[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is a tech start-up established in early XXXX in Germany. The company focuses on standardization of product data across the globe, supporting manufacturers, resellers, and retailers to be more efficient. The company will have a Product Cloud database (containing all product information), Partner Cloud database (containing all business entities in the supply chain) and a [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] connector which will enable the user to navigate the standardized data. In short, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is Facebook for data with main focus on brands and manufacturers.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is targeting the Product Information Management (PIM), Master Data Management Industry (MDM) and Programmatic Marketing (PM). PIM industry is constantly growing in parallel to the growing demand of consumers for digital product information. In XXXX, XX% of in-store sales were influenced by digital product information (accounting to US$X.X trillion). The PIM industry can be divided in BXB (manufacturers, wholesalers, resellers, etc.) and BXC segments (retailers). In parallel to the growing PIM industry, the MDM market is also growing from US$X.XX billion in XXXX to US$XX.XX billion by XXXX (CAGR of XX.X%). Geographically, North America and EU market will dominate the need for Product Information Management. The third industry, PM is also showing substantial grow. PM spend as a share of banner display and video is growing to XX% of total display and video spend in XXXX, compared to XX% last year, and will increase to XX% by XXXX. Geographically, the US represents XX% of the global programmatic market. After US as largest programmatic market, other PM markets that will dominate are UK, Japan, China and Germany.
Looking at the competition, there is one main competitor that offers PM/Programmatic Content and XX PIM/MDM solution providers were identified and categorized into X main categories: Enterprise PIM, new players and open source solutions. Each of them have common sets of features, but they are all lacking the standardization of the product information on a global level, which is [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]’s main USP.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] has already covered its worldwide domains, has patented its technology and it is ready to go global. It will charge US$X.X per active view ([ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] plug), US$X-US$X per SKU (Product Cloud), and a monthly license of US$XX (Partner Cloud).
This document represents the business plan for [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] – a software that is to become a worldwide symbol for certified and structured content from brands and manufacturers. The company is a start-up – established in January XXXX, offering standardized online data and content distribution and management.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] has emerged as solution to the fact that there is no standard for product data on the web. This made it difficult for businesses (especially online shops) to access supplier data, and they need to adjust each supplier data according to their needs (which requires resources and contains room for errors). In addition to the business owner community, end-users have their own struggles to compare products based on different type of specifications, descriptions or performance criteria. [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] solves this customer need by delivering high-quality, comparable product data backed by a real-time system that ensures accuracy.
This document starts with an extensive external analysis in order to evaluate the industry, the competition and the market opportunity for [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]. Next, an overview of the internal analysis is performed reviewing the team, internal workflows, processes and procedures within the company. A SWOT analysis has been developed as summary of the external and internal analysis. Finally, a financial model has been crafted in order to present the projected financial outcome of the company.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]’s ultimate service is standardized online data supported by content distribution and management. Looking at the characteristics of the services being offered by [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY], the best industry that fits is the PIM (Product Information Management) Industry.
According to Techopedia, “Product information management (PIM) refers to a set of processes used to evaluate, identify, store, manage and distribute product data or information. PIM facilitates the central management and maintenance of the entire type of raw data, product content or any related information for one or more products of an organization or system.”
According to Informatica.com, “Product information management (PIM) is the software-based orchestration of data dissemination related to a business’s products and its suppliers’ products. PIM coordinates changing product information across all channels of communication, thus ensuring that a business’s entire ecosystem has consistent and up-to-date information. PIM is used to keep stakeholders, customers, and partners informed. As products and services are created, the status of materials, suppliers, equipment, etc. can change. PIM communicates these changes rapidly to maximize efficiency and minimize the impact of changes on the sales cycle. PIM promotes faster time to market, operational efficiency, and sales growth.
There are several other terms that are similar or synonyms: Product Data Management (PDM), Product Resource Management (PRM), Product Life-cycle Management (PLM), Media Asset Management (MAM), Cross Media Publishing (CMP) and Product Catalog Management (PCM). In this section, an overview has been made on the PIM industry.
In addition to PIM, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] has some similarity with MDM (Master Data Management) industry as well (some could argue that these are also synonyms). In the common case of commercial enterprises, MDM may apply to such entities as customer (customer data integration), product (product information management), employee, and vendor. Master data management processes identify the sources from which to collect descriptions of these entities. In the course of transformation and normalization, administrators adapt descriptions to conform to standard formats and data domains, making it possible to remove duplicate instances of any entity. In this section the focus is on PIM, however a further analysis can be performed on MDM industry if necessary.
Furthermore, programmatic marketing industry (PM) will be analyzed as an important aspect that makes [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] different. In addition to standardized data for PIM, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will offer programmatic content to the PM companies. While in PM the current focus is on the automated buying and selling of the ad space, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is clearly focused on the automatic delivery of content to the ads that are sold. Therefore [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is about joining these dots to deliver programmatic content. So in essence, the second step after an ad buy has been automatically concluded, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is the conduit to the content associated with the specific product being advertised. This content can be programmatically adjusted to the audience and platform where the ad or product is being showcased. In this section, both PIM and PM are analyzed into more details.
