GWT Blog – GlobalWorldTech

Competition

This section is devoted to analyzing the competition – whether the current competition, or potential competitors who will attempt to enter the space if the business is successful.

Key questions to answer:

• Who are the current competitors? What is their market share? How successful are they?
• What market do current competitors target? Do they focus on a specific customer type, on serving the mass market, or on a particular niche?
• Are competing businesses growing or scaling back operations? Why?
• How will your company be different from the competition? What competitor weaknesses can you exploit? What competitor strengths will you need to overcome to be successful?
• What will you do if competitors drop out of the marketplace? What will you do to take advantage of the opportunity?
• What will you do if new competitors enter the marketplace? How will you react to and overcome new challenges?

Competition answers the “Against who?” question.

Operations

Customers are necessary. Products and services those customers need are necessary. The next key step is to develop an operation plan to serve those customers while keeping operating costs in line to ensure profitability. The Operations plan should detail plans for research and development, processing, manufacturing, staffing, managing… in short, how to run the business on a day to day basis.

Key questions to answer:

• What facilities, equipment, and supplies will you need?
• Is research and development necessary, either for start-up purposes or as a part of ongoing operations, and if so how?
• What are initial staffing needs? When and how will you add staff?
• Who will you establish business relationships with (vendors, suppliers, etc?) How will those relationships impact your day to day operations?
• How will your operations change as the company grows? What steps will you take to cut costs if the company initially does not perform up to expectations?

Operations answers the “How?” question.

Products and/or Services

Clearly describe the products and services the business will provide. (Without products or services you have no company.) Highly detailed or technical descriptions are unnecessary – use simple terms and avoid industry buzzwords. Describing how the company’s products and services will differ from the competition is critical; so too is describing how your products and services are needed if no market currently exists.

Patents, copyrights and trademarks owned or applied for should be listed.

Key questions to answer:

• Are products or services already on the market or still in development?
• What is the timeline for bringing new products and services to market?
• What makes the products or services different? Are there competitive advantages compared to other offerings from other companies? Are there competitive disadvantages that must be overcome in some other way?
• Is price an issue? Will operating costs be low enough to allow a reasonable profit margin?

Think of it this way; Products and/or Services answers the “What?” question for a business.

Market Opportunities

Market research is critical to business success. A good business plan analyzes and evaluates customer demographics, purchasing habits, buying cycles, and willingness to adopt new products and services.

Key questions to answer:

• What is your market? Include geographic descriptions, target demographics, company profiles (if business to business)… in other words, who are your customers?



• What part of your market will you focus on? (In other words, what niche will you attempt to carve out?) What percentage of that market do you hope to penetrate?
• What is the size of your intended market? (Population, spending, etc.)
• Why do customers need – and will be willing to purchase – your products and services?
• How will you price your goods or services? Will you focus on being the low cost provider, or on providing value-added services at a higher price?
• Will your market potentially grow? Why?
• How can you increase your market share over time?

Market Opportunities answers the “Who?” question.

Sales & Marketing

Offering great products and services is wonderful, but customers must know those products and services exist. Marketing plans and strategies are critical to business success.

Key questions to answer:

• What is your budget for sales and marketing?
• How will you determine whether marketing efforts are successful? How will you adapt if initial marketing efforts are unsuccessful?
• Will you need sales representatives to promote your products?
• What public relations activities do you plan (if any?)

Some business plans include examples of marketing materials: Website descriptions, print advertisement samples, etc. While including samples is not necessary, the exercise of creating actual marketing materials can help focus and shape overall marketing plans and objectives.

Sales & Marketing answers the “How will I reach them?” question.

***Note to readers: This is a four part series, wherein we will highlight every aspect of business plan ***

 A business plan is a written summary and guide to starting and running a business. A  well-written plan creates a blueprint for success and can help entrepreneurs obtain  financing, create strategic plans, follow marketing and sales plans. For many people, a  business plan is the first step in the process of deciding whether to start a business –  determining if the plan “fails on paper” first can help prospective business owners  avoid costly investments.

