BUSINESS PLAN FOR UNIVERSITY GROUPWORK COHESION (UGC)
Business Plan for University Groupwork Cohesion (UGC)
Executive Summary
The aim of this project is to design, develop, and market a mobile application for assisting students in their productivity especially when placed in groupings of several modules. Group works are considered one of the most hectic assignments that students are required to perform. However, as most of the students point out it is not the actual assignments that are hard but the interactions, planning and delivery of the work across several students. This project, therefore, aims to provide a simple and efficient means of handling such issues among students who are doing their group work. The primary goal of this application is to facilitate communication of the students when they are conducting their group projects. It is evident that most of the issues arising from group’s works are primary because of poor communication across the participants. In this case, communication refers to the exchange of the information particular to the performance of the group project such as meeting times and the exchange and compilation of individual works into a harmonized project. As such, the mobile phone application is named University Groupwork Cohesion (UGC). As the name suggests, the app works by facilitating communication across group members it will increase the cohesiveness of the group and their ability to deal with the assignment.
After an extensive amount of brainstorming regarding the troubles that arise when performing group work, which many people experience during their university life. We outlined the problems that occur when tracking the progress of individuals within the group to make the process smoother and more enjoyable due to the increased communication.
UGC is a mobile application developed by ourselves at the University of Hertfordshire to enhance productivity within university environment in the UK. In the 2014/15 academic year, there were 2.2 million students in education (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2015) indicating the size of our target market.
The key aim of our application is to aid communication when placed in groups for particular modules/assignments and reduce the amount of hassle involved with group projects, enabling students to have a much more flexible university experience.
Our most distinctive feature is the common problem many people face when doing group work, the inability to communicate effectively with maximum cohesion. Which led us to our App name “University Groupwork Cohesion” with a short name of UGC. A key feature we raised during planning is that in their higher education the need to be well organized is of paramount importance; this is due to the many assignments and deadline pressures occurring throughout the academic year.
Ways in which we have chosen to approach this is via our core features, which include:
Room Booking: When phased with places in which to meet up, quiet environments ranked the highest. Therefore booking silent rooms for meetings with a facility such as smart board should be made available more readily through the click of a button, with our app, in places such as the library.
Meeting Planner: An interactive calendar can display the availability of each group member throughout the entire week depending on their institution. This can be done when synchronizing timetable to the app, meaning it will be visual for members to see when they are free rather than continually checking schedule and communicating accordingly.
Project Planner: this should outline the estimated time of completion for the project through an interactive timeline if any delays are applied then notifications will be sent to each user informing them as soon as possible.
Within the team efficiency mobile application market, the only two apps which have features of our app is UpTo and Skedj these have similar aspects of our application, however, differs from ours is more concentrated towards the university education sector. A big decision we had to make was deciding our pricing strategy, many suggestions were made to choose penetration pricing, but analyzing our target market that consists of main students, many would not pay to utilize our app. We have therefore decided to penetration price, to capture maximum market share with a low price of £0.39 to attract buyers. In the first week of release, we will offer the app free and generate revenue through advertisement contracts, to create a word of mouth marketing drive.
Market and Competitor Research
The mobile application industry is unique in the fact that geographic limitations are irrelevant short of language considerations. The application’s, once uploaded to the respective application stores such as Google Play and Apple App store they will be instantly available to anyone with access to the stores regardless of their countries. On the considerations of other languages, this the first version and launch of this application my lack other languages implementations. However, other versions in the future will be available in different languages to allow a greater geographical reach and market penetration. The application will be available in both the Google Play and Apple App store; this is because the two stores allow us to arrive at the most widely used mobile phone application system of Android and IOS. Considering that our target is the young college students with limited resources, we have set a deliberately low price of £0.39 to ensure that they are fully capable of buying the application without major having to inconvenience themselves. In addition, for the first week, we are offering the product free to generate attention and increase its market penetration.
Market Segmentation
Market segmentation is a tool to identify the potential target audience. While there are four primary strategies including geography, behavioral, demographics and preferences, this application will focus on the preferences and behavioral strategies. This is because the geographical reach of the application is global and the demographics of our target market of students in regards to purchasing mobile applications are already well established. A study has confirmed that most people are more willing to pay for a mobile application if they can access its services across their different devices. As such, UGC will be available on the two most popular mobile platforms, and once a purchase is made, the user will be able to download their application and use it in other devices. A significant percentage of the younger students prefer using the application on mobile phones while the order students prefer tablets. In addition, the students’ purchasing power is presumed to be low as there have already been complaints that the apps offered in the App stores are too high. Therefore, the price application must be set low enough to allow any student to purchase them. The smartphone market is still growing with increasing number of users downloading applications that are useful in their lives.
Figure 1. Project Growth of App Markets
Competitor Research
Porter’s Five Forces
Considering a large number of the mobile applications that are targeting a similar demographic to our application, it is paramount to establish the macro environment of the business. We shall rely on the Porter’s five forces to analyze the external forces that could affect the success of the UGC application.