The importance of Product Information Management systems has escalated with the new digital age. The mobile, e-commerce, and online channels are where customers go to get information about products. Increasingly, marketing is going digital to be where customers are. To communicate accurate and consistent product information, they need a PIM solution to overcome the scale and complexity that digital channels create.
PIM can be of great help to companies regardless whether they are BXB or BXC. For manufacturer, a PIM system can reduce the time to market of a product significantly for producers in particular. If the PIM system is also used during the design process, it allows for the development and production across multiple locations, countries and time zones by multiple partners. In addition, the commercial product information can already be created while the product is still being manufactured, or even being designed. Once set up well, the product information can already be distributed in an organized fashion, and sales can start exactly at the moment the product actually becomes available, or even earlier.
These advantages do not apply only to manufacturers – it affects wholesalers and retailers. Many retailers are increasing the number of SKUs (stock keeping unit) they sell online by a factor of five to XX times. Brands, too, are increasing the number of SKUs they offer with new sub-brands, private-label products, and general diversification of product lines. All of this means that existing home-grown product management systems and manual processes are bursting at the seams. With PIM set up, information can be distributed faster to all relevant channels across the globe to market and sell a product. This may be of strategic importance in a competitive environment where new products are being released all the time and scalability is a key advantage.
The PIM industry is of growing importance because it has strong statistics to support the need for online product content that will support the sale (both online and offline). According to Forester Research, XX% (or US$X.X Trillion) of all retail sales in XXXX were influenced by online product content. In addition to this, XX% of US adults (online) would consider buying from an online retailer they had never previously purchased from if the retailer offered detailed product information. According to Deloitte Report on Digital influence in retail (XXXX), the chart below shows both in absolute numbers and in percentage the digital and mobile influence on in-store sales. To quote the report: “Year over year, we see both digital influence and mobile influence on in-store retail purchases growing by double digits, with mobile growing faster than overall digital. Digital influenced US$X.X trillion of in-store sales last year compared to just US$X.XX trillion only a couple of years ago. Mobile influence on in-store sales jumped to nearly US$X.X trillion from just US$X.XX trillion in XXXX.”
The main benefit of using Product Information Management is improving the overall customer experience while reducing the costs. Although the cost reduction is the most common objective among companies, customer experience has been neglected. In a latest study published by Forrester (September, XXXX) it was reported that XX% of business leaders believe improving the Customer Experience is their #X strategic priority. The unfortunate reality however is that none of the featured brands were ranked as excellent in the survey of almost XX,XXX consumers. The study, which covered XXX of the largest brands across a range of industries in the UK, France and Germany, asked people to rank customer experience somewhere between ‘Very Poor’ at one extreme to ‘Excellent’ at the other. Rather surprisingly it found the vast majority (XX% in the UK and XX% in Germany) were ranked no better than merely ‘OK’ or ‘Poor’. In an era where customer obsession is reportedly the best strategy for winning and retaining customers, only XX% of the UK firms and XX% of the German firms received a ‘Good’ score, with every single French brand being judged as no better than simply ‘OK’.
The PIM industry could be a competitive advantage or differentiator factor when it comes to customer experience and overall cost cutting. PIM solutions of today are the enablers of the high-quality, consistent product information demanded by consumers at every stage of the buying process. The PIM industry can generally be divided in two main categories: X) PIM for BXB segment, and X) PIM for BXC segment. Both of them are reviewed separately in this section.
The focus of this section is the PIM industry in BXB segment. In the early XXXXs, BXB sellers’ biggest (and most costly) hassle was transferring their print catalogs into electronic data. In addition to that, today they need to manage and maintain all of that electronic data. There are PIM solutions robust enough to handle the complexities of BXB.
In Regards to BXB segment, Informatica has made a recent study (November, XXXX) on ROI of Product Data for Multichannel Commerce. This study has an excellent overview of the BXB segment, covering XXX respondents both manufacturers and wholesalers/retailers. What is particularly interesting is that provides a comparison between business entities that are using PIM systems against companies that don’t use it. With XXX completed questionnaires, the online study has gained access to a huge amount of experience in national and international businesses in the areas of retail and manufacturing. Of the XXX participants evaluated, XX% were retailers, wholesalers and distributors, XX% were manufactures and the remaining XX% both. In regards to revenues, XX% of the respondents have a revenue of over €XXX million per year, a further XX% achieve between €XXX-XXX million and XX% have a revenue of between €X-XXX million per year (X% did not answered).
Few key takeaways can be found in the report. One is the interest in the BXB community regarding PIM/MDM usage. The chart below shows that from the companies surveyed, XX% have already introduced PIM/MDM, further XX% are currently in the process of implementing a solution, XX% are considering having it, and X% are not interested at all.
