Let's Build a Successful Virtual Assistant Business - Assignment Example

? E-BUSINESS PLAN PROJECT Executive Summary The Virtual Assistant Company specializes in providing fully capable remote assistance to corporate and professionals, maintenance and support for electronic equipment, website designing and coding, and personal online retail services. The market selection would depend upon the specialization and skills of the Virtual Assistant (VA). VA with multiple skill may target multiple markets where as a specialist focuses on a particular niche market. The target markets may be reached through social media, internet advertisements such as banners or through website blogs. The company aims to leverage its technology in order to provide their customers with best online service experience. The company aims to transform their earnings into profits by holding the customers and turn them into repeat customers. The competitive advantage of business is that unlike the competitors, the business specializes in delivering remote office assistance in administrative capacity for professionals and corporate. There are many online advertising options available for the company to offer their products and services to people. Advertising depends on the target audience and the type of message that the business wants to deliver to its customers. Some options that are available to Virtual Assistant are Banner ads, social media and website blogs. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 Market Plan 4 Market Analysis 5 Competitor Analysis 6 Advertising 8 Pricing 9 Delivery and Payment 10 Operations and Risks 10 Financial Statements 10 Timeline for E-Business Plan Project 13 Bibliography 14 Appendices 15 Market Plan The VA or Virtual Assistant Company specializes in delivering remote office assistance in administrative capacity including maintenance and support of electronic equipments. Hence, the most appropriate target market clients for VA would the small and medium sized organizations that operates in various sectors including online e-tail, gaming, library, music and video streaming, customized software distributors and so on. (Source: Shubhamsoft, 2013) There are three most important advertising opportunity for VA including social marketing, internet marketing, and web site blogs. Popular search engines like Google and yahoo offers advertising banners around $20 to $50 on CPM for purchasing minimum impressions. The minimum number of impressions that a user has to buy is 100000. This means a banner on these popular search engines could cost around $2000-$5000 per month. The services provided by VA would vary from client requirements and hence variable pricing model may be used to price products according to different target markets and clients. Product payment will be online user registration in a secured virtual network connection that will provide safe transactions with the customers. Product deliver will be sourced via local supply chain nearest to the client’s destination market. Market Analysis Before starting an e-business for Virtual Assistant (VA) it is very important for the entrepreneur to analyze the target market. The market selection depends upon the specialization and skills of the VA. VA with multiple skill may target multiple markets where as a specialist focuses on a particular niche market. As there are no barriers in reaching customers through the internet, the VA services will initially focus on local geographic areas which will minimize cost of operation. After few years the company may expand geographically depending upon client demands and services requirements. The two important target markets for the company are college students and real estate agents. While the services to students may be short term, the company will focus on long term partnership with corporate clients. The target markets may be reached through social media, internet advertisements such as banners or through website blogs. The company aims to leverage its technology in order to provide their customers with best online service experience. The company aims to transform their earnings into profits by holding the customers and turn them into repeat customers. The value proposition comprises of high quality hardware as well as prices. It also includes high quality customer service along with interoperability and content ecosystem. The company will have to buy advertisement runs for a period of time after which it has to renew its license. It will have to pay specific cost per thousand (CPM) for certain number of impressions. These impressions are generally in chunks of 100000 to 1000,000 over a period of time, like monthly. These banners are generally sold by publishers on specific section of website on the web page. The advantage through this would be that both the publisher and company would know what they want to sell and what it would cost. Competitor Analysis The direct competitors of the company can be listed as follows in descending order of market share, 1. CatchFriday 2. 247Virtualassistant 3. 