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Evaluation of marketing plan & operations strategy
Live-e-Care is a web based customer service supports venture that have planned to enter into a market of e-business by providing quality and cost-effective online customer management operation for various companies. According to the reports released by Boston Consulting group, the online sales have doubled the figures available in 1988 and is expected to reach 36 billion dollars in this year. Further, it is also reported that the total online customer sales services will be reaching 1 billion dollars within next 3 years.
In the business strategy revealed, the company promise to deliver highly personalized email and live text chat response at a much reduced cost and also as a replacement to the existing in-house function. As internet technologies has revolutionized the traditional forms of customer retention the company is confident to make big inroads into e-business segment. The impact of e-trading have been observed to increase through high growth anticipated in online retailing.
Their learning from the poor experiences of the retail market segment with the automated and quick reply systems for customer support, which unfortunately couldnt address the specific needs of the customers and extend the customer loyalty, would certainly help to pay better attention to their performance. They are very optimistic of this initiative and is very confident to turn successful by ensuring the consistent and timely delivery of high quality services, careful analysis of the trends in the transaction process, much reduced cost than the existing in-house operations and reduced implementation time for web-based solutions. Based on these observations, I am confident that live-e-care would be able to meet their promise of better personalized customer support services delivery and better value of value to their clients.
The market analysis undertaken is really extensive and has helped them to design appropriate strategies in this e-business initiative. Live-e-Care clearly understand the existing bottlenecks prevailing in the online operations. Most of the companies currently use auto reply softwares to handle the email enquires and large portion of which unfortunately never respond to the enquiry properly. Instances like ignoring email enquiry and large response time of more than 5 days are also prevailing currently in this field of operation.
Also, it is highlighted that 62 percent of customers currently give up the purchase due to the difficulty in accessing the site. Based on these inputs, Live-e-Care promises to help the clients understand their need by reaching them through feed back and comments. The company also provides a live chat service for their valued customers. Thus, an interactive, lively and friendly session for the customers would be created to become prospective future buyers.
The company intends to reach 95% of the customers in 24 hours or less. The company further expects to reach their web based clients through on line chat services as web based support is a fast growing medium. The companys target market clearly focuses on purely web based quality service at the minimal rate and stipulated time. For promoting Live-e-Care, the prospective customers would be reached through print and advertising media and also by conducting trade shows. In addition, creating an interactive website would also create a brand value about the company and its services.
The market for web based out-sourcing can be classified into web based out sourcing, customer service out sourcing and telecommunication services. The live-e-care company plan to focus its operation on web based customer service e-mail and the chat market. The major competitors for the company in this sector are internal marketing department of the clients and new emerging players. Other major groups currently operating in the online business segment are also identified. Brigade solutions which is the most important competitor of live-e-care provides web based support to IT companies.
People support based in Los Angeles also provide outsourced e-mail customer care to e-commerce companies. Live chat assistance, finale.com and e Assist. net are the three other major competitors which provide live chat support. These web chat providers demonstrate a single live demo with minimal wait time without revealing the clients personal data. But the live-e-care company focuses on quality customer care at a much lower cost. the company helps the clients in handling their online customer services for various function like sales support, identifying consumer trend and preferences.
From the above descriptions it is very clear that live-e-care has carefully analyzed the market and incorporated the customer behavior in their marketing plan. The firm have also clearly positioned as a online business organization like any other online business companies with clearly stated objectives and operational plans (n.d.). The live-e- care company plans to operate in Philippines where low cost under employment work force is available which would give them a distinct advantage over their US based competitors.
The main challenge lies in convincing the retailers especially the traditional businesses about the benefits and advantages of out sourcing their customer support. The target market of the company include the traditional brick-and- mortar companies having websites that receives a high volume of e-mail and insist on maintaining a strong relationship between the clients. Moat of these type of operators have very low email support, poor reply pattern and incapable to handle high volumes of email. The company focuses on mid sized clients and larger and more established clients. From these details the target markets are also properly delineated.
