the best, but also one of the most expensive. Most of the time the income covers the expenses, so the financial state of the company is stable.
- Sales Vs. Expenses monthly
The contribution margin should increase steadily during the next year because of two factors:
- The cost of sales goes down as the HR business is being developed, bringing on the know-how it needs to fulfill the promise it has given to the clients. Risk goes up with the increased fixed costs, but the margins go up too, because cost of sales is less.
- AIMS sales and marketing expenses will stabilize. A decrease in the overall level of expenses is not expected, but they should decline in percentage terms as sales go up.
- Conclusion
As we see from the economic analysis, AIMS Human Capital Bulgaria is one very successful company. Still, there are some things that need to be improved, for example the marketing strategy.
The main obstacle I had when writing this coursework was the difficult access to the company’s data. The profit and loss account, the pricing and the salaries are confidential information and no big company will reveal them. Anyway, I was provided with some data from AIMS, because I’m a member of its team, but the numbers I used are not true, they are similar to them, but I was not aloud tell the real ones. However, the final conclusions are true and as this information is confidential it should not be distributed.
References:
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- Anthony C. Danca, “SWOT Analysis”
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“Swotin your way to success”,
- Ken Heather, “Understanding Economics”
