Marketing for Company to Become the Leading Provider of Commercial Drone Services - Business Plan Example

4. COMPANY ANALYSIS 4.1 Venture Mission/Vision The vision of the company is to be the leading provider of commercial drone services in the country. The mission of the company is to continuously provide highly innovative and effective commercial drone services for clients in the agriculture, tourism and hospitality industries. We will leverage emerging technologies and new industry-specific knowledge to bundle our services in such a manner that we provide our clients with high-value services at reasonable prices. 4.2 Goals and Objectives The overall goal of the company is to become the leading provider of commercial drone services in the country. To achieve this overarching goal, the company will pursue specific objectives that are listed here. a) To constantly look for and adopt innovative techniques and procedures as a way of improving our services. b) To constantly streamline our internal operations so that we optimise our processes and pass down the benefits to our clients in the form of offering them reasonable prices for our services. c) To continuously discover new needs for commercial drone services in the market and serve the needs. 4.3 Situation Analysis (SWOT) SWOT analysis provides a useful framework for analysing the internal strengths and weaknesses of an organisation as well as the external opportunities and threats (Lussier 2010, p. 127). Thus, from the results of the SWOT analysis, particular strategies of using the inner strengths of a business to take advantage of the opportunities that exist in its external environment can be developed (Sarsby 2016, p. 29). Similarly, SWOT analysis provides an opportunity for the development of strategies that can be used to compensate for the internal weaknesses of an organisation and avoid the threats that exist in its external environment (Ferrell & Hartline 2013, p. 87). In the following table, a summary of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the new venture are presented. Strengths Proprietary service offering A strong client base of SMEs Well-trained employees Weaknesses Lack of capacity to handle large projects Lack of financial muscle for rapid expansion Opportunities A growing demand for services niche markets in drone filming Threats Competition from established players One of the major strengths of the new venture is that it has managed to combine proprietary knowledge in specific drone services with commercially available technologies to develop proprietary service offering. The company can use its service offering as a source of competitive advantage since it is not only inimitable but also useful in helping the company to serve its clients better than the competition. Additionally, the company has strong ties with many businesses in the SMEs sector, giving it access to potential clients. This level of access to clients is complemented by a highly trained team of employees who have wide experience in the fledgling commercial drone services industry. However, a major weakness of the company relates to a lack of enough resources to fuel its expansion. As a new venture, the company has not accumulated enough financial resources to finance its expansion. Also, because the company is a start-up, it cannot attract enough capital to help it manage to carry out large projects that can help it grow. Thus, the company is caught in a situation in which it needs access to large projects to generate revenue for its expansion yet it lacks the capability to manage such large projects. A major threat to the industry that the company faces relates to the fierce competition from established players that it faces. The company has to compete with many other large and well-established companies offering commercial drone services for clients. 4.4 Organisational Structure and Control Since this is a start-up, it will be necessary to use a simple and organisational structure. It is expected that as the company expands, the structure will be altered to accommodate the changes and maintain efficiency within the organisation. The following diagram represents the structure of the new organisation. 4.5 Overview of Implementation Plan Implementing the plan of the business will be based on the need to meet specific targets within clearly defined time frames. The targets will be in the form of the number of clients that the business acquires, the deals that it seals and the number of projects that it starts to work on within specific time frames. More importantly, the process of implementing the plan will solely rely on the availability of the initial capital investment for the business. The initial capital will finance the operations of the business until the business breaks even by attaining particular revenue targets. Lastly, a lot of attention will be given to business development activities. Given the highly competitive nature of the industry, it will be important for the new venture to devote a considerable amount of resources on the process of acquiring new clients. 5. MARKETING STRATEGY 5.1 Strategic Positioning The strategic positioning of the new venture is based on two things: an examination of its external environment and evaluation of its internal resources and capabilities. The strategic positioning process of the company is based on the manner in which the company uses its internal capabilities to address the issues that exist in its external environment. The external environment of the new venture can be evaluated using Porter’s Five Forces model. Under this model, the profitability of an industry is determined by the sum total of the following five factors: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of buyers, suppliers’ bargaining power, threat of substitutes or new products and the level of rivalry among industry players (Thompson & Martin 2010, p. 90). In the current context, these factors have varying levels of influence in the commercial drone services industry. The following is a brief analysis of the level of influence that these factors have in the industry. First, the threat of new entrants is low because of several reasons. To start with, starting a commercial drone services business requires heavy investment in technology. The high costs associated with acquiring the drones, the software programmes used to control them, and the trained employees required are barriers to entry. Besides, the government is still regulating the industry very heavily at the moment and this makes it difficult for new companies to set shop. Secondly, the bargaining power of buyers is low given that this is a new technology and buyers do not have equally competitive substitutes that they can use. More so, the small number of companies that