SWOT

Summary of Business idea and SWOT analysis

‘During my time as a student, organisation has not been my strongest attribute, obviously there are many students in the same boat and my idea came from the basis that I wanted to create an application which would help to make the fragmented resources for university easily accessible for the modern student that can be used both on the move and at home and brings everything into one place.’

My business idea is to create an application that can be used through current social media mediums such as Facebook and iPhone applications. I have chosen this for several reasons, the first to help students organise their university lives, both work and play, with ease. The second reason is that the majority of the student community uses Social media sites such as Facebook everyday or at least on a regular basis. This coupled with the need to organise student life, deadlines, coursework and university timetables gives me a good medium to build my application for and promote it.

SWOT Analysis

‘My business Idea is an application running through social mediums helping to organise university life – an online university planning system’

Strengths

Advantages of my proposition/Competitive advantages.: Nothing like this seems to exist through mediums such as Facebook.

Capabilities and Unique selling points: The application itself would be capable of helping a user to organise their work through current existing social mediums. Rather than existing as a standalone website the application itself would be ran through social networking websites. This has several massive advantages which would be key to my business. Firstly it makes the application more accessible due to the fact the majority of people are already signed up to sites such as Facebook, secondly the potential for free advertising is massive. Each person who joins up would provide a large amount of advertising to more of the student community which would increase the number of users.

The application could also be available through apples app store for the iPhone. This would help make it accessible on the move and more appealing to users. It would also generate profit perhaps even on a yearly basis with a small Licensing fee, this would generate revenue between September and December.

Resources/Assets: A key point to the project is that it would require a small team of one/two people to set the business up so could be ran in either sole trader or partnership form. This would help to keep revenue up as it would not require too many people within the business to run it successfully.

Experience and knowledge: In respect to the business being ran as a partnership this may be beneficial to the companies success due to the fact that shared expertise in coding and development would make the product available to market quicker while sharing the load of maintenance and market development would help the development of the company.

Marketing: Again as said before it would be beneficial to run within a partnership so marketing responsibilities could be shared. The second aspect to the marketing side of  the product would be due to the fact it works through networking it would advertise itself based on user participation. Other options are also available such as direct marketing (face to face outside of universities), poster campaigns inside of student unions and viral based web marketing; again another popular medium amongst students.

Price: It would be available at a small price due to the nature of the audience, perhaps a couple of pounds. It could also be based on a license fee which would generate strong revenuw in the early university months.

Values: The company would serve to have strong ethics, keeping costs down for its target audience while generating a profit as well as providing good service and personal customer relationships. Again this would be done via Facebook and other social mediums.

Weaknesses

Disadvantages of proposition: Certain websites are available such as Keep and share (http://www.keepandshare.com/htm/calendars/day_planner/online_daily_planner.php) which allow a user to create a daily planner.  So there is a version of a similar product currently on the market.

Gaps within its capabilities: Early versions of the product may not feature the full amount of features that I would like for the product, although this would make it an ongoing product and service.

Finances: The product itself would invoke several costs before going to market. The first charge would be the initial set up fee to develop and list within the app store ($199 – £64.05). This would obviously have to be made back before any profit could be made. This however makes it quite cheap to set up as the development would be done by the partnership setting up the business.

Known vulnerabilities: The product itself could be copied or developed within a similar manner as it may be difficult to patent the idea itself. Another issue could be keeping the application itself maintained and bug free, if there was a problem due to the limited amount of people within the company during its early stages it may be difficult to repair any technical issues within a small time frame.

Timescales: The product development would have to be organised into a timeline. A potential issue could be technical issues during the development due to the technical nature of the product. This could then potentially cause disruptions to the development of the technical aspect of the product. This could disrupt getting the product to market.

Reliability: Again the product could experience technical problems and may require regular maintenance. The more users using the product would cause the business to expand in staffing terms and employees with the expertise to rectify problems.

Commitment in relation to finance: The commitment in relation to the product itself would be large in the first instance.  It would take much development with no financial gain. The gain itself would be made when the product is fully developed. Again any disruption to the disruption in the project would be met with much input and no financial gain.

Opportunities

Market developments: As a new development within the market the product itself would be considered unique therefore taking advantage of a gap in the market. The fact that other planners exist on-line shouldn’t be a massive issue for our product as no product or service offers a route through current day social networking methods.

Lifestyle trends and advantage of new technology: This is a key selling point for my product. The fact that the majority of students use Facebook or other networking mediums gives me a massive advantage when developing my product. The use of new technologies is key to this, I feel that the product would be approaching a market in a way never seen before as there are no similar products being used through social networks at the moment.

Geography and niche markets: Another advantage of the product itself is the fact that it could be used in universities throughout the country, it would not be limited to a small market of perhaps one or two universities. The appeal would also be to a niche market being the student community and again through markets which this community use it would provide large levels of advertising crucial to the business.

Product development: The business itself would be an ongoing development. It doesn’t just end once the product is released, constant updates would be applied due to the online nature of the product and the community using it, helping make it better and more accessible for the users involved.

Partnership and distribution: Many opportunities for partnership with student unions are available when distributing the product. This could also lead to advertising all over the country within universities as well as once the business takes off, sponsorship of university events and teams giving our product more exposure and making it a household name throughout the student community nationwide.

Seasonal influence: This would be a key aspect of the business as most sales would be done between September and December due to the amount of new students joining university each year. This coupled with a yearly licensing fee would be effective for creating sales throughout the earl university months. However after this the yearly licensing fee (again no more than one or two pounds) may put people off during the later university months so it may be wise to give free licensing for the product when purchased from January onwards.

Threats

It developments: The product would have to move with developments made within the IT industry. If other networks or technologies emerged to rival the dominance of Facebook and the iPhone then our business would have to move with the change in trends and develop the application for new formats.

Competitor intentions: Any potential competitors could develop a similar product which would straight away become a rival. If a large company with many programming personnel could develop a similar product in a shorter amount of time, undercut our price and manage the business better due to manpower, we would have large problems as an emerging business. The key to our business is to establish a foot in the market before any other company managed to copy our idea and develop it themselves.

Obstacles faced: A key problem with the business could be the technical development. Certain features that I would wish to include within the product itself may be outside of my technical skill set. This would mean either subcontracting certain specifics within the product to a developer or employing someone within the business who hold the expertise to achieve what I believe necessary to the success of the product.

Sustainable financial backing: The product would make absolutely no financial gain when entering and during the development stage, in-fact initially it would run at a small loss. This would mean that it would take a serious amount of work from the initial company developers before any gain would be made. Certain people involved may not like this sort of delayed income and expect instant financial results.

Obstacles faced: The main obstacle the business will face is initially getting off the ground and getting students to use the service. As much of the advertising and success of the product will be based on people using it for advertising, we will need to get a large number of users using the system before it becomes recognised.

Loss of key staff: The idea itself is quite unique. If we were to lose key staff during the development process it could be a problem due to the nature of the idea being developed elsewhere and the fact a key member of development staff leaving during the initial process would stifle development of the product.