A significant proportion (XX%) of the companies work in a PIM/MDM environment that they have developed themselves, although XX% of this group admit that they are no longer satisfied with the system and need improvements or expansion. This shows that BXB segment becomes a great target market for [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY], as superior PIM provider.
The next chart focuses on the respondents that have not yet been introduced to a PIM/MDM solution, in order to identify main reasons. It is particularly noticeable that XX% cannot see a positive business case, yet XX% have no knowledge of the systems themselves or have no way of identifying the benefits or don’t feel that they need it.
This information points to the need to explain the business case of a PIM initiative fully and to be able to identify the cross-departmental potential in purchasing, sales, product management, logistics and IT. This shows that the potential market segment needs to be educated and convinced of the advantages that [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will introduce.
The final takeaway is the differentiation among companies that use PIM and don’t against their competition. According to the chart below, in addition to the quality of product/service (which is obvious differentiation), the companies with PIM, the quality of product information was seen as an important factor in differentiating themselves from the competition. For the respondents with PIM experience, the quality of product information was clearly ranked more highly (XX%) than it was by the participants not using PIM (XX%).
The conclusion that can be drawn from this assessment is that BXB community shows a great interest in implementing and using PIM/MDM systems. From the ones that are not interested, the main reason is due to lack of knowledge/understanding or availability of business cases that will support PIM advantages. This is also noted when differentiation against competition, where companies that use PIM, rank the product information quality much higher than the companies that don’t use PIM.
Many years ago, Digital Commerce Version X.X was adopted by BXC retailers. They were the early adopters of e-commerce technologies such as personalization, findability, remarketing, consumer feedback, social marketing, among others. These are the companies like Amazon, eBay, Target, Walmart etc. These companies meet the need of an always-on consumer who wants to shop anytime, anywhere and with Omni-channel convenience – Computer, iPads, Mobile, and Printed catalog.
BXC companies are now moving to Digital Commerce Version X.X and beyond. This new era promises increased conversion rates, better consumer experiences and even more merchandising opportunities. As BXC companies evolve and deliver digital differentiation, BXB companies – especially medium-sized businesses looking to grow – need to take note. To achieve the promises of the second wave of Digital Commerce, an important and fundamental challenge is around product information management (PIM). PIM enables data standardization. This includes the setting up of standards, defining how a product information will be displayed on the marketplace and identifying data that fails to conform to the specified business standards.
With PIM set up, information can be distributed faster to all relevant channels across the globe to market and sell a product. This will be of strategic importance in a competitive environment where new products are being released all the time. Furthermore, the most important strategic benefit is that a uniform customer experience can be created with a PIM system across all channels. PIM has a direct and very solid impact on online sales. The customer conversion increase between XX-XX% by providing better and richer product information. Typically this is linked to better keyword search, ability to bundling and configuration as well as the increased ability to up- and cross-sell. The effect is also noticeable in customer care, partner sales and field sales operations.
In the Heiler study, the manufacturers surveyed do indeed report a link between their performance in connection with product information quality as a result of using PIM and customer loyalty: XX% of respondents confirm very high levels of customer satisfaction, while only X% of those not using PIM rate their performance to be similarly high. For retailers, the difference between XX% for those using PIM and XX% for non-users is less, but nevertheless clear. Likewise, Yankee Group reports an increase of XX% in customer loyalty due to the introduction of a PIM system. The chart below shows the companies which have high level of customer loyalty are the companies with PIM system.
Companies utilizing PIM technology to manage product information benefit greatly by tying product management processes together with a centralized product information repository. These benefits can yield significant multiples of the original investment for a company, relating to reduced costs to manage product information and lower production costs for product-related publications and support materials, to increased sales revenue and higher profit margins. PIM systems provide manufacturers, and members of their supply and sell chains, with strategic tools that provide competitive advantage through harmonized, accurate, and timely creation and sharing of application information and commercial content.
In this section programmatic marketing industry will be analyzed as an important aspect of content marketing which is another service offered by [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY].
Here is a quick overview of what is PM. Programmatic marketing (also known as programmatic media or programmatic advertising) refers to various technologies that automate the buying, placement and optimization of media inventory, replacing human-directed temporal methods. Automated systems and business rules place advertisements dynamically in electronically targeted media inventory, mediating supply and demand partners. Programmatic media is a fast-growing phenomenon in the global media and advertising industry Programmatic Marketing or advertising is a general term, so it is best to divide it based on whether it involves Real-time Bidding (RTB) or not.
This kind of digital marketing opens up a series of opportunities, which would not be possible if ad placement was done manually as it has been done in the past. It allows advertisers to procure digital media without having to pre-negotiate a price, so they pay only for the relevant impression that they actually receive. They can also sign up for a minimum number of impressions or a minimum budget, which makes digital advertising more flexible, and they can buy digital media across publishers, which reduced administration costs. But the opportunities are much greater than just making ad buying easier and more flexible. Because programmatic marketing means bids are arranged for each individual accessing the site people can be targeted to a far greater extent that before. Using customer data, Programmatic technology can identify what resonates with each individual and target him or her on the sites on the sites they are most likely to engage with and at the time they are most likely to engage. This is why customer data is becoming so highly valued (one of many reasons), and why programmatic advertising is growing so fast today.
