BTEC Business

Business Plan

Owners: Tautvydas, Michael, Cathia, Sarah and Kai
Business Name: Silver way

Contents Executive Summary: 4 General Company Description 5 What is your business? What will you do? : 5 Mission Statement/Company Goals and objectives: 5 Target market: 5 What factors will make your company succeed: 5 Legal form of ownership: 6 Explain your unique selling point: 6 Marketing Plan 7 8 Economics 8 Legal 8 Product 11 Features and Benefits 11 Customer Profile 11 Competition 13 Marketing Strategy 14 Promotion 14 Promotional Budget 14 Pricing 15 Proposed Location 15 Distribution Channels 15 Start-up Expenses 16 Operational Plan 16 Production 16 Legal Environment 16 Location 16 Personnel 16 Stock and Assets 16 Suppliers 16

Executive Summary:
As owners we are the employees, the people who came up with the ideas and the bosses of this business. The purpose of the business is to provide an app that will help people learn and develop different languages on the go wherever they are in the world. The business idea is a modern app available on only on Apple devices that help people learn and understand other languages in a complete different ways. Within the app there are two sections where one section the user can decide to learn a language by verbally speaking to the device or by text, this will be called ‘iLearn’ and the other section is where a user can take picture, scan or speak into the device for a translation this will be called ‘iCapture’. The name of this app will be Capture &Learn, this is because it the users capture a word by taking a picture then the app translate it and they learn from it, and also because the two sections are both named iLearn and iCapture so we just two them two together and came up with the name.
Our target market:
Age – iLearn 13-23years old student, iCapture – young adults
Gender – both male and female
For our business the future holds a bright, successful, financially stable and a well-known business in the translating industry. In regards to investors loaning our business money, we would appreciate it if they would invest £120,000 in to our business. This would enable us to purchase all products and services needed in order to start up our business.

General Company Description
What is your business? What will you do? :
The purpose of the business is to provide an app that will help people learn and develop different languages on the go wherever they are in the world. The business idea is a modern app available on only on Apple devices that help people learn and understand other languages in a complete different ways. Within the app there are two sections where one section the user can decide to learn a language by verbally speaking to the device or by text, this will be called ‘iLearn’ and the other section is where a user can take picture, scan or speak into the device for a translation this will be called ‘iCapture’. Our unique selling point is using methods of being able to take pictures, scan things in different languages you are not able to understand and verbally talk into your phone and get a fast translation into the language of your choice. For this business we would like a Venture Capital as this will be money to help us with starting and developing a business but will also have expertise’s within the our idea and knowledge.

Mission Statement/Company Goals and objectives:
Our mission statement is to create a unique and diverse app and give people the opportunity to learn different languages on the fly that is affordable, fast and available at any desired time with a touch of a finger.
Our goal is to survive the first year and get a backing that will in hope tell others about our app and bring in more customers that will lead us to become one of the world’s leading translating apps. To make it on Android devices later on, making it go global after a year of introducing the app to Android market.
Our objective are; * Grow as a business and compete with Google translate. * Break even during the first half of the year. * Get good reputation from apple users.

Target market:
Our target markets are people who are interest on learning and developing new languages.
What factors will make your company succeed:
The factors that will make our business succeed are: * Good money management * Avoid being in debts, stay above break even * Team work * Good time management * Good customer support and support * Getting the support of Apple professionals
Legal form of ownership:
We are a partnership and Limited Liability Company. We have selected this because it will protect us from creditors or judgements and will only involve us in the business and not any stakeholders.
Explain your unique selling point:
The USP of our app is that you can scan, take a picture and speak into the device to translate any word. This is a USP because we are the first translating app to provide all three features in one app.

