Former ‘Apprentice’ finalist develops HR app for smaller firms
ANEW app aimed at saving small companies time on HR work has been launched by a Birmingham-based entrepreneur.
Nick Holzherr, who made the final of BBC show The Apprentice and founded recipe app Whisk, has now launch Air.
The app offers several essential services such as a central employee directory and the ability to book time off, which aims to help owners of SMEs deal with personnel matters on the go.
Mr Holzherr said the app aimed to provide basic services that small businesses needed, free of charge and for an unlimited number of employees. Air’s app store then allows businesses to extend the platform with additional features including some by third-parties.
Mr Holzherr said: “Managing HR is too hard right now – most process- es are manual and different processes or software usually don’t link together. Small business owners spend an average of four days each month battling internal admin according to the Federation of Small Business and even then most business owners don’t have access to basic tools that can help them manage their people and culture better.
“Twenty years ago people used bloated enterprise software platforms that were hard to use.
“They had every feature you could want but navigating to just the essential features was cumbersome.
“Then ten years ago the trend was that every feature became a separate app delivered by a different company.
“Each app was good but business owners suddenly had to log into five or ten different services – an inefficient and tiresome process.
“With HR in particular, this problem is exacerbated because there’s such a big foundation of personnel data that’s necessary for most tasks.”
Customers of Air will also be able to vote via its website for which apps get built next.
To support its development, Mr Holzherr joined the Entrepreneurial Spark programme which is based in NatWest’s office in Birmingham city centre.
Run alongside partners KPMG, Dell EMC and Pinsent Masons, Entrepreneurial Spark is a free business accelerator programme for start-up and growing businesses.