Entrepreneurship

Business plan

FOR

Expressionz.com

NIDA SAEED
SANIYA ANWAR
BBA V MIS

Fatima Salahuddin
BBA VII MIS
November 23, 2006

COMPANY PROFILE

The company for which we are developing the online business strategy is a hypothetical business and does not have physical existence. However, after establishing the business through its website, we plan to expand the business by opening offline stores as well. Thus the ecommerce model that we will be implementing is Click ( Brick. But the expansion of business is subject to its online success.

BUSINESS OVERVIEW

Though the company is a new entrant in the online greeting industry, the concept of such business is quite old and very popular as well. Considering the Pakistani situation, sending free ecard greetings’ trend has increased drastically over last few years. People prefer greeting each other by sending ecards or by using sms services offered by their respective mobile services. Main reason for this inclination is the postal services’ cost i.e. Rs. 8 for Pakistan Post (with a very low probability of reaching the desired destination) and Rs. 25-100 for other courier services. Following are the Pakistani sites that provide free ecard and gifts services in line with other major services, but there exists no single Pakistani site that is in greetings (ecards, gifts etc.) business solely. Thus this business will have a competitive advantage since its inception.

http://www.urdupoint.com http://apnakarachi.com TCS Sentiments Express

The above mentioned sites, on the other hand, will have an advantage for the fact that they are in the consumer market through other means as well. However, in e greetings business, e-loyalty does not matter much if one does not provide for what the customer is looking for i.e. ‘the perfect expression’, which all of these sites lack. Our target market would be all those individuals who wish to send free ecards and/or their greetings by ordering online. People who want to send gifts to their loved ones in Pakistan will be our customers.

BUSINESS DESCRIPTION

PRODUCTS:

Initially, products will be delivered only in following major cities of Pakistan: • Karachi • Hyderabad • Lahore • Islamabad • Rawalpindi • Peshawar • Quetta

We will be offering flowers, gifts, hand made cards and free ecards via our web store.

Flowers: will be available in form of bouquets. Images of these bouquets will be placed on our site. Customers will be able to choose from a variety of flowers, ribbons, colors, bouquet styles and sizes. Flowers will be obtained from pre contracted vendors present in the cities in our delivery list.

Gifts: will include perfumes, cakes, sweetmeats, chocolates and stuffed toys, mainly. The gifts will be obtained from the whole sale market (except for the cakes and sweet meats) and stored in one central warehouse located in Karachi.

Hand Made Cards: will be bought from Absa- a school for deaf and dumb children. We will provide them with the stationary and then pay them for their hard work. In this way we will be helping them and provide them with means of income as well. Our site will serve as an online forum for these children and we will accept charities for the school.

Free Ecards: free ecards will also be available on our web site. This will also be the main feature of our web site. Cards available on our site would include animated and non-animated ones. Designers will be acquired to make ecards for us.

PURCHASE MECHANISM:

For our products other than ecards, the purchase order should be worth Rs. 100 or more.
Customers will be required to sign up for making a purchase. Customers will then fill an order form to make a purchase. It will include sale id, customer id, customer’s name, purchase items, recipients’ name and address, date of delivery and mode of payment (credit card/direct debit information). Customer information other than credit card information will be stored in our data base. Customers’ order will be confirmed as soon as the customer’s credit card is verified and credited. Customers will be able to track their orders and a delivery confirmation email will be sent to the customer when their order is conveyed. Minimum time for the order shipment will be one working day for within city delivery and two working days for inter city transaction.

PAYMENT MODE:

To make a payment, customer will be required to use any of the following: • Credit cards(Master and Visa) • Direct Debit to the business bank account

For those customers who hesitate using a credit card online, we will also be providing land line numbers to place an order offline.

ECOMMERCE MODEL

The ecommerce model that will be applicable to our business is Click ( Brick. Though difficult to implement, it is the most appropriate model. The brick part of our business will depend on its click part’s popularity. Brand equity developed through online stores will aid our offline business. Our brick stores however will facilitate our online business as we will then be able to stock our gift items in each city. These offline stores will take purchase orders for both take away and delivery. Thus customers will be given a total shopping experience through our online as well as offline stores.

