Introduction
It is documented that there is a rapid increase in the use of computers within institutions of higher learning, especially use of Laptops. The use and opening of a laptop store have, from research, shown a socioeconomic and welfare improvement of the target group in various dimensions.
However the adoption of the idea on establishing laptop store that sells laptops and laptop accessories within the university campus would offer a big challenge for firms already established within the reach of the campus though the firms could easily cooperate without fear of closure.
The purpose of this proposal is to analyze the creation of laptop store within the campus and its effects on the economic, social and academic lifestyle of students within PMU. Since the introduction of laptops sales, there has been a tremendous increase in the demand of the services associated with computers across the nations.
The adoption of the usage of the laptops has been so slow due factors such as the lack of a store that could be accessed by PMU and employees. The purpose of this proposal is to analyze the adoption of the laptops, their parts and the overall effect on the economic life of a student on campus.
The introduction of laptops was a great relieve to the users of personal computers. Before that, the computer sector, experienced difficulties in service delivery to its customers. When the world was still using main frame computers, service delivery particularly in universities presented a big problem due to inaccessibility to them by the larger student population at PMU.
In bid to reduce the above difficulty, technological inventions which began early 1950s led to the birth of laptop computers. These machines, laptops in particular realized their diversified applications not only within college environments, but also in consumer retail world like in the super markets and even petrol filling stations.
However, it has taken many an investor long time to implement this technology thus reducing and limiting its popularity in usage. Benefits, however, come in two ways; both to the user and the provider of the service. The former is the customer while the latter is the laptop vendor or an agent providing the service. A survey was therefore conducted in PMU campuses to ascertain the need for such services to the students within the university
Executive Summary
Pace setters is a new computer store which will be providing full services geared towards full customer satisfaction. This will be ensured through excellent products, services and quality staff purely motivated towards producing excellent results. The environment will be furnished to provide the customers with fairness in terms of prices, hospitality considering and respects diversity, ideas and hard work. The start-up capital will be used for the design, leasehold improvements, and equipment used in the store.
The owners comprise of students and partners who have been within the campus and worked in the computer industry for some time and has enough experience needed for the running of the store. They will be supported by experienced staff having vast knowledge in computer hardware/software and accessories.
Starting-up capital from the students will amount to ÂŁ 26800 for assets and will further seek additional loan of ÂŁ30,000 to finance the business. The loan will be paid from the cash flow of the business, collateralized by the assets of the company, and backed by the character, experience, and personal guarantees of the owners (Province of British Columbia, 1992, pp. 1-57).
Business Organization Plan
The mission of the business is to provide a long term solution to the challenges that PMU students are facing at the moment. The model of the business shall assume stationing of four agents each with either parts of laptops or complete laptops, all distributed strategically within the university compound.
The uniqueness of this model is that many students would be reached. Our target places will be students’ hostels that are dispersed all over the compound. If considered, the service providers should also provide accessories as well as some training to our new customers. This could be on the usage particularly installation of the software that are accompanied by the sale of laptops and their accessories. This will form part of our long term goal.
The strengths related to this model asserts that the business shall not be confined to the four agents requested for but there is a large opportunity to expand even to other campuses not only in PMU but also across the republic of Kenya. The willing partner will act as a business partner in providing the network and the funding necessary for spearheading the start of the project. We plan to have a name of the company that will enable us to operate countrywide (Lannon, 2010).
Services provided
This proposal presents a service-based business environment. The clients shall get their service from employees stationed at different parts of the campus at the start. The mode of provision of this service shall be a customer presents his/her encoded card to be swiped into the POS slot. Therefore, the direct implication of this service is that a customer must have the recommended card in order to transact business with the store.
Administrative plan
At the moment this business is still in its pilot stage and therefore, the trademark of the name is not yet established. This is the business’ long term plan. Location of the business at the moment shall be confined at the university’s campus premises.
As a consequence, the cost associated to this location shall be the rent of $ 7,000 for each agent’s hall housing a single POS machine. To increase accountability, students and the employees at PMU shall be required to carry an encoded plastic card that will be used with the point of sale machines. However, hard cash shall also be accepted.
Management and accounting shall be done solely by the pioneering group of students. However, for more accountability, we plan to source management skills from the university’s school of management. The legal part shall delegate to the University’s administration as well as the security.
In addition, accounting shall involve a reconciliation of statements from the machine’s printout. These statements’ shall be reviewed using a select committee from the owners on the side of the project holders. Personnel shall include individuals from the management team of the students. They shall be paid on a monthly basis. We rely on the strength that at the moment there are a few players in this field, therefore we expect a monopolistic business type of business in our favour.
The only competitor on market is the current mobile phone vendors. At the moment, manufacturers of mobile phones are producing handheld phones that almost have the capability of laptops; however, we discovered that it had a weakness in that these manufacturers are not able to provide phones that can handle large amounts of data, especially application software’s to customers. We also realized that, it is affected by network failures time to time.
This is where we pegged our strength. Besides, maintaining desktop computer machine is not cost effective for beginners in such like businesses. The only weakness that is associated with this business model is that it cannot serve people on a 24-hour basis at the moment. Plans are there to facilitate this in future.