3H Virtual Services 4. A+ Administrative Solutions 5. Acumen VA 6. ADC Litigation Support 7. ABLE Virtual Assistant Services The indirect competitors of company are mainly global virtual service provider companies who have different client market but also have the power to influence pricing strategy of the company by leveraging the company’s existing clients. Some indirect competitors are, 1. Accurate Business Services 2. VA Networking 3. Virtually Sorted Some future competitors of the company includes, 1. AdminConcepts 2. Alloy Virtual Assistance 3. Alpha Omega Virtual Office After a careful analysis of the companies listed above it was found that the company faces direct threat of competition from Acumen VA and 247Virtualassistant. The company faces indirect threat mostly from VA Networking and a potential future threat from Alloy Virtual Assistant. From the research it was found that the most popular VA companies that operate in the company’s target market are Accurate Business Services, Acumen VA and 247Virtualassistant. The competitive advantage of business is that unlike the competitors, the business specializes in delivering remote office assistance in administrative capacity for professionals and corporate. The services aim to give clients with unique virtual experience in future office management needs through collaborative relationship. Opportunity - e-commerce itself is a box of opportunity for all the business and utilizing it accurately and effectively will lead business to flourish and become successful in the long run. The growth of e-commerce in the industry is very optimistic and promises opportunities for business along with severe competition. The taste of online consumers became much more elaborate and proper service with in-time delivery is just not enough to retain the customers. Threats - Threats might be the rising competition associated with e-commerce in the service sector. There are many company which offers similar kind of needs leading to stiff competition. The business managers in the current market scenario are experiencing the most challenging times ever and this is because of intense competition. The success and failure of organization and business highly depends upon the flexibility and their capacity to response towards the external changing market environment. Business which has the flexibility to adapt to changes and adopt the new technology is able to compete in the competitive market Advertising There are many online advertising options available for the company to offer people the company’s products and services. Advertising depends on the target audience and the type of message that the business wants to deliver to its customers. Some examples of online advertising are Banner ads sold as impressions (impressions are generally sold in chunks of 100,000 to 1000,000 over a particular period of time), Social Network Advertising (targeted to the social networking site users), or through Advertising Networks (ad networks aggregates ads space from advertisers and then matches it with advertising demands). Pricing The following table justifies the pricing model for the company’s products and services: From the above pricing model it can be said that if the all products and services of the VA are priced at discount of 35%, it will increase sales volume and make the company more competitive in the market. Delivery and Payment Product payment will be online user registration in a secured virtual network connection that will provide safe transactions with the customers. Product deliver will be sourced via local supply chain nearest to the client’s destination market. Operations and Risks Virtual Assistant can be a great business parent and become the best alternative for human resource. The company specializes in providing fully capable remote assistance to corporate and professionals, maintenance and support for electronic equipment, website designing and coding, and personal online retail services. The risk associated with these operations includes time management and timely delivery, finding correct virtual client whose requirement matches with company’s offerings, technological risks, capital investment risk in research and development division of the company, industry demand fluctuation or cyclical demands and market risk and regulatory restrictions. Financial Statements The advantage that the clients would get through the VA services is that while a company on an average pays their employees for 8 hours per day, their cost would decline by VA to 3-4 hours per day. This means that the total hours of work per year by employees in a company is at least 2080 hours where as in VA it would be 480 hours. The company’s service charge per hour would be fixed at $30, $35, and $40 for the year 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively. The company would pay hourly wages to its employees at $12, $15, and $17 for the year 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. On the basis of these model, the pro-forma income statement and cash flow statement for the company is projected for the next three years as follows: Since the company is a new start up it is assumed to be completely equity financed. The company is expected to maintain a cash balance of ?20,000 at the beginning of 2014 and thereafter is expected to add ?5000 to cash balance annually. The company is assumed to have invested in fixed income securities for insurance and other contingencies which yield ?10000 annually. The R&D cost take up significant portion of the revenues earned and hence it is given maximum weight age of 20%. Other indirect expenses like Selling & Distribution, Administrative expenses, salary, depreciation is assumed to be at 15% at par with industry standards. The corporate tax in UK is assumed to be at 40%. Hence from the above discussion it can be said that the company would have net $3024 of cash and cash equivalents from its operations and it would grow by 27.28% in 2016. Timeline for E-Business Plan Project Bibliography Byer, J. & Parr, E. (2008). How to Build a Successful Virtual Assistant Business. Canada: CVAC. Chaffey, D. (2008). E-Business and E-Commerce Management. 3. New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd. Hill, N. (2009). The Virtual Assistant Handbook. United Kingdom: Cabal Group Limited. Laudon, K. C. (2011). E-Commerce: Business, Technology, Society. 4. New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Wen, H. J., Chen, H., & Hwang, H. (2001). E-Commerce Web Site Design: Strategies and Models. Retrieved from http://www.nyu.edu/clubs/web.design/education/ecommerce/e-commerce%20Website%20Design.pdf. Appendices Table 1 – Pricing Model for Virtual Assistant Table 2 – Pro forma Income Statement for Virtual Assistant Table 3 – Cash Flow Statement for Virtual Assistant Read More