Web designing and hosting:
Website will be designed by us via Dreamweaver Software. We will also host the website ourselves.

Website features: • Home • Order status • Images of hand-made cards • E-cards • Gifts • Shopping • About us • Security • Comments and suggestions • Search option • Site Map • Advertisement • Terms of service

Home page will give a brief introduction of the business, show key features and sample cards. Order status will show the status of each customers order once order confirmation has been issued to the customer along with a customer ID. Advertisement space will be sold on auction to registered sponsors. Hand-made cards will be shown with their respective prices. Both e-cards and hand-made cards will be categorized on the basis of events such as birthday, seasons greetings, mothers’ day, eid, Christmas etc. E-cards will be provided to customers free of cost. Gifts section will show available gifts with their respective prices. Shopping page will allow the customer to add his purchases to the cart. About us section will tell about the company, its mission, vision and policies. Security section will inform the potential customers about the security measures that will be implemented to ensure that customer information remains confidential. In comments and suggestions section, visitors can give their suggestions and comments for improvement.

Method of purchase:
Customer will be required to fill a form to make a purchase. It will include customer’s name, mailing address, purchase items, recipients’ name and address, date of delivery and mode of payment . Customers’ order will be confirmed when the customer makes payment

COMPETITORS

Broadly defined, our competitors include all greeting card websites that have handmade cards and/or gifts and who deliver in Pakistan (in cities that we have identified) the gifts and the cards personally to their identified recipients.
Following are the major competitors that we have:

▪ TCS Sentiments Express:

The TCS Express has its own gifts and card delivery services. Thus it’s a major competitor of our business. A whole service of TCS, the Sentiments Express is dedicated for this particular offering to its customers. Customers can order gifts or cards online and by telephone

▪ Urdu point’s E Markaz :

UrduPoint.com is a website that is providing a lot of services to Pakistani cutomers. The component of UrduPoint.com, EMarkaz provides gifts and Ecards to their customers. This is our major competitor, though selling gifts and cards is not the core operation of UrduPoint.com.

▪ Apna Karachi:

ApnaKarachi.com provides its visitors with a lot of services such as maps, bus services, educational institutions, major events ectcetera in Karachi. The site also has ecards that can be sent to recipients. As this site does not deliver cards and selling cards is not its main business, its not a major competitor of Expressionz.com.

▪ Amazon.com:

Amazon is a major shopping site that has a variety of products that it delivers throughout the world. Amazon also has a gift and a card category and it delivers to Pakistan as well. Therefore it is a competitor of Expresionz.com. However as Amazon is an American venture, its delivery time is around 5 days and so we are on a better ground than Amazon in this category.

PRIVACY POLICY

We will gather information on the site so that we can contact our customers for their orders and better serve their needs. All personal information that they will share will be used to improve our store and our customers’ shopping experiences. Our customers name and other information will not be shared with any third party for any purpose.

Selling Information:

We will not sell, trade or rent the customer information to others. We may provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, traffic patterns and related site information to reputable third-party vendors, but these statistics will not include any personal or identifying information.

Collected Information:

For order processing purposes, the information that we collect will include; • Name • Email address • Mailing address

For maximizing security of our customers we will not store their credit card information on our server.

Promotional Emails:

From time to time we will send our promotional offers/seasonal greetings/new arrivals to the customers via email. But if they do not want to receive our promotional material, they will have an option to opt out. When they opt out, they will be contacted by us only for their order proceedings.

Feedback Sharing:

All comments, ideas, suggestions, information and other communication that our customers will make with us regarding our website or its’ contents (except for the order forms and customers’ personal information) will be deemed non-confidential. We will reserve all rights to use, share, publish, market or distribute all such communications freely without any limitation or obligation. Our customers when providing us with their feedback through the feedback link will be informed about this fact.

