Creating Profit Through Alliances - business models for collaboration E-book | Page 96

Hago
Hago is a contract cleaner with approximately 9000
employees. It is part of the Vebego concern, active in
facility services and cleaning, and employing some
35,000 people worldwide. As contract cleaning is a
competitive industry, most of the Hago business units
have an operational excellence strategy. Everything is
focussed on reducing the time required to clean an
office, classroom or shopping mall.
There are exceptions: Hago Healthcare, with around
1000 employees in the Netherlands, strives for
customer intimacy. Carola Put – de Vreugd, manager
of the Vebego/Hago-St. Jacob joint venture
JacobSchoon, explains why: “In healthcare the cleaner
does more than just clean the room of a patient or
elderly person. Making beds, supporting the care
process, flexibility in planning and interacting with
the people is part of the job as well. The difference
between cleaners and nurses is limited from the
point of view of the clients. The only challenge with
this strategy is to recruit and train the right people for
these low-paid jobs.”
Carola used to be facility manager at St. Jacob, a
nursing organisation with 1500 clients and 1500
employees across 8 locations. St. Jacob aims to
provide experience-oriented and demand-driven
care, under the motto „remarkably close‟. The
strategy is to focus on the core business, which is the
care, and to arrange all other aspects in partnerships.
The joint venture with Vebego/Hago is the first result
of this strategy.
As facility manager, Carola Put – de Vreugd was one
of the members of the outsourcing team, and she
became enthusiastic about Hago. When the
agreement with Hago was finalised, she applied for
the job of joint venture manager, which was to be
fulfilled by Hago in close consultation with St. Jacob.
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The joint venture, as well as her job, started in June
2010.
The alliance is structured as a Limited Liability
Company where Hago holds 49% and St. Jacob 51%
of the shares. Employees from both Hago and St.
Jacob are seconded to the new company but remain
on the payroll of the respective organisations. The
necessary assets, such as cleaning machines, are
transferred to JacobSchoon
One of the reasons for the alliance was that a tax
advantage could be obtained. As a public institution,
St. Jacob could not reclaim the Value Added Tax that
it paid, but the JacobSchoon could. However, while
the negotiations were ongoing, the government
lowered the VAT percentage on cleaning services
from 19% to 6%, which somewhat undermined the
original purpose and hampered the decision process.
The other reason was to professionalise the cleaning
activities with the techniques that Hago brought in,
such as cleaning with a microfiber cloth instead of
with water and soap. Hago personnel were better
trained in terms of speed than the St. Jacob cleaners,
but would still have time to spend a few minutes on
social interaction.
The target setting for a more efficient work method
was to achieve a 2.2 million euro savings. This was
one of the major items during the negotiation
process, along with the tariffs for extra work. Hago
and St. Jacob arranged to both invoice the activities of
their workers to JacobSchoon, the only difference
being that St. Jacob invoices the actual hours worked
and Hago the scheduled hours. This allows Hago to
make a better profit by working more efficiently.
The parties also considered transferring the St. Jacob
employees to the payroll of the joint venture.