The infographic below shows how programmatic advertising works in six steps: When anyone clicks on a web page that has advertising space on that is configured for programmatic advertising, the publisher of the page puts up an ad impression for auction in an ad marketplace. The ad marketplace then runs an auction among advertisers interested in displaying an ad to that specific customer that just click on the page. There may be many advertisers competing in this auction, and whichever one ultimately is willing to bid the most wins the auction and then their ad is displayed to the customer when the page loads. Because the process is automated and the maximum price each advertiser is willing to bid for the impression has already been programmed in, the auction can be completed within the milliseconds it takes for the page to load.
In addition to programmatic marketing, content marketing isn’t about making a transaction, although it can include information that encourages customers to take a closer look at a company’s offerings and capabilities. It contributes to brand identity in the sense that content communicates the company’s voice, attitude, and ideas to a market where consumers increasingly expect brands to relate to their values, but it’s not perception-shaping in the big sense like advertising is. The potential of programmatic content and all the other benefits that allow marketers to create better customer relationships and experiences come from a common source: data, and the ability to use it. [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will give partners great ways to visualize, experience, share, and co-create stories based on the data.
In regards to Programmatic Marketing and Programmatic Content, PulsePoint can be treated as main competitor. Their programmatic platforms distribute welcomed advertising to the right consumers and create real connections across the internet – to make ads matter. PulsePoint’s programmatic platforms distribute and optimize it all branded content.
Looking at PIM competitors, Forrester published their Forrester Research Wave (May, XXXX) with focus on reviewing existing PIM solutions. The independent analyst’s report assesses the state PIM market and sees how the vendors stack up against each other grading them against XX criteria. The scores are in three areas: current offering, strategy, and market presence. The XX criteria and how each company was scored are available in the complete report. The chart below is a summary and shows that leaders of the PIM industry are Informatica, hybris, IBM and Stibo Systems, followed by Riversand Technologies, ADAM Software, Agility Multuchannel, and falling behind Enterworks, inRiver, asim. These companies will be reviewed into more details in this section.
Because of the large number of PIM suppliers and companies, the competition can be categorized in three main groups: X) Enterprise PIM, X) New players, and X) Open Source PIM. We will look at them separately in this section.
The Enterprise PIM are the players that have been active in the market for years and often come from the world of print and, to a lesser degree, from the world of e-commerce. These often highly advanced products facilitate a wide range of functions, which are sometimes accommodated in (separately sold) modules. Thanks to their years of experience, these PIM suppliers also have the advantage that they have much support worldwide and that they are a stable factor in the world of IT suppliers. In short, operational risks are kept to a minimum. Here are several Enterprise PIM companies and their headquarters:
In addition to these ‘big’ systems, new players have appeared on the market in recent years. Based on new development technology, PIM systems have been developed that respond particularly well to the ever-growing e-commerce market. This usually entails smaller companies (around XX persons) that have developed PIM products from within a specific sector and have introduced them to the market as generic products. The functionality is often somewhat more limited than the big PIM systems, especially in terms of the possibility to load automated product information in the system. This usually involves implementing a great deal of additional software. Here are several companies that fall within this group:
As a third group is the so-called Open Source products. These products are indeed also technically modern. The Open Source PIM systems currently available on the market offer extremely limited functionality. The nature of Open Source is that the Community contributes to the further development of a product. If the underlying organization is not set up adequately, the commercial risk is high. A PIM system within a company is often a business-critical application. Here are several examples:
Although there are handful of PIM providers with their own strengths, there are still weaknesses that have yet to be overcome. According to IT-Consultis (XXXX), Pimcore, for instance, don’t have support, while IBM hasn’t had a significant release since XXXX. Hybris, Heiler, and EnterWorks lacks connectors with open-source e-commerce apps. Meanwhile, Riversands has no digital assets management (DAM). Some are more focused on CMS than true product inventory management. And of course, pricing is an issue too.
The company’s USP will promise a clearly articulated benefit to consumers, offers them something that competitive products can’t or don’t offer, and is compelling enough to attract new customers.
The main USP for the company is standardization of online data and content distribution and management. In this way, the company will be better than its competitors and therefore, will improve the effectiveness of the promotion and sales activities.
The comparison between different products from the web is another USP of [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]. The customers will have all products at one place. This will give the customers a representative view of the products they are interested for.
Another important USP for [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is the background of its parent organization and highly trained and experienced staff. This gives [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] competitive advantage against new start-ups on the market.
In this section will be analyzed the market of the industry globally. In addition, it will be shown the main statistics for the global online sell, because it is important for the target market of [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY].