SECURE SOCKET LAYER IMPLMENTATION

Secure Socket Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting private documents via the internet. SSL works by using a private key to encrypt the data that’s transferred over the SSL connection. Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer support SSL, and many websites use the protocol to obtain confidential user information, such as credit card numbers. By, convention URLs that require an SSL connection start with https: instead of http:

Another protocol for transmitting data securely over the World Wide Web is Secure HTTP (S-HTTP). Whereas SSL creates a secure connection between a client and a server, over which any amount of data can be sent securely, S-HTTP is designed to transmit individual messages securely. SSL and S-HTTP, therefore can be seen as complementary rather than competing technologies. Both protocols have been approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a standard.

We need a Secure Socket Layer for several reasons. Our customers are important to us, we value our customers, and we don’t want any of their personal confidential information going at places where it can be misused. Secondly this site will be one of the few e commerce sites built for Pakistani customers, at the start at least. We want our customers to trust us. A research in the US reveals that 93% of the online shoppers surveyed by VeriSign, a Certification Authority, reported that they felt it important for an ecommerce site to include a trust mark of some kind on their site. Thus we feel that it is important for us to have a secure website.

Our website will have both the protocols implemented. Our homepage will not have the SSL implemented on it. Only the login page, the signup form page and the customer profile page and the order form page will have the SSL and the Secure HTTP implemented on it. The SSL will encrypt the credit card numbers and all other personally identifiable customer information that could be used for malicious purposes.

Our website will also obtain SSL certificates. The SSL certificate will be located on a secure server. It will be used to encrypt the data and to identify the website. The SSL certificate will aid us to prove to our customers that the site they are visiting belongs to us in reality and will contain information about the certificate holder ie. us, the domain that we use and to which the certificate was issued to, the name of the Certificate Authority that issued the certificate, the root and the country it was issued in.

Security is probably one of the most significant concerns for both the shopper and the retailer during an online transaction. In reality an online transaction can be more secure than a card transaction in a shop or conducted over the telephone as the online information is highly encrypted using complicated logarithm combinations. To ensure the security we will not store the credit card numbers in our database. We will process order requests on SSL secure server. The privacy of communications between the customer and us, is ensured via encryption to make it very unlikely that anyone is able to sniff it while it travels across the network. Our Public web servers will be certified by thawte, a public certificate authority.

Transaction encryption: the transfer of purchase details from our site will be encapsulated using our own encrypted and digitally signed protocol. This will use a combination of standard methods such as PGP, RSA, and MD5 to ensure that information passed is secure and tamper proof.

We will get a certificate that has 128 bit encryption capabilities as the 40 bit varieties have been hacked. We will ensure full two way encryption to occur by obtaining a certificate with server grade cryptography capabilities as well. The following are the guidelines that we will look at when we will purchase the certificate:

▪ Reputation and the Credibility of the Certification Authority: We will check the time period for which they have been in this business and the number and reputation of their previous customers regarding their e commerce transactions. We will prefer those Certification Authorities that have been in this business for quite some time and whose customers are many and trusted for their e commerce transactions.

▪ Ubiquity of the root: We will check the universality of the root. We will see what browsers hold this root and their reputation. We will determine whether it is embedded in all the popular browsers. We will prefer the Certification Authority that has its root present in nearly all of the trustworthy browsers.

▪ Root ownership: We will check whether the root is owned by the certification authority itself or is it tied to someone else’s root. We will prefer the Certification Authority that has its own root, not someone else’s root to which the Certification Authority has tied on to.

▪ Lifecycle Management Tools Provision: We will check the after sale services provided by the Certification Authority. We will consider the support that the Certification Authority provides in the usage of the SSL certificate. We will look at how easy is it to install, reinstall, renew, and revoke the SSL certificate if it is compromised. We will prefer the Certification Authority that is most supportive.

▪ Ease of Acquisition: We will compare the level of complexity in the processes of each Certification Authority to acquire the SSL Certificate. We will prefer the Certification Authority that has a reasonably complex process for acquiring its SSL Certificate.