A good business plan:

• Requires objective analysis and critical thinking – what seemed like a good idea can, under mature reflection, be exposed as a business lacking viability due to excess competition, a lack of sufficient funding, etc.
• Serves as a guide to operations for the first months and even years, creating a management blueprint.
• Communicates the company’s purpose and vision, management responsibilities, personnel requirements, marketing plans, and competitive environment.
• Creates the foundation of a financing proposal for investors, lenders, etc.

While each business plan is unique, all business plans share a few common elements. The following are some of the key components of a well-crafted business plan.

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary (sometimes called a Vision Statement) is a brief outline of the company’s purpose and goals. While it can be tough to fit on one or two pages, a good summary includes:

• Brief description of products and services
• Business objectives
• The market space the business will inhabit
• Justification for viability (including a brief look at competition and competitive advantage)
• Growth potential
• Funding requirements

For many people, the Executive Summary is the make-or-break section of a business plan. Companies solve customer’s problems; if the Summary cannot clearly describe how the business will solve a particular problem – and profit by doing so – in one or two pages, then it is very possible the opportunity does not exist… or the plan to take advantage of the opportunity has not been well developed.

In effect, an Executive Summary is where the sizzle must meet the steak.

***Note to readers: This is a four part series, wherein we will highlight every aspect of business plan ***

Reviews are intended as a way for people to share useful and relevant information. That encompasses a wide range of opinions so ensure that the information posted in reviews is useful and relevant for everyone. Reviews are best when they reflect the unique opinion and viewpoint of an individual. You can share as much or as little information as you’d like: you might choose to describe the intricate details of a restaurant’s decor, or simply recommend your favorite dish.

We are listing here few points to help reviewers understand how to write thoughtful reviews, that readers will find them informative, and that the content of the reviews provide useful feedback to business owners.

• Be informative and insightful

Your review should be specific and relevant to the place you are reviewing and describe what other patrons are likely to experience. Describe why you liked or disliked the place. Highlight what makes the place special and try to share something novel. From favorite dishes to secret sale racks, reviews can describe unique experiences about a business.

• Keep it real

People read reviews to learn about real experiences from real people, so be authentic. Keep your reviews to your own, direct experience with a place. Try to describe your experience as accurately as possible, including both positive and negative aspects.

• Be respectful

We don’t expect that every interaction you have with a place or business will be perfect. Sometimes, you’ll want to share negative feedback. Even if you’re frustrated, be sure your criticism is constructive. Business owners can use feedback to improve their business, but remember — they’re people too.

• Write in style

People will pay more attention to what you say when you write your review thoughtfully. Keep it readable and don’t use excessive capitalization or punctuation. Use good grammar, check your spelling, and don’t use excessive profanity. Choose the right length: People aren’t necessarily looking for formal write-ups, they want to know what’s notable about a particular place. Whether it takes an essay or a tweet — share your thoughts and be creative.

Things to avoid while writing a review:

• Advertising and spam

Nobody likes spam and it can only make its author look bad. Don’t use reviews for advertising or post the same or similar reviews across multiple places. Obviously, don’t post fake reviews intended to boost or lower ratings.

• Off-topic Reviews

Reviews should describe your personal, first hand experience with a specific place. Do not post reviews based on someone else’s experience, or that are not about the specific place you are reviewing. Reviews are not a forum for personal attacks, rants or crusades. Please also do not use reviews to report incorrect information about a place.

• Conflict of interest

Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. Do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing.

After month’s of speculation, Twitter, finally has launched it’s own Tweet button. Tweetmeme, the company responsible for the majority of retweet buttons said on their Blog

“Twitter is launching its own Tweet Button and we are very pleased to be partnering with them to continue to grow the overall Twitter ecosystem.”

Here is how you can add Tweet button on your blog:

• Login to Twitter.
• Go to the bottom of the page and click Goodies.
• Select Tweet Button.
• Select how you want to show the tweet’s count i.e. Horizontal / Vertical or No count. See pic below

Recommend two people to follow. You can write here your Twitter ID alongwith some other ID whom you think people should follow.