Marketing Plan
Marketing of the business shall adopt a direct sales method. In the initial stages of the launch of the business, a selected number of members freedom our team shall be stationed at the main gates of entry to the university, hostels and use of university’s notice board.
Initially, this shall take the form of training the prospective clients (university students and staff), on the usage of the new technology. Actual transactions are expected to take place during this period of time. This is expected to take a period one week.
The part taken above for marketing has taken the perspective of students marketing their project. To get the computer store that shall provide them with the network of efficient gadget operations, we shall adopt the internet access system by accessing the websites on the locally available suppliers. They will be provided with an option of returning their willingness via an email account that we already own jointly.
If the available store does not distribute the laptops and accessories, we shall advertise a tender to suppliers; the highest bidder shall supply the equipments required. We are involving the authentic suppliers endowed by law to distribute these laptop equipments. We involved these gadgets so that the sale in our stores could consider even those without hard cash
In our bid to, to reach new markets, a team from the students side (the presenters of this proposal) shall be send to colleges around and away to sale the idea to the administration of the concerned colleges.
In order to maintain trust and commitment to business satisfaction, personnel to watch over the equipments in other colleges other than PMU University shall be sourced from the college that enters into agreement with Pace setters.
The same procedure of training users and customers how to use the gadgets shall take place. Additionally, brochures will be used which poses a low cost in terms of money resources and time. The procedures of usage of the service will be outlined in the brochures.
In order to enhance a good customer care and relations, we shall approach this in two dimensions. In the first place, we understand that there shall be two players in this business, that is, the suppliers and buyers.
Issues relating to customer transactions, network failure will mainly be taken up by our staff. The method we recommend to be used is to establish customer care mobile numbers using all the locally available service providers and a landline which will operate on a 24-hour basis.
Customers will be served by trained personnel specializing in customer care provision. On the other hand, the person who shall be directly involved will be us, therefore, a customer care desk shall be established at every hall/outlet in the university campus or the college that shall be under our acquisition.
Another market penetration strategy will be a future target to organize for road shows. We have also realized that this has a potential for business growth.
The reason that justifies this is that, during our feasibility study, we found out that the communities bordering the campuses could also be reached and allowed to use the services. We found out that we shared so much in common in terms of technology application. This will be considered as our business depends on the number of people making transactions. Therefore if these people are allowed to be part of our customer base, we could easily add up the numbers to our favour in order to remain in the business.
Therefore the road shows shall target entirely a customer beside the student. At the moment, we are not for sourcing an outside advertisement agency to help us in the reaching the target of the market goals. However, we have it in our plans when we shall be expanding the market (Lannon, 2010).
Financial statements
The financial statement shall be limited to the budget that we presented in this proposal. The reason is being we are still undertaking this project as a pilot in its infancy. The financial statements shall therefore provide cost estimates as per the market. The budget below shows the costs as projected for the completion of the project.
As presented the costs were reached at after careful consultation from experienced computer users within the industry especially retail shops outlets and other institutions using these machines. The budget shows that most of the costs are implementation and therefore shall only occur as initial costs and shall not recur. Therefore this budget is adoptable
This budget is based on the current prices of most of the items as presented in the financial analysis above. Therefore any cost may be subject to adjustment if changes in prices of the mentioned items occur before or during its implementation. If a comparative analysis is drawn between the implementation of laptop supply and those of desktop, it is shown that there are more requirements for Laptops than is required.
This budget has therefore a comparative advantage over other implementation options. Consequently, it should be adopted. As mentioned earlier, some of the costs in the budget occur only once, precisely: installation personnel, machines themselves, network cards, staff training and furniture. Thus it justifies the implementation of the project.
The analysis shows that over 97% of the sample in the survey have an acceptance that laptop store be brought on the campus. From the analysis it has also indicated that students constitute over 70% of the sample population and that they are the most willing group that advocates for a laptop store included on the vending list of their university campus grounds.
Conclusions and recommendations
In conclusion, laptop machines are ideal on the compound of the campus since the analysis of the population sample shows acceptance. Campuses are composed majorly of students. This population of students, employees and staff comprises of a significant number that can justify the cost/benefit aspect related to the use of these machines. Transactions are an income earning portion of any business institution, therefore, the POS campuses presents an opportunity both to the student and the banker who can implement the project.
Consequently, the technology ought to be adopted.
Economic aspects of using laptops
Point of sale machines is small hand-held devices that do access a network that they are assigned to. As a result, they don’t cost a lot of money to install.
Besides, a relationship between the cost of maintaining a single machine and the income it can give back in terms of transaction proves that it is a viable machine to run or install. Technically speaking, they do not need regular technicians to service them. This has been shown by repairing the software malfunctions from their main server located miles away by a single person.
In addition they are not known to consume power to larger extends. If a comparison can be drawn between personal computers used by tellers in banking branches, scientific calculations show that laptops consume less power than personal computers. Therefore, this justifies the use of laptops on the campuses in order to support the sale of laptops and their accessories (Lannon, 2010).
References
Lannon, J. (2010). Technical Communication. Web.
Province of British Columbia, (1992). Preparing a Business Plan; Greenhouse.
Vegetable example. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Victoria, B.C. V8W 2Z7, Canada, pp 1-57.