Economics
Because the business is a start up, we intend to do much of our operations in Montreal, Canada after which we will weigh the prospects of operating in other destinations.
We settled on Montreal because of its high population of at least 3,859,318 people. Moreover, a number of its firms deal in aerospace, nanotechnology, and information and communication technology products which can really make use of our brainchild (Canada Economic Development, 2010).
This is a clear indication that the residents of the city are technologically savvy. Another reason that makes Montreal an ideal location for our start up is its population of students who are the end users of our products.
There are at least 165,000 universities students in Montreal including 15,000 international students. This gives it an upper hand over other Canadian cities in North America (University of Montreal).
The main consumers of our product will be students and university professors. Of the four major universities in Montreal that we target, two are English speaking and the other two are French speaking.
These are Concordia, McGill, UQAM and University of Montreal respectively. University of Concordia has a student population of 44,000, McGill 32,000, University of Montreal 55000, and UQAM 66,000 (Canada Economic Development, 1996). One of the major barrier would be language.
Universities that use English as the only mode of communication attract a huge number of international students as opposed to institutions where French is used as the major mode of communication which only attracts local French speaking students.
This makes the market of our product to be more diverse. Our ease of acceptability is enhanced by the knowledge of both the students and lecturers who are technologically savvy. These people had either used or encountered RFID before. This makes it very easy to enlighten them on the benefits of this product.
Customers
After we have properly established ourselves in the market, we will diversify our client base and bring on board large corporations doing business in Montreal (Pride et al, 2010). There are at least 664 enterprises in Canada with over 1,000 employees (The Million Dollar Database).
The leading enterprises are General Electronics with over 13,000 employees, University of BC with 10,000 employees, and Government of Saskatchewan with 11,000 employees.
Product forecast
We are considering bringing on board other Canadian Universities including Quebec education system, multinational companies, and government agencies.
Despite the fact that our major customers are currently the students and professors of the universities found in Montreal, we intend to make big organizations our principal customers. Our end users will vary in terms of their income, gender, education, language, socio-economic class, and lifestyle. The factors will be majorly influenced by our principal customers.
Distribution
At formative stages, the distribution of our product will be undertaken by the outsourced company that manufactures our product.
Pricing
The pricing of our product will be influenced by many factors like the operation costs, the raw materials used in making the product, the cost of transport, proximity of the market to our manufacturing facility among other factors.
Promotion
This will be done by organizing university fares where we will popularize our products among students and lecturers. We also intend to do our advertisement in the daily newspapers and popular media like radio and television stations.
Competitors
Our major competitor will be enterprises that have tried to initiate idea similar to ours but have not succeeded because of privacy settings. We are likely to penetrate the market because we have managed to solve the problem of privacy setting in the RFID Technology.
However, there is a possibility that other players may soon overcome this impediment and eat into a proportion of our market share. However, our position will be strengthened by the fact that we are the first movers in the market.
This will endear our customers to us. Our competitor may have an edge over us because of their ability to faster upgrade their technology. Being the pioneers in the market, our competitors are likely to learn from our mistakes and come up with formidable product.
This keeps us on toes and calls upon us to up our game. As for indirect competitors, by the virtue of the fact that our company will likely become successful and bigger, many business enterprises will yearn to eat into its market share.
Credit card companies will feature prominently in this sphere because of their concerted effort to ensure that to protect their clients from possible theft. Their major strength would be that they have clients and have built a name for themselves.
However, they will only manage to give us a run for our money when they come up with encrypted RFID card. It is incumbent that they come up with their own product design and encryption because our product is patented.
Our competitors will have a difficult time because our security concerns are fixed, we are the market pioneers, we have constant cash flows, there is a huge market visibility, and since our product is a new technology, it has a great market potential.
However, some of the underlying threats include government’s resolve to cut expenditure to universities, the business has short term benefits, return on investments may be protracted, market acceptability, and the competitors may decide to upgrade their technology.
Operational Plan
It will be mandatory that we sign a contract with a company that will manufacturer the RFID encrypted software because we are currently only capable of creating the software.
However, we are contemplating having our manufacturing plant in the near future. However, this can be disastrous in case of a breach of contract. In the start up stages most of the operational costs will be borne by us.
We are contemplating coming up with a powerful marketing plan to overcome issues that may spring up due to students filing law suits against universities because of privacy related issues.
Top of our operation plan will be idea generation where new and improved RFID concepts will be generated. The generator of the idea will explain it to a friend who will become his business partner.
The idea will then be patented. The partners will undertake to do market analysis and establish if there is demand for the product. The idea will be flouted to engineers who will approve its viability.
After they have approved it a contract will then be signed. The engineers will do technical analysis and make the idea a reality. A unit of the product will then be designed and encrypted to make it more secure.
Patenting will soon follow the encryption process. To ensure proper functionality, the product will then be tested. The product will be outsourced to the product manufacturer to initiate production process.
Management
We will not have large number of employees because we intend to outsource at start up. The two entrepreneurs will be responsible for the internal management of the company and external management.
The two engineers will be concerned with the RFID encryption and coming up with new ideas. They will also be mandated with ICT department related issues.
Five installation employees will be brought overboard to look into issues of maintenance as well as and installation. Two assistants will be responsible for managing the company.
Reference List
Canada Economic Development. (1996). University attendance: Montréal ranks first in relative terms and fifth in absolute terms in North America. Web.
Canada Economic Development. (2010). Montreal (06) Region – Social Economic Profile. Web.
Pride, W. M., et al. (2010). Foundations of Business. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
The Million Dollar Database. (n.d.). Search results. Web.
UniversitĂ© de MontrĂ©al. (n.d.). L’international Ă l’UdeM. Web.