Once you are done, your code will look like this:

Things to know:

data-url – This fetches the URL that you want to share.
data-via – This tells twitter who was the original tweeter.
data-related – This adds recommended users to follow. Like said earlier, you can write here Twitter ID whom you think people should follow after they have shared the content from your website. Here we are recommending @satinderp (Founder of gwtindia)
data-count – This tells twitter’s script which style of button you want to show. See pic above.
data-lang – This variable tells twitter which language it should be in. Default value is ‘en’ for English, and we have left it at that.

In the last few years the Open Source movement has changed the face of computing more than almost anyone would have thought possible. More and more companies are preferring Open Source as against to Proprietory software / applications. As the name suggests Open source offers a new perspective. Open, not closed. Collaboration, not isolation. Many people often get confused thinking that Open Source means Free Software/Apps. Though open source softwares / apps are free but there is a difference between Open Source and Free Software and the primary distinction of open source software is that it’s not about freedom, it’s about what software does things better.

According to a Survey, key findings in the 2010 Open Source Systems Management include:

• 98% of the survey respondents indicated usage of open source in their enterprises.
• 71% of 2009 respondents indicated that open source software was easier to deploy up from 48% in 2008, 38% in 2007 and 26% in 2006.
• When asked their degree of satisfaction with open source software on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 indicating most satisfied) users indicated an average level of satisfaction between 7 and 8.
• 76% of system administrators in large enterprises indicate they prefer to use open source whenever possible.
• 50% of respondents indicated that they are already using some form of cloud technology including but not limited to hosted applications, Amazon Web services and/or hosted storage.
• The top IT management priorities for 2010 where monitoring, configuration management, patching and provisioning and security.
• 40% of respondents planned to adhere to ITIL best practices in 2010, up from 33% in 2008 and 32% in 2007.

Are you looking where to find Open Source Softwares / Apps?

The most reliable way to get such software is to download it from the popular, recognized web portal. The situation changes over time, but the most popular portal currently seems being sourceforge.net. Also see www.gnu.org for a list of projects sponsored by the Free Software Foundation.

There are many advantages of Cloud Computing over traditional Computing but as they say – Everything has its own Pros and Cons. In our earlier posts What is Cloud Computing and Types of Cloud Computing, we have mostly talked about the advantages of Cloud Computing. In this post, we will talk about the Risks involved in Cloud Computing.

Data in the cloud is typically in a shared environment alongside data from other customers and since it’s in shared environment, so the customers are ultimately responsible for the security and integrity of their own data, even when it is held by a service provider. Many customers have no idea how exposed they really are when they put a website or other corporate application on someone else’s hardware.

SaaS Chronicles has put together a good list that can help gain more insights into security and provide some additional context for the ways data does flow in the cloud:

• Where will my data be stored?
• Who will have access to my sensitive data?
• What controls do you have in place to ensure safety for my data while it is stored in your environment?
• What type of employee / contractor screening you do, before you hire them?
• Will my data be replicated to any other datacenters around the world (If yes, then which ones)?
• What is your Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity strategy?
• Is your Cloud Computing service SAS70 compliant?
• Do you offer single sign-on for your services?
• How do you detect if an application is being attacked (hacked), and how is that reported to me and my employees?
• Do I have full ownership of my data?
• Will you provide me my data in a readable format – Pdf, Excel, Access…?
• Do you offer a way for me to run your application locally and how quickly I can revert to the local installation?

While cloud security is still a critical issue and something that must be taken extremely serious by all vendors, the mood is shifting towards general acceptance of security in the cloud.

What do you think? What questions do you suggest asking about cloud security?

In our earlier post, we wrote how Social Customer will first Listen, Analyze, Relate & then Act contrary to traditional customer. Social media presence and online communities can and should be part of a great customer experience. Here is how:

• Common knowledge with customer contributions
• Empowering customers to help each other
• Listen to customers to learn how to improve
• Design seamless experiences to turn customers into brand ambassadors
• Engage proactively: don’t wait until you see service issues
• Measure and improve continuously

Can you Measure Social Media?