Marketing Plan
We have carried out market research on competitors that are selling a similar product to ours but also the costs of creating apps for the app market on android and iOS. From the research we found out that creating our app can cost us from £4000 to £30,000. The average time it would take to develop this app would be around 12 weeks during which we would have to pay high costs to programmers and testers who will make sure our product doesn’t have any bugs or issues that could ruin the user’s experience and our reputation as a company as we would get a bad name for releasing faulty programs and thus damages ourselves further. We will have to pay money to both apple app store and google play store in order to be allowed to publish our apps. We will have to pay $99 dollars to apple or £58, and $25 dollars for android play store which is £14 pounds. From this we can see that we may want to choose to firstly launch on the play store as apple costs are quite high and if we fail to make profits we could ruin ourselves. This payment must be paid every year as long as the app is on the store.
There are many competitors that offer a similar app to ours but the main ones are: google translate, say hi translator, Bing translator and i-translate. All of these apps are very popular and have many people using them thus if we want to beat them we must use our unique selling point in order to get the customers attention. Judging by our competition we believe that in time we will be able to overtake our competitors and be among the top. Most of our competitors are selling their products for free but they are including ads into their apps which bring them in revenue, this is an excellent way of making profits as most people desire free apps and are willing to overlook the ads this is especially the case on android where.
Our best case scenario is where we will get recognised fast and will be able to make many new customers that will help us spread our product to as many people as possible and the best thing would be for our product to show up on the front page of the App store where every single person visiting App store will see our app and download it. This would bring us in many new customers and more people will want to use the app and tell their friends.
Our worst case scenario is if our product does not sell and gets overshadowed by our competitors which will lead to our failure. This is because our costs for making the app will be very high and if it fails we will have to pay back a huge sum of money with interest to venture capitalist which would make us go bankrupt or even worse get our personal possessions taken.
Economics

Legal
Apple will grant us 50 promotional codes for each version of our app. The code allows the user to download our app from the App Store for free. Each code is different, so we will have to keep track of our codes and who they are sent to. We will request promo codes in iTunes Connect.
Our intellectual property needs to be protected this includes our designs, graphics, source code, name, look and feel of our app. We are also a Limited Liability Company; this will protect us from creditors or judgements and will only involve us in the business and not any stakeholders. To follow the corporate formalities we will have to separate our personal and business finances and not co-mingle assets.
There has to be a written work-for-hire agreement with the freelancing developer. This is the person who writes the source code for the app, they are creating a copyrightable material. Our company will hold the copyright material under the work-for-hire agreement between the developer and the company that was signed prior to the commencement of the work. This also applies to graphics, designs and every other aspect of the app.
We will also protect our ideas by firstly not having the secret information not becoming part of our general knowledge, secondly it will be an economic benefit in some way and thirdly we will keep confidential information in files marked confidential, use firewall on all our computers, have non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with everyone we have discussed the app with in detail. This includes investors, contractors, potential business partners and others.
We will need to complete a copyright registration as copyright protects the source code, artwork, design, text and other content of an app. As our app automatically gets copyright once the work is done or there is at least a working version of the program, even if incomplete. Our company will need to file a copyright application with the UK Copyright Office because registration establishes a public record and lets others know that you hold a copyright to this work. Registering the app with the UK and U.S. Copyright Office within 5 years of release date creates a legal assumption that you are its owner and that all facts in your copyright application are true.
We will also need to complete a Trademark registration of our logo or symbol as this is part of common law. The company will have to fill a trademark application for it with the United Kingdom Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The copyright law forbids you from: * Giving a copy to a friend * Making a copy then selling it * Using the software on network (unless the license allows it) * Renting the software without the permission of the copyright holder

For our company’s’ production to ensure that the business is legal we must know if we are going to use found images therefore we will need permission from the original owner.

Regulatory bodies

The ASA is the UK’s independent regulator of advertising. ASA stands for Advertising Standards Authority which is written by the committees of harmful or offensive advertisement. Their missions are to ensure that advertising in all media is legal, decent, honest and truthful, to the benefit of consumer, business and society. A Patent A patent is used to protect new inventions and covers how things work, what they do, and how they do it, what are they made of and how are they made. This affects our business as a patent application when granted can be given to owners to take legal action civil law to try stop others using, selling or making their inventions without permission. A registered design A is legally registered design is described as the appearance of the whole or part of a product from the features of e.g. colours, shape, the lines, contours, shape, texture or materials of the decoration or product. This affects our business as a registered design is a legal right which protects their overall visual appearance of their products and services or a part of their products and services in the country we are registered in. Software licenses It’s very important that software licensing matches the needs of the company. This will help the company know they have the right number of software licenses. This affects the business as the correct license agreement can make it easier for the company to manage their software. It also makes it easier to manage the business software. Protection via patents and copyrights The protection via patents gives the business the ability to take legal action towards stopping others from selling, coping, manufacturing and important their products or services without their permission. The protection via copyright allows the company work to be protected against another medium without permission. This includes publishing photographs on the internet. Online legislation * Our business must comply with the Data Protection Act 1998. * The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations * (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. The company MUST conform to this legislation which was introduced in December 2003 * Users must be able to opt out of any disclosure * Users must be advised who will be using the information and who it may be disclosed to * Users must be advised of Cookie usage * Accessibility -The Disability Discrimination Act 1995. This business MUST conform to this legislation. * As an Ecommerce business presence our website must be accessible to disabled people. In General: We must ensure that our business can be accessed by disabled users.