▪ The Vetter: We will find out who is doing the vetting job for the Certification Authority. We will check whether the vetting is done by the Certification Authority itself or if the SSL Certificate provider is a reseller, whether the reseller delegates this task to other resellers. We will prefer the Certification Authority or the reseller who does the vetting job itself.

APPLICATION SERVICE PROVISION IMPLEMENTATION

The term e-business refers to the application of Internet technology to streamline all aspects of business processes. It is comprised of e-marketing, e-commerce, and e-operations. The business that we are proposing is Expressionz.com and we plan to develop the website into an e business venture. Building an online presence, showcasing Expressionz.com, and providing detailed information will be our e-marketing. The next level is e-commerce, which involves selling products and services online, conducting payment, handling transaction details, and supporting automated customer inquiries. We plan to perform these jobs in the most efficient way possible. The third aspect of our e-business is e-operations, which will consist of the streamlining of our business processes and steps to enhance our business efficiencies between functional departments of our company. This will also include streamlining the supply chain between our company and our key suppliers. Taken together, our e-business model is equal to e-marketing + e-commerce + e-operations.
Being able to harness change and make it work to strengthen a company's products and services is one of the biggest challenges in business today. The Internet and its widespread adoption as a distribution and communications channel is now bringing change to many industries, from how cards get sold to the approaches being used by universities for delivering their product: knowledge. What ties all these industries together is the ability that both intranets and Internets provide for getting more done in less time. The speed of transactions, based on both sales and communication, is at a rate faster than ever.
We will be adapting to the quickening pace of business brought on by technological innovation by leveraging both internal intranets and the Internet with applications that would have otherwise been built as standalone applications. Our company will build interactive and reciprocal relationships with our customers, using the tools of technology to accomplish our goals. Harnessing internal intranets and the global Internet is now possible for any business in any industry.
Small businesses, like ours, are one of the highest growth areas of the economy right now, there are thousands of companies literally launching overnight to assist us in the development and launch of our e-business strategies. Our business needs a technology partner who can go the distance, from providing e-marketing tools through e-commerce support, all the way to implementing e-operations throughout our organization. Having the software for enabling our business in each of these areas is just one part of the solution. The other is having a person able to walk with us through the customization of software tools to we need, without requiring a large investment up front.
There are a lot of features in our website that can and will be outsourced to application service providers over the internet.
Following is a list of features that we will outsource:
▪ SSL Security (we will be acquiring certificates from VeriSign and Truste)
▪ Shopping Cart (we will be acquiring the software from shopstorenow.com)
▪ Search Engine Optimization (the software will be provided by DynamicASP)
▪ Partnership Relationship Management (the software will be provided by OnDemand)
▪ Configuration engine (this will be acquired from either Calico, SalesLogix, FirePond or Selecta)
E LOYALTY STRATEGY

The Bain Survey found out that trust is the most important thing for an ecommerce site, prices of products come second. E loyalty is all about building trust in our customers so that they return to Expressionz.com to shop for their loved ones again and spread the word about the good services that will be provided by our website. Customers will trust our website if the transaction that they make on our website is secure, their credit card numbers are not used maliciously and they get the service that they expected. The first part of building trust has been dealt with in detail in the SSL Security Strategy and the supply and distribution chain management part of the document. In this section we will talk expressly about customer referrals and product testimonials, a part of e marketing.

We will be outsourcing our configuration engine to Calico, SalesLogix, FirePond or Selecta. The configurator will scale the most complex of of configurations. The configurator will provide simplicity and ease of navigation to our website. Managers can activate the Business Desk command console to get a complete picture of their e-stores, from customers to sales and product catalogs. The built-in capabilities for CRM in Commerce Server 2000 are adequate, managing customers and campaigns through a reasonably powerful Web interface.

To develop e loyalty we need to have the ability to be relevant to the customer. We need to make sure that our ASP has experience and proven scalability in this area. Opinions from experts indicate that scalability is most visible in personalization in the e marketing strategy. As a given site loads for personalized content, the response time can come to a screeching halt. We need to get our ASP to commit to minimum response times for visitor counts from 10,000 to 100,000 or more.