Measurement means metrics/Statistics during a specific time period that shows what had happened. Purpose of measuring is to compare between actual and expected.

Why measure?
Ans: If you dont know where you are … how will you get anywhere?

Types of Metrics

• Organization – Metrics for the Shareholders.
• Social Media – Metrics for Social media means Engagement, Customer Satisfaction, Sales, Traffic & Research.

Why Google failed on Social Media front?

According to a former Google employee – “Google has an environment that viewed social networking as a frivolous form of entertainment rather than a real utility, and I’m pretty sure this viewpoint was shared all the way up the chain of command to the founders.”

Consider this example: Google Answers focused on answers and failed; Yahoo! Answers focused on social and succeeded. The primary purpose of a social application is connecting with others, seeing what they’re up to, and maybe even having some small, fun interactions. Google apps are for working and getting things done; social apps are for interacting and having fun.

Google is from Mars, and social applications are from Venus. Google is ready to fight, but social applications are about loving not fighting.

Cloud Computing as the name suggests computing on the cloud. Cloud computing might be more accurately described as “sky computing,” with many isolated clouds of services which IT customers must plug into individually. Cloud symbol is often used to represent the Internet in flowcharts and diagrams. In Cloud computing all a user need is a Computer and Internet, rest everything is managed by the service provider. Services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Because the service provider hosts both the application and the data, the end user is free to use the service from anywhere.

The major cloud service providers include Microsoft, Salesforce, Skytap, Amazon, Google and HP.

Cloud computing is pretty big and is growing bigger everyday. There are basically 3 layers in Cloud Computing i.e. Infrastructure, Platform and Application. Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers.

Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers’ computing needs. You can put anything ranging from your website, or application to any software that you can remotely access it. It works the same way as Electricity, when you turn on the light, meter start running and you are billed for the power you consumed. When are you done with it, you switch off the light and meter stops. Key to cloud computing is not to focus on the hardware, you just focus on your website or on your application.

There are 3 reasons why Cloud computing is getting popular
1) Scalability – you can easily grow to your demand.
2) Instant – computer power is instantly available, whenever you need it.
3) Save Money – You only pay for what you use.

WebM, the open video standard introduced at Google’s recent I/O developer conference, is now available in Firefox 4. According Mozilla’s Robert O’Callahan, the key sticking point was making sure that the new WebM codec licensing was compatible with GPL – an open-source licensing type that allows users to copy, modify and redistribute software free of charge as long as modifications made are shared with the community.

That issue has now been addressed, allowing Mozilla to support the codec in its Firefox Web browser.

What’s WebM?

The WebM video format is based on the VP8 video codec, something Google acquired last year from On2 Technologies, a New York-based video compression developer, for $106.5 million. At that time, Google announced it intended to use the codec technology it now owned to “make the overall Web experience better for users“.

Since the acquisition, Google has open-sourced the codec, fixed the licensing issues (as noted above) and added WebM support into its own Web browser, Google Chrome, the latter taking place just last week.

WebM is an alternative to the H.264 codec, which is currently used by Apple to display video on the iPad and iPhone and is supported within Adobe’s Flash player, among other things. Although H.264 is available royalty-free right now, it’s owned by the MPEG LA consortium, a group that has announced the codec will only remain royalty-free until Dec. 31, 2015. After this license term is up, it’s suspected that there will be charges for its use going forward.

Where to Find It

One of the first sites to implement WebM, was, of course, Google’s own video property, YouTube. To utilize the new codec, which is still in testing, one can enable the “HTML5 experiment” following instructions from the WebM’s project page. In addition to Google Chrome and now Firefox, Microsoft too has announced support for WebM in its upcoming Web browser, IE9, after an end user installs the necessary codec (VP8). Apple has so far made no comment on whether or not its Safari browser will do the same.