Product
Features and Benefits
Our app features are the iLearn which involves a verbal translator where the user can speak into the device; this is optional because the user can type in a word for the app to translate. The app also gives a chance to test the user by giving the user a certain amount of tries to guess a certain word, this will encourage the user to get the word right and they will learn whilst doing this. Whereas with the second section iCapture this section allows the user to either scan, take a picture and speak into the device for any word to be translated. The benefits of this app is that it is fun to use and the user will be learning new languages in a unique and advanced way which is something our competitors have not done yet.
Customer Profile
Age – iLearn 13-23years old student, iCapture – young adults
Gender – both male and female
For the marketing research we have come up with a suitable target market for our app. There are two sections to this app. iLearn and iCapture, they both differ when it comes to target market but anyone outside the category of both target market can use this app. The market research we have done helped us find out that there is a gap in the market for an app like this. This is because it works in a way to encourage young people to learn more languages and also help them with their work as well. The learning part of this app which we have named iLearn is targeted at students between the ages of 13-23 years old because those are the years when students are still in education whether it is in school, college or university so if they are learning a language this app can help them develop their skills in that language. Even though we have a target audience for the iLearn part of the app, people outside that category can still use it to learn or develop a language.
Whereas the other part of the app is the travelling part that we have named iCapture, and this is targeted at young adults who have an interest on travelling and this part of the app allows the user to speak into the device, take a picture or even scan a word they don’t know. For example the user could be in a foreign restaurant and if they want to translate a word from the menu then they just need to take their device out and capture it! For both target markets we have used the psychographic segmentation method because when we chose our target audience it involved dividing customers into groups based on opinions, interest and lifestyle. This is because our target market must have an interest in learning a language and having a lifestyle that travels.

How to identify your target market
You can identify your target market by doing primary and secondary research. Primary research is often time-consuming and expensive. Primary research is considered as a trustful source of information because it is directly from the consumer and is specifically designed to meet the objectives of a project. Primary research methods include questionnaires, focus groups, interviews and direct observations. This allows a business to understand customer needs and identify possible gaps in the market which could become their target market.
For our business plan we used questionnaires and interviews to find out what our target market are looking for in translating apps. The questionnaires and interviews helped us gain control over the type of questions we asked and information we gathered which is extremely valuable. Even though this can be time consuming and expensive in some cases.
Secondary research is existing research that has already been collected by other organisations. Secondary data includes books, journals, and the internet and government statistics. This is useful for a business to find out their target audience for instance they can discover new trends and view existing competitors and who they are targeting. In addition by looking at statistics they can determine their target audience for example spending patterns and income as well as other aspects of demographic makeup can be obtained.
We did a huge amount of internet researching because it was easier for us to find out about our competitors and their market. We explored already existing translating apps on our devices and analysed how they work, from this we as young people we can see what they did not provide for us so for iLearn we know what to present to our market that Google Translate do not. as a whole we looked expanded on our research into our competitors target market as they already have an existing satisfied market, this helped our business plan because we looked into reviews that our competitors market have given them and we can work around that and provide them a better translating app. Our secondary research allowed us to make the most of existing information about our market. However, it can be a challenge to find the information we really needed.

Competition
Our biggest competitor is Google translate, they offer a free translator and are one of the most well-known company in the world. Google translate currently supports 54 language which includes all the main ones: English, French, Russian and Spanish. Nearly every single person that uses the internet knows about Google translate, this means that it has a huge user base and good reputation. To overtake Google translate we will have a more advanced translating app than Google. This will be done by adding more languages and using unique technology where we can scan, take a picture or even speak into the device to translate what you desire. By doing this we will be able to attract some of their customers and make them our own which then they would tell their friends and in result bring us profit and put us on a similar grounds to google which would get us a very good reputation. apart from Google there are many other translator apps that don’t have a nearly as big of a following and we could overtake them quickly if our product succeeds in what we want it to do, as we offer unique selling point that not many other apps will do.