Free ecard

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

Services to be delivered:

We will provide the services mentioned below to our valued customers via occasionz.net website: • Free e-cards can be sent by our website users to friends and family. Initially, ten e-cards will be available in each occasion’s categoty. The card categories will be listed on the side of e-cards webpage and will be arranged in most popular to least popular sequence.The e-cards will be made in flash for appealing designs, sound and image quality. To send an e-card, the user will register himself by providing his name and password. Once, he gets registered, he will be allowed to customize the selected e-card and send to a specified e-mail address. • Sale and delivery of hand-made cards, gifts, flowers, chocolates and sweet meat across the major cities in Pakistan (Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta and Peshawar). Hand-made cards and gifts section can be accessed from the home page of website. Images of hand-made cards and gifts will be available in .jpeg format with the respective price stated under each image. To send a card and/or gift, the user will have to register himself in the same way as mentioned above, this time he will be required to give additional information such as e-mail address, postal address, contact no., recipient’s postal address, name, email address, contact no., date of delivery, payment mode and will be expected to accept the terms and conditions of transaction. • Registered users’ account information. The personal information of customers will be maintained on our secure back-end database and held confidential as per company’s privacy policy. • User reviews section will allow users to post their views about the website and the quality of service. They can post any written material which may include suggestions, general views and complains. The company holds the right to remove any contents that are obscene or harmful to any person or entity in any way. • Birthday reminders will be sent to registered users’ e-mail account. Users can create an online list of birthday reminders and will be notified a week before. • Order placement and order tracking services. All orders will be delivered by Leopards and TNT delivery service. Any customer who wants to know his order status will be required to give his user ID, password, and order ID and the order status will be e-mailed to him the same day • Payment procedure will assist customers to make payment securely. They can either make direct payment into our bank account or use credit cards (visa, master card) • Delivery notification to customers by e-mail once the product has been received by the intended person. • Shopping cart can be used customers add whatever products they want to purchase to the shopping cart. Once the customer is done with the shopping, total shopping cost is shown with the cost break-up of each purchase made as well as the image of each product.
Performance, Tracking and Reporting Management:

The website will be accessible to all internet users 99.9% of the time. The website will be maintained by us to ensure that it is functioning in the expected manner. The website will be dynamic in nature. As a result, updations made in database will reflect in the website. A shared web hosting service will be used from a reliable service provider for maximum uptime. However, database ad website maintenance will be our responsibility to have greater control over the content and functioning of the website. The website will be updated with new cards and e-cards every month. Unpopular cards and products will be removed and replaced. In case of any queries or issues, the customers can call us on the phone lines.

Problem Management:

If a card or parcel is lost due to any negligence on our part, the customer will be reimbursed in part or full after investigating the situation.
If a customer does not understand any part of the website content pertaining to the transaction process and other important sections such as privacy policy and terms of use, they can contact us on phone numbers and/or e-mail address given ob the website’s homepage.

Legal Compliance and Resolution of Disputes:

Customers must agree to defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from and against all liabilities, damages, claims, actions, costs and expenses (including without limitation legal fees), in connection with or arising from their breach of any of the Terms of Use and use of Website. We may, if necessary, participate in the defence of any claim or action and any negotiations for settlement. No settlement which may adversely affect our rights or obligations shall be made without our prior written approval. We reserve the right, at our own expense and on notice to you, to assume exclusive defence and control of any claim or action.
The law of this country governs this agreement. So, the user must agree to and comply with the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the country courts.

