TOPIC
A feasibility study is used to look at the opportunities and issues that arise in developing a new business idea or opportunity. It is done before a business plan is written, and its purpose is to help managers decide whether or not a new venture or business idea is worth pursuing. A full feasibility study would include sections on financial, resource, and management/operational feasibility. For the purposes of this assignment, you are not required to justify the content in these sections, just to demonstrate that you can comment on costs, resource availability , and whether or not the staff and management can do the work.
You must select an eBusiness idea on which to base your study. This could be for a completely new venture, or an idea for an existing business or organization to establish, change or extend its online presence or business channels. The organization can be a for-profit or not-for profit venture.
FORMAT and LENGTH
• Professional/business writing style (third person, without grammatical and spelling errors)
• Sources of information must be cited using the APA referencing style
• Length: approx 16- 24 double spaced pages (excluding appendices and references), + a link to a web-site prepared by the group, + a demonstration of the web site by the group on the last day of class. Electronic submission of the study is fine, along with the link to the site
STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
Your paper must contain the following sections (with section numbering as shown).
Title page
Table of contents
Executive Summary
1.0 Introduction
A paragraph that includes a brief description of your eBusiness idea Product and/or service to be provided
• Information about the industry or sector in which you operate or will be operating.
• A description of the product(s) and/or the service(s) you will be offering through this online presence.
• An explanation of other channels that your company or organization uses to provide these goods and/or services (if any)
• An explanation of what you hope to achieve by using web channels, and what the particular opportunity or advantage is that is offered by a web channel.
2.0 Business model and revenue models
• What is the primary function of your online presence (eg. eCommerce, lead generation, self-service/support, Content/Media portal etc)
• A detailed explanation of the way(s) in which you will generate income for your business or organization. Remember, many businesses use a number of revenue models.
• Explain where and how value is being created in your organization over the long-term
3.0 eBusiness goals
• List the goals of your online presence – explain in detail exactly what the purposes of the site are and what you want people to do when they come to the site. What does your company or organization hope to achieve?
4.0 Target markets and customers
• For each revenue model included in section 3.0 , include a detailed target market and customer profile. (This will likely include both end-users of your product or service and business partners to whom you sell advertising or other services that provide revenue to support your business).
• For each customer or business partner specify
o who the customers are
o what do they have in common? Describe your target market(s) in terms of identifiable characteristics that they share.
? (eg. geography, company size, industry, lifestyle, demographics etc)
o what do they value?
? why do they use your site
? what are their motivations and expectations (for example, are they looking for low cost, for value, or for quality)
5.0 Marketing communications and conversion
o How will you reach your target market(s)
o How are you going to advertise and promote your online presence
o How will you generate traffic
o What is your “stickiness” strategy (how will you keep visitors on your site, and then keep them coming back)
o What “conversions” are there on your site. How will you get customers to “convert”. What is your “call to action”
6.0 Competitors
o Who are your main competitors?
o What is their current share of the market?
o How are their products / services the same as yours?
o How will you differentiate your products or services from theirs?
o Will it be easy or difficult to compete with you (are there any barriers to competition?)
o What major advantage does your organization have over the competition?
o Include screen shots of relevant pages of competitor websites in the Appendix to illustrate your analysis
7.0 Privacy, security and protection of intellectual property
o Explain what the privacy concerns of your target markets are likely to be and how you will manage those concerns. Include a sample privacy policy.
o Explain what the particular security concerns there will be for your revenue model(s) and how you will manage these concerns (eg. how will you protect your digital intellectual property?)
8.0 Measures of success
o For each goal listed in Section 3.0 , explain how you will measure success in reaching that goal, including a detailed description of the web analytics you will use.
9.0 Risk assessment
o Include an assessment of the main risks that might lead to the failure of your business idea. How likely are these risks to occur, and how might you mitigate them.
o If possible, include information about similar ventures that may have failed, or appear to be failing, with some discussion of the causes of failure.
10.0 Evaluation of the business idea
o Write a concluding section, summarizing the findings of the feasibility study and make a recommendation as to whether or not to proceed with doing further work to pursue the business idea. you should touch on costs and resourcing issues here.
11.0 Web-site link
Appendices
References
