Individual Business Proposal
1. Introduction
Will Bury, the entrepreneur of Will Bury enterprises is not new to the information technology world, having worked at High Tech Digital Industries. It is when at High Tech that Will invented in a garage operation of book digitization technology, an invention which he may well decide to take up and devote his time to. With the consideration that he will be leaving a secure job with a good salary and benefits through which he is able to keep his family comfortable, he has to weigh various decisions before he can eventually make up his mind how to determine the applications of his technology. By so doing he will concentrate more on his invention, improve on it and probably increase his revenue growth, which he hopes to achieve. His organization will deal with the digitization of books through his already developed and patented technology (McConnell et.al, 2009). Will finds himself faced with some problems such as:
Inadequacy to determine all the applications for his technology
Inadequacy to demand for his software
Challenge in pricing of the audio books
Modes of delivering the books to his customers
Acquisition of books to be digitally transformed and scanned into his digitizer
How to hire the right workforce that will work best to give optimum output
Insufficient business skills
Training costs
Trends of audio books sales in the market
The group of people to target as his customers
When these factors are tackled and solutions to them found, Will to be more confident in investing his time and money into his business. The fact that he has identified a business which he understands well and which he has passion for means he will smoothly run the enterprise and attend to technical matters immediately, which is a plus for him.
2. Proposed Solution
One important aspect to be considered is how to increase revenue of the business. Generally, this can be achieved in three ways. The first way is increase the customer base by attracting new customers. The second way is to ensure that each sale made to the customers has an increased value, while the third way is to ensure that clients make regular purchases of the books. Increasing revenue can also be done by increasing the prices of the books. Will, can decide to focus on a specific market target based on the substitution effect. When the prices are too low compared to his competitors, this means that he will have to produce more digitalized books to meet demands of many customers. However, Will can chose to concentrate on a market segment that comfortable at buying the books at a higher price.
In order to maximize the profit quantity, there are several steps which he should take. Firstly, he should determine the profit at every level of sales. As sales of the books increase, there are factors such as increased shortage, quantity discounts, and labor cost that he has to consider. Secondly, the marginal profit at every incremental sales increase has to be determined. Next, Will, will have to find the profit maximizing quantity. This is because, the more sales are made, and variable costs would increase thus affecting the marginal profit to read negative. Lastly, he should determining areas to reduce expenses in order to optimize the sales and increase revenue.
One of the greatest and most important and easy way that Will Bury can adopt to reach more customers is through online selling. By so doing Will, will reach a larger customer base, as many people all over the world have easy access to the internet and are willing to buy. By posting on social networks in which many people use to communicate through lately and blogging, he can reach more people. The fact that he has already developed his websites makes it easier as he can create direct links to his webpage, suggest to his friends and create pages on the network, which is cheaper. The bottom line is letting people know what he is doing by creating awareness after which those who buy will recommend to others which works through psychological selling.
Making his website more user friendly with better graphic design as well as updating it regularly could go a long way. As much as many people find the thought of buying online unusual; a clear, grammatically checked and well-designed webpage is worth checking out. The images of his CDs, bullets, display texts, logos etc can be displayed attractively and be of good quality.
The recommended pricing strategy is market oriented pricing. This strategy depends on the research analysis compiled from the market of interest. Therefore Will, will first have to conduct an analysis of the market. He will have to establish the price range by hi competitors before deciding whether he should price below or above that of his competitors. If he wants to achieve a cost leadership, Will, will price the books slightly lower than his competitors to attract customers. Pricing extremely high or low can be harmful to his business. Looking for the prices that his competitors are selling the same books for can help him determine his price range. He can drop the price by a dollar or two to attract customers. Alternatively, he can price equally but give discounts on the numbers of sales made. Because sometimes placing a product too low on the price margin can pose as being counterfeit according to some buyers. As part of the pricing, considering pricing such as $19.99, $14.79 as opposed to $20, $15 respectively can see increased sales (Ball, 2009).
As a way to keep his customers and make them feel appreciated; on time calls, return emails and replies on social media are a key. Calling especially to address concerns will see increased customer loyalty. By so doing specific needs can be addressed to via complains and compliments made.
Creating applications in his technology, which allows for the conversion of the narrator’s voice to sound exactly the same as the book’s author would make him create a barrier in the market thus monopolizing the book digitization markets through product differentiation. Venturing into direct contracts by authors and book publishers where he is hired to digitize books before they are released such that the book is sold together with the CD. This could be an added cost but could be worth trying as it would sell more compared to the generically produced e-books
Considering to digitize other than books, other write ups such as journals, articles, minutes of meetings, papers, proposals etc. would be a good venture as they would be shorter to make and a new concept that would be easily sold. By so doing, Will Bury will have targeted a larger audience who do not have enough time to peruse through all the pages as well as those who are visually impaired.
3. The Benefits
Through the above-proposed solution Will Bury, enterprises can reach more customers while as the same time increase the revenue at reduced operating costs through leverage social media (Pugel, 2009). Through advertisements and blogging; clients through their comments can request to have specific books digitized which means that Will Bury gets to study what books to digitize more depending on the demand.
4. Costs
Brian Tracy (Mar 15, 2004). Advanced selling strategy: the proven system practiced by top
McConnell, C. R., Brue, S. L., & Flynn, S. M. (2009). Economics: Principles, problems, and policies (18th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Pugel, T. A. (2009). International economics (14th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
sales people. Simon & Schuster Ltd.
