{"id":7355,"date":"2015-12-09T23:20:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T04:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/wyzant-inc-a-brilliant-way-to-keep-everyone-on-board\/"},"modified":"2015-12-09T23:23:38","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T04:23:38","slug":"wyzant-inc-a-brilliant-way-to-keep-everyone-on-board","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/wyzant-inc-a-brilliant-way-to-keep-everyone-on-board\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyzant, Inc: A brilliant way to keep everyone on board"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wyzant, Inc. is a fast-growing online service company that links a network of students seeking academic tutoring to a network of tutors offering independent tutoring services in exchange for a percentage of the payment exchanged between each student and tutor. \u00a0\u00a0Its brilliance comes from its ability to keep everyone in their value chain on board\u2026or else no one will get paid.\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, the success of their business model relies on the customers\u2019 ability to continuously support the operating model.<\/p>\n

Wyzant\u2019s operating model is based on four core values, narrowed down from a list of hundreds at the inception of the company.\u00a0 Each value, while seemingly vague to the general public, is actually fully integrated into the business model for the company and built into the way they create and capture value for their customers and collaborators. \u00a0The company needs employees who want to learn from customers, customers who want to learn from tutors, and tutors who want to teach and learn to grow their own potential as well.\u00a0\u00a0 Incentives are designed accordingly. \u00a0\u00a0The table below summarizes the company values, their link to its operating model, and the ways in which value is captured through revenue and service.<\/p>\n

\"Wyzant
\nOf course, there is nothing stopping tutors from detaching from the website and forming their own tutoring relationships, provided that these relationships were not obtained through Wyzant based on the terms and agreements of the company.\u00a0 However, in doing so, tutors would quickly find that they are unable to source the same quantity and scale of students, and upon returning to Wyzant, would discover that their payment percentage has dropped due to inactivity.\u00a0 As a result, they only make this \u2018mistake\u2019 once. \u00a0\u00a0Tutors have to remain engaged.Like many other companies, Wyzant incentivizes employees based on company performance.\u00a0 Company performance is driven by revenue generated by volume and frequency of students and tutoring sessions.\u00a0 Students are incentivized based on their own knowledge, and shown the value of Wyzant through improved test scores and school grades.\u00a0 Tutors are incentivized based on the percentage of their tutoring fees they earn; if they tutor frequently and receive good reviews, they can make up to 95% of what they charge, while if they tutor infrequently and receive few or poor reviews, they drop down as low as 60% and have difficulty obtaining business.<\/p>\n

Similarly, students could source their own tutors through friends, family, and educational systems. However, with these methods, there is little to no information on the direct impact that the tutor can have on student performance, so a lengthy and often unsuccessful tutor vetting process occurs.\u00a0 Once they have seen the value, students remain engaged too.<\/p>\n

For Wyzant, business performance is not a separate task from customer satisfaction, value generation, or any other components of their operating model.\u00a0 Business performance is driven by revenue, and revenue is only generated when both students and tutors are happy, engaged, and active.\u00a0 As a result, employee focus on retaining users and continuously developing new opportunities for the users directly affects revenue and performance of the company.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Revenue of the tutors due to knowledge of the students also directly affects revenue of the company.\u00a0\u00a0 The ecosystem, mapped out in the figure below is currently in perfectly aligned balance to support the business model. \u00a0It will be exciting to see what Wyzant does next!<\/p>\n

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