offer drone services means that buyers are in a weak bargaining position. Thirdly, the bargaining power of suppliers is high. Specifically, manufacturers of drones and developers of the associated technologies are few and thus command a lot of bargaining power over the companies that buy the technologies. As well, professionals who have the skills needed in this industry are few, meaning that they have high bargaining power over the companies that offer commercial drone services. There are few substitutes to using commercial drone services to film movies, monitor agricultural products or provide shark warning services. Hence, the power of substitute products in the industry remains low. Lastly, the level of rivalry among firms operating in the industry is high. This is because the industry is still in its nascent stages and many small as well as big companies are competing to gain a sizeable share of the market. The internal resources and capabilities of the organisation and how they help to position it strategically in the market can be analysed using the VRIO framework. Under this framework, the competitive advantage of an organisation is said to be derived from the unique resources of the organisation that meet the criteria of being “valuable, rare, inimitable and organisable” (VRIO) (Witcher & Chau 2010, p. 126). Although the new venture has many capabilities and resources, the majority of these capabilities and resources are similar to what other players in the industry have. Many of these capabilities and resources such as access to technologies and expertise are industry standards – which means that all companies operating in the industry have them. However, one capability that will likely differentiate the manner in which the new venture operates and, most likely, help it develop a competitive edge over its competitors is a unique service offering that combines commercial technologies and proprietary processes. The capability of unique service offering meets the VRIO criteria. In the first place, it is rare for companies to use commercially available technologies with internal processes to develop a unique and competing service offering. The organisational knowledge and other internal attributes of the firm cannot be easily found in any other organisation. More so, this capability is inimitable in that rival companies cannot easily copy it. Also, it is valuable in that it helps the organisation to carefully position itself in the market and have a competitive edge over big companies that have a lot of resources at their disposal as well as small start-ups that do not have the ability to appeal to clients in the industry. The new venture can exploit the above-mentioned resource for its advantage in several ways. To start with, the business can successfully use its capability to overcome some of its internal weaknesses as well as the threats that it faces in the industry. The organisation lacks the resources to expand fast as well as the capacity to handle large and lucrative projects. Also, the organisation is facing intense competition from well-established companies offering drone services that seek to control the demand for the services by SMEs. However, the company can use its capability to appeal to a small number of SMEs and have a steady supply of projects. A steady supply of work will help the company to achieve and maintain a sustainable rate of growth over the years. The organisation can also use its unique service offering that combines its internal processes and commercial technologies to take advantage of the opportunities that exist in the market. The company can focus on its uniqueness to market itself among SMEs that need niche commercial drone services. This will help it to take advantage of the growing market for niche commercial drone services in the country. 5.2 Business Development We will implement the business development process for the new venture by following a simple framework as shown below. All the steps in the figure above are interrelated. The first step will be to survey the market to understand the specific needs of potential clients and the competitors who serve those clients. The focus will be on the three core types of the clients of the business: farm management firms, government departments and filming studios. The second step in the process will be to reach out to the companies that need commercial drone services. We will use the knowledge about the companies that we would have gathered during the survey stage to make appropriate overtures to the right contact people in the organisations. We will also use formal as well as informal methods of reaching out to potential clients. Thirdly, we will formally pitch to potential clients. The pitching process will directly lead to the fourth stage of the process, which is building and maintaining relationships with key individuals in various organisations that may form our client base. 6. SALES STRATEGY Our sales strategy is defined by three things: how we segment the market, our service offering for every market segment and our sales process. First, we will segment the market based on the type of clients and the unique services that they need. We will primarily serve three types of clients: companies that manage agricultural projects, government departments and organisations involved in the tourism industry and filming studios. We will then provide unique commercial drone services to the identified market segments. For companies managing large agricultural projects, we will provide crop and livestock drone monitoring services. For hotels and government departments involved in the safety of people on beaches, we will provide special shark monitoring and early warning services using drones. For filming studios, we will provide special drone-based filming and photography services. The sales process will be based on the business development framework described elsewhere in this report. The basic approach to selling the services of the company to clients will entail the following steps: negotiating with the clients, evaluating the scope of the project, agreeing on the prices and finally implementing the project. Other support activities such as giving the client feedback on the progress of the project and offering additional support services even after the project has been closed will also be offered. References Ferrell, OC & Hartline, M 2013, Marketing strategy: texts and cases, Cengage, Mason. Lussier, R 2010, Management fundamentals: concepts, applications, skill development, Cengage, Sydney. Sarsby, A 2016, SWOT analysis, Lulu.com Thompson, JL & Martin, F 2010, Strategic management: awareness & change, Cengage, Mason. Witcher, BJ & Chau, VS 2010, Strategic management: principles and practice, Cengage, New York. Read More