According to MarketsAndMarkets report (May XXXX), the PIM market is estimated to grow from US$X.XX Billion in XXXX to US$XX.XX Billion by XXXX with a CAGR of XX.X%. Indispensable requirement to have centrally managed data and rising need for compliance and verification are the main drivers of the Product Information Management market. The report on the PIM market considered XXXX as the base year and the forecast period from XXXX to XXXX. The report aims at estimating the market size and future growth opportunities of the Product Information Management market across different segments, such as software type, deployment models, service type, user-type, vertical, and region. PIM compromises a broad set of software products and services that help the user types, such as SMBs and large enterprises to centrally manage their consolidated master data. The multi-domain PIM applications such as product and supplier data have provided the organizations with a unified view to manage their clients’ demands. The most prominent demand has been for bridging PIM solutions with the technologies of big data and BI with the cloud.
The consulting and system integration services segment is expected to have the largest market share and highest CAGR during the forecast period. The multi-domain PIM software’s are being increasingly adopted by companies and organizations in various industry verticals such as Banking, Financial Services, & Insurance (BFSI); retail; manufacturing; energy & utilities; healthcare; IT & telecommunication; government; and transportation & logistics among others. BFSI is expected to dominate the PIM industry market, contributing to the largest market share, during the forecast period. The large enterprises, and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as a potential target, are showing high interest in the cloud-based PIM software due to its multiple advantages such as low operational expense, easy deployment, scalability, and easy collaboration.
Globally, North America is expected to have the largest market share and would dominate the Product Information Management market from XXXX to XXXX. Asia-pacific (APAC) offers potential growth opportunities, as companies in the APAC region are turning toward multi-domain PIM software providers to offer a high degree of services in terms of quality, performance, and capacity. However, diversified government regulations and policies present across domestic and international borders are restraining the growth of the Product Information Management market. The chart below shows the global PIM market size, by region in XXXX. From this chart it can be seen that in XXXX North America will still have the largest market share, while the second place will take Europe and the third place is for APAC.
The total e-commerce sales are important for analyzing the market globally. They have climbed remarkably steadily for years, with continuous further growth expected. The total number of digital shoppers worldwide grew by over XXX million between XXXX and XXXX, and is keep on growing. About the global online users, there is a chart below which gives information on the digital buyer penetration worldwide from XXXX to XXXX. In XXXX, XX.X% of global internet users had purchased products online. By XXXX, this figure is expected to grow to XX.X%.
In addition to the market, the retailers are considered as potential target market and below will be analyzed in details. The global retailers and global brands are global for a reason—their brands, systems, scale, or intimacy in regions allow them and compel them to push their boundaries further, but it is never easy. The chart below gives information on retail e-commerce sales worldwide from XXXX to XXXX. In XXXX, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to US$X.XX trillion and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to US$X.XXX trillion in XXXX.
Looking into more details, the next chart provides a ranking of the leading retail e-commerce markets by several countries based on sales between XXXX and XXXX. From the total e-commerce sales worldwide for XXXX, a half of the sales is estimated in China (US$X.XXX trillion). China is the biggest e-commerce market in the world with US$XXX billion in sales projected for XXXX. Factors like population contribute to their top slot with more than XXX million internet users.
USA has the second place and is one of the most popular countries in the world for ordering products online from other countries, with price (XX%) being the primary reason for engaging in cross-border commerce. Many consumers around the world also look to the country for products, with XX% of cross-border consumers who have made a purchase from the USA listing it as their top international online shopping destination. The XXXX USA e-commerce market has become the second largest globally and is expected to reach a total of US$XXX billion by XXXX, accounting for approximately X% retail sales within the country. Retailers possess or seek a strong presence in the USA because it is one of the largest economies in the world. The uniformity of the country from a general taxation and language perspective also makes selling online in the USA easier than other countries. Finally, a sophisticated global infrastructure allows for the deployment of modern logistics capabilities. The number of digital buyers in USA reached XXX million in XXXX and continues to increase, with the total number of digital buyers projected to surpass XXX million by XXXX.
Other countries are UK for which is expected to reach a total of US$XXX billion by XXXX, Japan – US$XXX billion the same year, Germany- US$XX billion, France with total estimated of US$XX billion, South Korea with total of US$XX billion, Canada- US$XX billion, Brazil-US$XX billion and the last is Australia with total of US$XX billion by XXXX.
The UK, Germany and France are Europe‘s three largest ecommerce markets. In XXXX, they jointly accounted for just over XX% of all digital turnover in the region. The UK alone claimed XX.X% of digital sales in The “European BXC E-commerce Report XXXX by Ecommerce Europe. According to the report, the value of goods and services bought digitally across Europe has been rising at about XX% annually for four years, and gains will continue at a similar pace, at least in the short term. In XXXX, digital sales are expected to reach €XXX billion (US$XXX billion). Additional forecasts estimate turnover in XXXX and XXXX at €XXX billion (US$XXX billion) and €XXX billion (US$XXX billion), respectively.