Regarding the operational plan, different divisions of total business organization has been explained well. This involves presenting the members of top management, details of other divisions like human resources, finance, marketing and sales etc. But a properly presented budget in support of the activities is the missing component. Absence of the budget and a proper flow diagram of sequence of events fails to give a true picture of the operations visualized by the company owners.
The plan presented by the company clearly shows that it capable to achieve desired objective. Being the beginner in this business segment the company enjoys the advantage of the market primer at the same time it must be capable to eliminate the future threats. As the business would expand other player would also be drawn into this sector and would create much stiff competition in the business. So the operational structure could be appropriately tailored to prevent any other entrant to win over Live e cares strategy of operation.
Analysis of financial strategy and final projections
The financial forecasts suggests that the revenue from online customer support would grow by nearly 200 percent across first three years. As the company is set to generate a new set of business operation, the figures presented are not very ambitious. The company expects a initial loss during the first year of operation and plans to recover steadily during the third year with increased revenue from the earnings.
The conversion of total of 23 percent of clients to the services offered by the live-e-care certainly requires a committed action from the marketing front. So the budget for the various operations during the first three years need to be elaborated more to give better clarity on fund management. From the available records and published results it is understood that only very low of business is being carried out online gives the existing dependence on internet techniques for business support activities. It is mentioned in the business plan that additional revenues from consulting and FAQ database management is not considered in income determination as they are the prime focus of the company at present and also they might not form a very significant volume of the revenue.
But as operating from Philipines, it would be worthwhile to explore all the possible earning in this domain with the skills available with the workforce. This would help the live-e-case to elevate its operations to total solutions provider in the domain of customer relations management. Also, as the break even period is expected during the third year of operation appropriate indices for reworking the strategies need to be created in the plan. But looking from the customer base, expecting a drastic shift in the operations of client management structure prevalent at each places to new method of out sourcing could take some time. The expectation from the return of equity across the three years as the envisaged growth of the business seems justifiable.
This would certainly help in pooling more funds for its future expansion plans. The assessment of the reduction of the operators expense across the initial years of operation is certainly coupled with possibility of future expansions. And the major operations are being carried out in Philippines, the impact of the local factors that could influence the operations there and might have an influence of the financial parameters need to be considered here.
Personal Opinion on Investing in Live e- care
The live-e-care certainly presents a very interesting case for financial investment. Though being a start up company, the domain of operation of Live-e-care certainly holds much promise in future. Also, their approach to the business operation by properly creating s specific area of action clearly promises a good growth prospects in future. With companies trying to male their operations very lean and concentrating on core-competency in their respective functions the role of companies of this type would certainly become very important in future. With the initial plans to operate from a very comfortable offshore center certainly gives me more confidence in investment.
But absence of a proper risk management plan is a vital aspect missing in the business proposal. (Simmons & Burgess, 2000). Though the projections presented in the report are purely speculative with considerable change in the prevailing business pattern expected to emerge during the course of its growth a scenario analysis on the impact of any adverse situations is not provided. As a prospective investor I would appreciate if the we are convinced of the inherent strength of the organization to withstand the difficult times it might have to face. Even then, the ability of the organization to raise sufficient funds to meet the capital investments as well as the operational costs negates this concern.
Also with the current growth of internet and related technologies the operations would soon become not only more efficient but also inevitable in variety of business operations. The successful retention of most satisfied pool of customers being the basic secret of all successful ventures, the initiative to create long standing chain of loyal customers through various innovative strategies certainly sounds as a highly viable proposition. With, the high expectations on the return on the invested equity by the end of three years and further rise in ROE foreseen with the increase in revenue, I would certainly be interested for personal investments with live-e-Care.
References
Simmons., & Burgess, Lois. (2000). Internet commerce, security risk analysis and small to medium enterprises. Collector. Web.
Eporia: Site That Sells More. (n.d.). Web.
Gale, Detroit. (2008). Online customer service support. Business Plans Handbook, 10, 253-273.
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