Customer Duties and Responsibilities:

As a condition of customers’ use of website, they must not: trespass, break into, access, use or attempt to trespass, break into, access or use any other parts of our servers, and/or any data areas for which have not been authorised by us: restrict or inhibit any other user from using and enjoying the Website; post or transmit any unlawful, fraudulent, libellous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, profane, threatening, abusive, hateful, offensive, or otherwise objectionable or unreasonable Information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions constituting or encouraging conduct that may constitute a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any local, state, national or foreign law; post or transmit any advertisements, solicitations, chain letters, pyramid schemes, investment opportunities or schemes or other unsolicited commercial communication, or engage in spamming or flooding; post or transmit any Information or software which contains any virus, trojan horse, worm or other harmful component; post, publish, transmit, reproduce, distribute or in any way exploit any Information obtained through the Website for commercial purposes; or upload, post, publish, transmit, reproduce, or distribute in any way, Information obtained through the Website which is protected by copyright, or other proprietary right, or create derivative works with respect thereto, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner or rightholder.
Users have no rights in or to the Information available on the Website and will not use the Information available on the Website in any manner or for any purpose, except as permitted under the Terms of Use.

Security:

Disaster recovery will be carried out by web hosting provider as and when required. Back-up information will be maintained by us on a secure database which will have restricted access. Credit card numbers will be taken from users on the webpage backed by secure server. No customer information will be sold or forwarded to any third party.
We reserve the right at all times to prohibit or deny any user’s access to the Website or any part thereof immediately and without notice, where we are of the opinion that the user has breached any of the terms contained in the Terms of Use or that such prohibition or denial is appropriate, desirable or necessary will be our sole discretion.

IPR:

All intellectual property rights associated with our website belong to us or have been lawfully licensed to us for use on the website. All rights under applicable laws are reserved. Except with the express permission of occasionz.net, users are not allowed to upload, post, publish, reproduce, transmit or distribute in any way any component of the Website itself or create derivative works We are free to use, disclose, adopt and modify all and any ideas, concepts, proposals, suggestions, comments and other communications and information provided by users to us ("reviews/feedback”) in connection with the Website and/or Services without any payment. Users must waive and agree to waive all and any rights and claims for any consideration, fees, royalties, charges and/or other payments in relation to our use, disclosure, adoption and/or modification of any or all of user feedback.

Termination:

Transaction process will be terminated as soon as the product/ service will be delivered to the recipient. However, the registered user account will be terminated if it will not be accessed for more than a year, resulting in termination of any/all services that were being given to the users as per terms of service.

OUTSOURCING STRATEGIES

Expressionz.com will be outsourcing a lot of features of its website as well as its perations. These include:

▪ Gifts
▪ Handmade Greeting Cards
▪ SSL Security
▪ Shopping Cart
▪ Supply Chain Management
▪ Search Engine Optimization
▪ Partnership Relationship Management
▪ Delivery of Products
▪ Configuration Management
All of the strategies for these operations have already been discussed in detail in their relevant sections.

BUSINESS PLAN

Operations and plan management:

i. recruitment and staffing
We are a start-up business and a major part of our business will be carried online. Considering these business aspects, we would require only a handful of employees to manage the day-to-day work. • Graphic designing services will be hired to develop an attractive web. He will be required to develop e-cards as well. New e-cards will be developed once every month. • Web hosting and domain registration services will be outsourced. • Database and system administrator will be responsible for maintaining and updating database as well as the website and ensure that both database and website are functioning properly. • Office boy will be responsible for cleaning the office and petty chores such as making tea and buying miscellaneous office items.

ii. Payment procedure
Currently, we will offer 2 payment options: • Credit cards: Both local and international customers can make payments securely through master or visa card. They will be required to enter credit card secure code in a pop-up window that is provided by the customer’s bank • Customers can make direct cash/cheque payment to our MCB account. The account information will be given on the website. Overseas customers can make Direct Bank Deposit (Tele-transfer / Wired-Transfer / Remittance Service) via Commercial Bank

iii. Marketing strategy

• Product and services include e-cards, hand-made cards, gifts (perfumes, stuffed toys , flowers, sweets and cakes. Free product delivery will be made to the major cities of Pakistan. The revenue generating products are hand-made cards and gifts. E-cards can be sent by customers to anyone free of cost. This service will be provided to create e-loyalty and make the website inviting for visitors. • Price of hand-made cards and gifts will be higher than regular cards and gifts. Price range of cards will be Rs 80-100. Price range of hand-made gifts will vary from Rs. 50-500. Pricing strategy will be cost-plus pricing. As the pricing is higher than similar products available in the market, our pricing strategy is market skimming as well. It is more likely to be purchased by early adoptors (people who want to be the first ones to own a new product, in our case first ones to gift a new, unique product). • Places where products will be delivered include the major cities of Pakistan such as Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta and Peshawar. • Promotion of website can be furthered by:

Relevant key terms in the homepage content of the website. Key terms such as “e-cards”, “hand-made cards” , “gifts”, “perfumes”, “stuffed toys”, “flowers” and “sweetmeat/chocolates”. We will also state “About Occasionz” instead of about us. So, whenever someone will search for any of the above mentioned words, our website will appear in the search results.

Advertising: Pamphlets will be distributed, as a low-cost form of advertising, in schools and colleges to inform the potential customers about our website, products and services.
Internet ads can be placed on the websites of our delivery partners such as Leopards and TNT.

Discounts: Customers who will make purchase of Rs. 1,000 or more will get a free small gift.

BUDGETING

*Cost break-up:

| |Rs. |
|Hardware: | |
| Pentium 4 PC 3 Ghz,160 GB Hard drive |60,000 |
|Software: | |
|Oracle 9i, Macro media Flash | 500 |
|Outsourcing: | |
|Shopping cart s/w | 3,000/month |
|Domain registration | 600/yr |
|Web hosting | 3,000/yr |
|Office space | 10,000/month |
|Inventory | 20,000/month |
|Micsellaneous items |10,000/month |
|Delivery costs (avg) |10,000/month |
|Salaries: | |
|Graphic designer |7,000/month |
|System administartor |10,000/month |
|Accountant |5,000/month |
|Inventory manager |7,000/month |
|Office boy |1,000/month |
|Total one-time costs |60,500 |
|Total monthly costs |75,300 |

*All costs are estimated. May change in future.

Search Engine Optimization Strategy for [pic]
Search Engine Optimization is a relatively new form of online marketing for web sites. The goal of implementing the Search Engine Optimization strategy is to increase traffic to our site by targeting relevant key words so that our site is listed higher in a search on one of the major search engine sites. Search Engine Optimization is important because:
▪ 85% high income and highly educated adults use search engines as their major sources to find out new websites and search for information.

▪ 55% online sales are derived from search engines – The No.1 Online Sales Source, 9% sales are from banner advertisements and 7% from Title Ads. So, you need search engine optimization.

▪ Internet users are more likely to click a search engine listing (40%) than banner ads (2%), so SEO is an important online marketing strategy for serious companies.

[pic]
The diagram below illustrates how a search engine evaluates any given web page as well as how SEO can benefit the page rank in the results of a search for a given key word or phrase. The two biggest factors in determining a web pages Google page rank in the search results are Keyword Relevance and Page Rank.
[pic]
The implementation of search engine optimization strategy is completed in the following three phases 1. Keyword Analysis In the preliminary stage of the SEO campaign, DynamicASP will work with us to select appropriate keywords for our target markets. They will accurately reflect search activity that will be identified from the markets interest. Key determining factors include, but are not limited to, search volume on the particular phrase, the number of competing websites with the similar search phrase, and creative insight into customer behavior. After refining the list of potentially appropriate keywords, we will select up to fifteen (15) appropriate keywords.

2. Optimization Strategy and Implementation of HTML coding Once the keywords have been agreed upon, DynamicASP will review the our website and forward a strategy document outlining the following information: a) The complete list of pages that make up the optimization campaign. b) Home Page Strategies. c) Internal Page Strategies d) Keyword and associated page setups, with search engine compliant HTML coding. e) The intended path that most spiders or search engine crawlers will follow.