In addition, there is a chart below from XXXX Global Retail E-Commerce Index highlights the world’s largest markets for e-commerce dominate the top half of the top XX, led by the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. In the bottom half are some smaller markets, such as Mexico, whose potential for growth is impossible to ignore.
Across the world, the past year brought a continuation of the impressive growth of retail e-commerce around the world. Sales increased more than XX percent worldwide in XXXX to almost US$XXX billion, as online retailers continued expanding to new geographies and physical retailers entered new markets through e-commerce. The small and mid-size retailers grew their online sales in XXXX by XX.X% to US$X.XX billion from US$X.XXX billion.
The E-commerce platforms are also important to analyze as a potential market. There are many e-commerce software available in the market that can be used as an e-commerce platform for a business. The chart below shows the most popular E-commerce platforms (in Top XM Websites).
From the previous statistics, it can be concluded that ecommerce market is a huge market that is still in its infancy which presents an amazing long term opportunity for businesses who are willing to reinvent the retail experience online and fuel the shift in consumer behavior.
Analyzing PM market is the main focus in this section. The information included show a global overview of PM and market potential, followed by per country statistics.
Recently, digital media buying is being revolutionized by programmatic buying technologies. Over the XX countries analyzed by MAGNA GLOBAL newest report (September, XXXX), display and video inventory transacted through programmatic methods reached US$XX.X billion globally in XXXX (+XX% compared to XXXX). Growth will remain strong over the next four years, with an average annual growth rate of XX%, to reach US$XX.X billion by XXXX. The main drivers behind this growth include the opportunity to reduce transaction costs on both the buying and selling side, the opportunity to monetize a broader spectrum of digital media impressions, and the opportunity to leverage consumer data at scale to improve the efficiency of ad campaigns.
Globally, the chart below shows the programmatic spend as a share of banner display and video growing to XX% of total display and video spend in XXXX, compared to XX% last year, and will increase to XX% by XXXX.
Next chart shows the PM market by countries. It can be seen that US is leading the global adoption of programmatic with US$X.Xbillion worth of transactions expected in XXXX. The US represents XX% of the global programmatic market. Programmatic transactions represent XX% of total display and video dollars already in XXXX in the US, growing to XX% by XXXX. Other largest markets in programmatic dollars are the UK, Japan, China and Germany. Germany, Japan and China, however, are currently lagging behind in terms of adoption. It’s only the large total size of these markets that elevates their programmatic spending totals. In the US and UK, by contrast, programmatic spend already represents nearly half of total banner display and video dollars spent.
Beyond the numbers, the programmatic markets in various countries are developing in significantly different ways. In North America, Western Europe and Australia, established premium digital sales channels were already in existence when programmatic trading was introduced. For this reason, publishers typically only introduce premium inventory through their own controlled environments such as publisher cooperatives, a concept that originated in France. In Asia Pacific, global tech solutions that dominate elsewhere have real competition from local ad tech platforms. In combination with the entrenched incumbent transaction methods and relationship-focused sales channels, programmatic development has been comparatively slow. In Latin America, dominant publishing houses can exert significant control on the expansion of programmatic trading through their willingness to embrace programmatic platforms.
From the PM market statistics, it can be concluded that this market is huge and growing rapidly. This is an opportunity for [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] because the company is clearly focused on the automatic delivery of content to the ads that are sold. Therefore, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] see opportunity in supporting the PM by delivery of Programmatic Content.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] Inc. is a startup established in Delaware, with offices in Silicon Valley, looking to further extend to Asia (Singapore) and Europe during XXXX. The parent company to [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is Database for Commerce and Industry – DCI AG. [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] has an initial staff of X people.
The Founder of the company is [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN FOUNDER]. He is also founder and CEO of DCI AG. Combining Michael’s background, education, the long work experience, his skills and capabilities, brought up the idea of starting [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY], a company which offers standardized online data and content distribution and management. His major awards and honors are: “Philip Morris Research Award XXXX”, “eBusiness Award” by IBM and ZDF/WISO XXXX and “Deutscher Internetpreis XXXX” awarded by the Federal Ministry of Economics.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN CO-FOUNDER] is the CoFounder of [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] with great technical skills and long work experience. He is a dynamic results driven business leader in the tech, media and marketing services and strong business and management experience in Information and Internet industries. [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN CTO] is also experienced in managing interdisciplinary teams and partners for technology products and internet services. His main specialties are: Leadership, Communication, Mobile ,Digital Media, capture Product Content, refine Product Content, Marketing, New Product Innovation, Development and Market Implementation, Leadership of organizations through change and growth strategies.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN CTO] is Chief Technical Officer of [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]. He is analytical hands-on executive with presence and background in marketing, sales, corporate finance and controlling. His work experience makes [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN CTO] deliver operational improvement, successfully. [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN CTO] is Master of Business Administration (M.B.A) at Technical University [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN LOCATION]. Beyond education and work, his main specialties are: Team Development, Business Planning, Valuation, M&A and Business Cases.