Marketing Strategy
Promotion
The market research helped us find out the best ways to promote a new app. First we must set up a web page about the app and promote the web page. We will create blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts which are all free to create so there will not be any cost when creating accounts on these networks. However there will be some costs if we want Twitter and Facebook to promote our app. They both have their own ways of promoting business. We have found that we must have either a daily or a lifetime budget on both Facebook and Twitter; this is useful for us because we only pay for the clicks or impressions we receive. We will need to promote on airports, airport coaches, and schools. We will also go around schools and hold assemblies which will not cost us anything.
Promotional Budget
The promotional budget of this business would be split due to the several types of advertising techniques we will be using. There are daily budgets on Facebook at £5 and also Twitter has a daily budget at £10 daily. The advert would automatically stop advertising after this limit is met which means we would need to top-up on the advert. This will be advertised between January and February which are when students are mostly on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter; this is because the exam season starts in May. Posters would be used on bus stops, airports, billboards and schools. To advertise on bus-stops and buses it would cost around £100-£4000 for our promotional budget this would be around £1500. To advertise in airports it would cost £2000-£14000 for our promotional budget it will cost around £8000. This is over our budget for the moment therefore we will not be promoting in airports.
However we will be promoting in airport coaches, these are coaches used by customer to travel from and to airports. From June until July are when people start planning their holidays and travel. To advertise in a school it will cost around £100-£1000 for the company it will be £450. The places that are chosen will be beneficial for us as a company to gain more recognition as these are good spots for us to advertise our app in. We will advertise in schools throughout the year and because this is a beneficial app for students’ schools will support to advertise it for a cheaper price or even allow us to put posters up for free. Schools, colleges and universities may even wish to buy our app which will increase our income. To advertise on billboards it will cost up to £100-£10000 for the promotional budget that we are doing it will be around £4000. Promoting on billboards is quite expensive therefore after we start getting some sort of income we will start to promote on Billboards and taking our business more out there for people to see. If we have to cut down on our promotional budget then we can cut the buses and airport coaches because if we are promoting in airports the same target audience will use the coaches that travel to the airports. Overall our budget is £3,500 for the first year and the finance person has calculated that our promotional budget will cost us around £3,100, so we have not yet met our promotional budget which is a positive thing because we have £400 to save.
Pricing
The pricing strategy we have used is penetration strategy because it will start on a low price and start increasing. For our app it will come with free 1 month trial from the day they download it so the user has time to explore the app and see if they like it. After the 1 month free trial of using the app, if the user likes the app then they can start paying £1 every 6 month to continue using this app. This will also stop the pop up adverts that appear on the device, this is very useful and it will attract the users to pay the £1 to stop the app because as an Apple user myself, the adverts that pop up are irritating.
Proposed Location
We want Silver Way headquarters office to be based in the UK but in the province as the rent is cheaper and we will be able to have more land for our office. We have requested to be based in a business centre in Coventry which is situated on a sought after business park on Sir William Lyons Road pricing from £175. There are numerous cafes, restaurants and takeaways in Coventry, some of which offer Wi-Fi connectivity, providing a good range of options for lunches and client entertainment. The size requirements we have asked for is for 5 people which is 350 sq. ft.
Distribution Channels
Distribution channel is the process which goods and services travel from the seller to the consumer or event payments for the goods and services from the consumer to the seller. However because we are an E-business this does not apply to our business.

Start-up Expenses
The budget is roughly how much we need in order to start up the business, from this; we can see that our company would have a budget of around £70,000. This will enable us to purchase all services and products needed to start up our business and keep us running.
Operational Plan
Production
As for production we will hire an expert that knows how to create an apps, the finance has covered the cost of this.
Legal Environment
We must make sure that we are following the Copy Right so that our app idea isn’t already some else’s idea legally because this could cause a lot of hassle for our business.
Location
Our business plan is an E-business therefore because it isn’t an actual product we do not need any location to provide this to our customers however we will need a location for our head office. We have considered renting an office in Coventry.
Personnel
Stock and Assets
As we are an E-business stock does not apply to us but the in terms of assets we will need the following items; * 5 Dell computers * 5 Apple Ipads * 5 Iphones * 2 Mac books * 2 Imac computers
Suppliers
Our suppliers for our items are Apple because our app is only targeted at Apple users to begin with and if we reach our mission and goals then we will develop the app onto Android which will create a wider market. As for the 5 Dell computers, Dell will be our supplier.