3. Submission to Search Engines & Online Directories Once the strategies and coding are verified and in place, manual and automated submission of links to our site will be performed. DynamicASP will submit our site to as many as 350 different search engines as well as 1100 various directories. As such, the results may not be immediately evident or realized. For this reason, DynamicASP has developed a payment model that means we only pay on positive results after they are realized and verified. The tracking of campaign performance begins and reports will be submitted to the us every month via email. Key metrics on the report include each keyword with its associated performance across each search engine.
The most popular of the search engines that DynamicASP will list our site on are: ▪ AllTheWeb ▪ Alta Vista ▪ AOL ▪ Ask Jeeves ▪ Google ▪ HotBot ▪ Lycos ▪ MSN ▪ Teoma ▪ Overture ▪ PPC's Looksmart ▪ Yahoo

Supply Chain Management Strategies for [pic]
Supply chain management (SCM) is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the operations of the supply chain with the purpose to satisfy customer requirements as efficiently as possible. Supply chain management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point-of-origin to point-of-consumption.
The products that we will be developing, marketing and selling are mainly handmade greeting cards and gift items. We will contract with The ABSA School for the handmade greeting cards. We will provide them with paper and the other material thatwill be needed to make these cards. The ABSA School will provide us with new designs under the broad guidelines that we specify each week.
The paper will be bought from paper vendors in Urdu Bazar. We will choose paper vendors that have worked previously with other greeting card printing manufacturers and those whose paper quality is premium. The paper will be bought in units of rolls annd sheets.
The drawing material such as color pemcils, crayons, markers, paints, glitter pens etc will be bought mainly from Faber Castell. We will contract with Faber Castell to provide us with the drawing materials that we specify in bulk quantities. This will also help us reduce our costs.
The decorative material for cards will be bought from different vendors in different parts of the city, whenever and wherever possible. We will not be contracting with these vendors as the demand for a particular card decoration items will be fluctuating snd we will materials that are in demand by our customers.
The gift items will also be bought in bulk quantities from gift item vendors. We will go to different gift providers. We will buy each design that we do following a precise criterion. We will be lookong for vendors that have products that are creative, unique, traditional, attractive and value. We will prefer vendors that have an efficient and reliable delivery system.
We will have a central warehouse in Karachi. As the ABSA School is located in Defense, our central warehouse will be located in Mehmoodabad, near Kala Pul, FTC. We will have a delivery vehicle of our own that will deliver the card raw materials to the ABSA school and get the finished greeting cards back to our warehouse. The different kinds of raw materials and gifts will be delivered to us through different ways. We will rent Suzukis that will deliver us with the paper and the decorative material for the cards. We will get our purchases from our suppliers in every two weeks. The gift items will be delivered by 2 trucks every month initially. Our purchases will increase gradually as our business grows. So our delivery volumes may increase with time. In the future we plan to open warehouses in each of the cities that we deliver to. With that we will also need to make new supply partners in the respected cities.
Our distribution partners will be two courier services, TCS and Leopard. We will contract with these services to deliver our products to our customers in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawer and Quetta. These companies will be our partners in distribution.
An emerging set of companies specifically focus on partner relationship management (PRM). These companies look to automate the transfer of information from manufacturers to their distribution partners. We will be contracting with OnDemand which focuses on the need for cascading training and certification to channel partners. OnDemand is adept at partner relationship management (PRM) in addition to being a training-focused ASP that uses Exodus as its hosting provider. This ASP also provides service and even strategy consulting advice when asked.

RESULTING BENEFITS

The business benefits derived from the site include;

Convenience of Shopping Experience: people will be able to send free ecards, and gifts through our website. The ease of transaction is made sure by offering offline services as well. Customers without a credit card will also be able to place an order with us.

Different packages: our products will be offered in different packages catering diverse requirements of our customers. Also, the customizable packages will be offered.

Secure transactions: all transaction pages will be highly secure using SSL and the credit card information will be taken in through customer’s bank site. We will not store any credit card information.

Product differentiation: we are providing the services that not any other Pakistani site currently is involved. All standardized products will be used.

Additional revenue generation: we can earn ad revenue by offering ad space on our website for sale. It is an easy and simple way of earning revenue by registering our company with any internet advertising services’ company (e.g. dclickads.com). Ads can be offered on week, month or pay per click rate and a certain percentage of revenue will be shared by the ad service company.