In addition to the company team, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] has outsourcing partner from Vietnam – FPT Corporation which can quickly scale up if necessary. Founded in XXXX, FPT Corporation has more than XX,XXX employees and more than X.X billion US dollars in sales by far the largest IT service provider in Vietnam. The company is also one of the leading IT consulting companies in the Asian market. FPT has offices in Japan, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as in France and the United States, another major market for FPT. Among the services offered include both a broad range of IT services and BPO services. FPT has grown rapidly in recent years and has thereby V. A. set in future, such as cloud, mobility services or Big Data as well as in the areas of individual and standard software priorities. In addition, FPT operates its own university with currently more than X,XXX students and partnerships with other universities worldwide.
Below is the process workflow of the company explaining all steps that are happening in order to have a successful customer. It can be summarized in X steps.
The marketing strategy will identify the different ways the company can talk to its customers, and concentrate on the ones that will create most sales. All marketing investments of the company will aim to quickly improve name recognition and rapidly penetrate the market.
All marketing activities and efforts will be outsourced and delegated to marketing agency. The agency will be responsible for drafting and implementing a marketing communication plan. Doing so, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will save on overhead, commitment, recruiting time, training time, and expenses of full-time staff. However, here are few marketing guidelines that can be applied.
The main focus of [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]’s marketing activities will naturally be marketing through global presence at all suitable trade organizations, trade shows, state organizations, trade fairs platforms and business associations lists as multiplier where the company will scrape and standardize and then present it as a free PR gift. Also, here they will meet with lot of content suppliers as well as product companies and service providers to the system as possible in order to provide the service worldwide. Participation in this kind of events builds an optimal enterprise exchange framework which is of great essence to [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] promotion.
Another marketing activities will be on Internet marketing, as this will promote all the company’s services most efficiently. [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]’s website is one of these online marketing channels in order to make the business closer to the public. Google AdWords and advertising on social networks will play also an important role in order to encourage visitors to contact the company. It will be found the best keywords that are most commonly searched and will advertise on them. A carefully thought-out email marketing and direct telephone contact strategy completes the marketing mix.
In addition to online marketing, the company will have online support in order to help its customers solve a problem at any time. The company will provide the best solutions to the targets and its partners, which will be a helpful marketing strategy.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will use a variety of pricing strategies when selling a product or service. The price can be set to maximize profitability for each service sold or from the market overall. It will be used to defend an existing market from new entrants, to increase market share within a market or to enter a new market.
The company will be oriented in three main markets: Europe, USA and Asia. Signing maintenance contracts with loyal clients will enable the company to achieve solid predictability of revenue and at the same time ensure longer-term customer loyalty in terms of fulfilling orders as compared to its competitors. The company will earn from the generated brand reach and calculate by “Active View”, where different prices will be set according to the quality of the view and use. Of the approximately US$XX billion global online spend, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] would target to win share in a fast growing segment valued at some US$X.X billion in XXXX and will become a strong competitor. The quality standard will facilitate [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]’s success in communication to attract serious, well-paying clients.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will also earn from content creation fees, freemium licensing model. (US$X-X per SKU) and from partners US$XX per brand/manufacturer user license per month.
Although these are initial pricing strategies, the company will actively look at the market changes and adapts its pricing accordingly.
As potential partners, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] has many companies which have shown interest to participate in the standardization process, such as Energy and Telecom companies.
The partner strategy for delivering content marketing is also very important for [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]. The company will produce personalized content and distribute it across the web based on the target audience, interests and activity. [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will partner with existing Programmatic Marketing Agencies, and will support them with complementary authorized content for the ads. By ensuring that ads are linked by [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY], an ad becomes more than just mindshare, enabling customers to discover more about the product. This will cause affiliate active views through using the plugin of [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]. The plugin will act as a periscope for customers who are interested to look at further contextual information for products.
While in PM agencies have current focus on the automated buying and selling of the ad space, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is clearly focused on the automatic delivery of content to the ads that are sold. Therefore [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is about joining these dots to deliver Programmatic Content. There are many PM agencies that work with programmatic buy/sell of ads. Five of them were identified as potential partners to which [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] will deliver marketing content.
LIST REMOVED
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is the answer to the demands of today’s consumers, solution providers and solution manufacturers, on a worldwide market ruled by Big Data, cloud solutions and Internet of Things constant changes.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] operates at several levels to deliver transformational customer and company experiences and performance: Organizing the world’s product data, brand content and connecting customers to better quality digital experiences. The [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] solution is essentially three elements:
These are two cloud based data stores organized using intelligent workflow and algorithms to manage X product data and content, as well as X partner data and a unique iconic programmable [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] plug, that connects customers and organizations to quality data and content where they need it, when they need it. The main products/services of the company are:
The features of the [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] app are:
As this is planned to be a small company, there will not be a need of a formal organizational structure. In addition, the company can use its founding company resources – XX software developers in Vietnam and a content factory in Romania with XX employees.