Supplier Power
The knowledge base required to design and make the application is limited to a few experts in the mobile industry; this is especially relevant in an app that seeks to achieve as much as UGC. Nonetheless, there has been an increased proliferation of the knowledge required to develop applications, meaning that the alternatives are also growing as more and more people learn how to develop the mobile application. In conclusion, the supplier power is average.
Buyer Power
In the mobile application, industry buyers hold strong positions especially due to the large numbers of options available to them including a sizable number of free alternatives. This means that if a product is has a price that is perceived too high the buyers will turn to free products with fewer features. Nonetheless, the buyers are not organized, and there are very many buyers available when the market considered is the entire world. For example, in May 2015 there were more than 1.4 Android phone users. This means that there are always alternative buyers.
Competitive Rivalry
The competitive rivalry is extremely high to the ease of entrance to the industry. The initial requirements for the technically skilled are limited to a computer and a cheap fee to the App stores to allow them to sell a competing application. In addition, there is a possibility of new apps emerging that offer the same service as the UGC application.
Threat of Substitution
As mentioned above, there are many free applications that have lesser features that UGC but can be used to serve a similar purpose. UGC is advantaged by the fact that it was conceived with the specific goal of assisting students in their group work. As such, if offered at a reasonable cost the students will automatically prefer UGC to other applications. In addition, there is the possibility of people who prefer to use the traditional methods of group work coordination and communication including phone calls, emails or even notices.
Threat of New Entries
This threat is significant considering the aforementioned ease of new entrance into the market. However, since the business aspect of applications goes beyond the mere design and uploading of an application, there will be few entrants with the resources and organization to challenge UGC. In addition, UGC will be marketed as a student’s application for building brand loyalty. As such, the threat of new entry is low.
Summary
The above forces influence the mobile phone application market, however cumulatively it is apparent that the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks, and this translates into a perfect opportunity for UGC’s entrance into the market.
Competitors
There are two main competitors for the UGC application including UpTo and Skedj that are designed to ease the process of communication and scheduling of assignments. However, they are targeted to a general audience. For example, Skedj is designed to assist in the planning and setting out of calendar and sharing. UpTo is also a calendar application that has a social layer and is primarily suited for the planning and sharing the plans across several groups. The other competitors are the enterprise solutions that are offered by large firms such as Microsoft and Google. However, these are aimed at large companies and business with costs that are too high for students to afford. In addition, the enterprise solutions are too advanced for students who just want to share their schedule and coordinate their group project. Therefore, the greatest advantage of UGC is in its targeting of students and group projects in particular.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
The main strengths of this project are the fact that it is targeting a new niche into the mobile app market of the student group work projects. While other applications that target students or young people, in general, exists as demonstrated in the above category they fail to target the problem that UGC is addressing.
Weaknesses
The greatest weakness of this project is the ease with which competitors can arise spontaneously. For example, when an application becomes popular in the App Stores, numerous similar applications often emerge offering similar services for lesser money. However, USG seeks to establish brand loyalty among its purchasers while simultaneously appearing as the reputed application in regards to group projects and assignment.
Opportunities
The rise of the mobile phone application market and its proliferation globally offers the business its greatest opportunity. There are numerous students globally who face issues with their group work. UGC, therefore, has a global reach through that can be capitalized on for increased revenues.
Threats
The greatest threat to the business in the hyper-competition that often emerges in the app store where numerous similar app arise at reduces prices or even offered free with a different revenue strategy.
Marketing Plan
Relying on the marketing research, we have developed an effective Marketing Plan that will allow UGC to establish itself in its specific niche by distinguishing itself from competitors such as UpTo and Skedj. To this end, there will be three stages of the marketing plan including Social media campaigns, online advertising, and offers.
For the Social media marketing, it is now common knowledge among the marketers that social media sites offer the best marketing opportunity for digital products especially application. This is because the advertisements can be aimed at people in the target demographics. For UGC this would be the students; considering that, the users have provided their information then the advertisements can be aimed at the students alone. This will be done through viral marketing strategies seeking to establish as many shares, and likes as possible. For online advertising, we shall use Google Adwords, and YouTube Videos to reach as many more students as we possibly can globally. In addition, for the first week, we shall offer free downloads to everyone in an attempt to increase the number of people who download the application.
Finance
Financing the project is the greatest challenge that this project faces. There are two financing options available for this project including making a long-term loan request or issuing shares. The preferred option is taking a loan since the money is obtained instantly as opposed to selling shares that take time, has numerous legal hurdles and requires advertising. In the making of the forecast, several crucial assumptions were made including the fact that the money obtained through borrowing will always remain at zero, regardless of the transactions because the use of an application only occurs when the user pays for it. In addition, the business is a startup, so there are no wages offered; instead, everybody is paid in the company’s shares. Finally, a presumption is made that the there will be 1000 downloads in the initial month and that there will be a steady growth of 200 users every month; at the end of the final year, the expected users of UGC will be 14200 who have paid.
Please find in the table below the cash flow forecasting for UGC over the first twelve months.
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