The company will have one CEO – the founder, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN FOUNDER]. He will be responsible for the success or failure of the company. The CEO will carry on about operations, marketing, strategy, financing, creation of company culture, human resources, hiring, firing, compliance with safety regulations, sales, PR, etc. Part of these will be outsourced to external experts.
The CoFounder, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN CO-FOUNDER], will be Managing Director. He will achieve the day-to-day management and together with the CEO, will set the tone for a company’s image, management and operations.
The third person of [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is the Chief Technical Officer, Ashley Reynolds. He will be responsible for making sure the company continues to have the best technology offering in a dynamically-evolving highly-competitive space. Also, he will effectively hold, develop, articulate, and continually evolve the company’s strategic technical direction.
A further information is needed in order to design an organization chart.
Having in mind the External and Internal analysis, a SWOT analysis can summarize the findings.
| Strengths: Brand. The associated IP with [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] brand and logo is secured and protected with trademark registrations.
Technology. Technology is secured with granted Patents in the US, EU and Asia.
[ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] is the authorized data and content hub for the PIM and CMS systems of the world. There are no product information standards today and no real-time updates and maintenance possible.
Unique features. Programmatic content delivery technology, enables a highly effective native customer behavior based advertising solution.
The parent organization DCI AG is established XX years with excellent know-how, relationships and expertise in the European and American IT Commercial sector.
Scalable technical development team based in Romania and Vietnam. Through the unique partner marketing approach, [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] can reach more customers, more quickly than with traditional approaches. | Weaknesses: Capital constrained growth issues.
Need better control of the processes.
The quality and design of the content (need to take more time and work to make good design and quality of the content in order to attract more customers). |
| Opportunities: Stronger competitive position.
More satisfied customers.
Increase partnerships.
Increase the PIM market.
Sell easily to both BXB and BXC customers.
Growing the company on worldwide level
Expanding to IoT and MXM | Threats: Failure to get adoption of the [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] plug on partner web presences.
A larger more established player in an adjacent business segment, simply entering the market through sheer scale.
New government and industry regulations requiring new standards of data compliance. |
Looking at the SWOT analysis, several risks have emerged for [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY]. The table below shows an overview of the identified risks as well as weighting them based on probability (how probable is the event to occur) and impact (what will be the impact on [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] if the event occur). Based on these X variables a total risk score has been generated.
| Risk Management | Probability (X-X) | Impact (X-X) | Total |
| Capital constrained growth issues | X | X | XX |
| Failure to get adoption | X | X | XX |
| A larger more stablished player | X | X | XX |
| New government and industry regulations | X | X | X |
| Need better control of the processes | X | X | X |
| The quality and design of the content | X | X | X |
Mission: Collecting real-time information from all existent domains, providing access to standardized data, in a digital ecosystem where everyone can distribute its content via [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] and connect arbitrarily with all systems.
Vision: Connecting the world’s product information, enabling faster better quality decisions, and enabling MXM IOT automation.
The most important key business objective of the company are:
The company will be asking for equity funding in the range of US$XX million to pay for investments and expenses during the launch phase of the business. Most of these costs will be associated to the actual development costs of the software and a likewise significant amount of the costs are other HR costs, especially sales and management.
Due to the triple launch in all three markets at the same time the startup will be incurring a high fixed-cost block from the very beginning. Due to the fact that [ERP SOFTWARE BUSINESS PLAN COMPANY] offers a wide range of usage potential, it is however expected that the startup will be generating substantial revenues already in the second year of founding, with the breakeven expected for the third year.
In the first year, the company will be focusing on development of the product and the forming of relationships with pilot project customers and public-relations partners. Much effort will also have to be invested in training and recruiting. Therefore it is expected that in the first year no revenues will be generated. However already in the second year a revenue of US$X.X million is considered realistic with the revenues climbing to US$XX.X million in the third year, leading to a breakeven profit for that year of US$XX.X million. In the fourth and fifth year, profits of respectively US$XX.X million and US$XX.X million are projected.
The start up plans for no further investments or the taking up of any loans in the first five years of establishment. The liquidity is estimated to remain high enough to both leave space for higher than expected marketing or development costs as well as enable the startup to have enough time for market penetration should the revenue goals prove to be harder to achieve than expected.
Eco Event Planning for Offgrid Gatherings / Festivals In this post, guest author Lucya Lalita Kostiw is writing about how…
Since BrainHive joined Quora roughly 3 years ago, we have posted dozens of very popular answers and come to lead…
Impact Business Planning and Social Sustainability Through Culture and Technology Two years have passed since BrainHive set up base in…
This blog entry is to showcase one of our recent contributions as part of the BrainHive Charity Program. It features a full…
Impact Business Planning - Grant Proposal Sample Grant Writing Sample: Lake restoration project. This grant was written by stellar veteran startup…
The Coworking Space by BrainHive Consulting Opens its Doors in Panajachel, Atitlan Lake It took us almost a full year but we…