Assignment for A Business Plan

Company Name: NCparker

Company Address:

64 Windward St, St. Catharines, Ontario

Owner(s):

Business Concept

NCparker is a smartphone application aims to solve parking issues for customers in Niagara College. This is an real-time parking guidance application which enable drivers to find available parking space quickly and easily by providing the location of available parking space. The only thing customers have to do is using their fingertips and select the parking lot they what to park, and NCparker will show a detailed map with the current occupancy status of every individual parking spot, so that drivers can go directly to that available spot without hesitation. In addition, technology is the key for making this convenience reality. Wireless vehicle detection sensors system will need to be installed all over the parking lot on Niagara-on-the-lake campus and Welland campus, and all information will be collected and analyzed by a parking analytic system. This system is made up with four parts. Firstly, ultrasonic sensors or geomagnetic sensor will be installed for every single parking lot for detecting the occupancy status of that parking space. Ultrasonic sensor works based on measuring the time between sending ultrasonic waves and detecting reflected energy after it encounter obstacles to determine the distance between the sensor and obstacles, Once we know the speed of ultrasonic wave, we can decide whether there is a car according to the time difference. Moreover, the working mechanism of geomagnetic sensor is based on a physical phenomenon called Magnetoresistive Effect. When a ferromagnetic object shows up around the sensor, the Earth magnetic lines will bend with change in density, and the geomagnetic sensor can detecting this minor change on magnetic line, so it can determine whether there is a vehicle at the parking spot. There is a build-in battery for each sensors which can usually supply powers for 6 - 10 years. And all those detected signals will be received by routing nodes and then delivered to and gathers by gateway nodes. Finally, all those data will be reported to the data center and decoded into digital language and display on customer platform. Meanwhile, this system is responsible for delivering live space availability data to smartphone applications clients which is also available on customer platform, and it helps institutions to operate the whole parking lot. For example, the administrators can access to hourly occupancy rate report for separated parking lots as well as the duration of stay for each parking space. Also, the parking and security department will be easily aware of unpaid violations, overstays, no parking and restricted zones. Then, Niagara College will have better insight about their parking system though this function and empower their parking operation. And considering the cost of operation this parking spot tracking system for Niagara College, this service will be running between 8 AM to 5 PM on weekday from September to April only.

Type of Ownership

Our company is privately owned by the three founders of this business who are and they currently have the equal share of total assets. Share division is subjective to change according to further investment or the joint of new investors.

Why We Will Be Profitable

Students and staffs in Niagara College are currently facing hard time in finding parking spaces. And our products and services are right target to this market to solve their concerns. Beside of the installment fee, we will charge Niagara College Institutional License fee annually for accessing and managing the parking analytic system platform. This price varies from the size of their parking lot and the total number of clients accounts to which the administrator will offer exclusive free access for the smartphone application. Once Niagara College has decided to add our parking spot tracking system into their parking lot operation, this will become their long-term assets, and we can generate continuous revenue from the same customer through Institutional License sale. On the other hand, Niagara College has an enrolment of more than 9,000 full-time students and more than 15,000 Continuing Education registrants annually. Everyone amount this number of people with a vehicle will become our potential customer. With limited parking capacity, Niagara College enforces permit parking and offer one month to eight months length parking permit for students to purchase, also they have 30 minutes visitor parking and pay by meter option available. For NOTL campus, 8 months parking permit get most sold with 687 sales. Students who have purchased longer than four months length parking permit will become the potential excutive customers with special account for using NCparker application for free with limited validity, while students without official parking permit or with short-term parking permit will have the option to purchase our Personal License with one-time fee of $0.99 to set up their personal account and access to the same application. This is another source of revenue for our company, and institution like university or college usually have stable new customer every year, so as long as we are working with Niagara College, we can have continuous revenue from those endless newcomers. In addition, Niagara College is expanding in some programs and having increasing demand for the parking permits, which makes it more difficult for students and college staff to find parking spots, and that is why our product is urgent and profitable.

Current Market Conditions

There are two parking lot available on Niagara College Niagara-on-the-lake campus, and they are made up with nine separated blocks. Limited parking space on campus as well as the heavy snow makes parking a difficulty, and some students have to drive through the parking lot line by line to searching for an available space, which is partially the reason for some of them to be late for class. Besides, Niagara College enforces permit parking and offer one month to eight months length parking permit for students to purchase, also they have 30 minutes visitor parking and pay by meter option available. Although Niagara College strives to provide ample on-campus parking at all times, a permit does not guarantee the availability of a parking spot, which is why this market has urgent need for our products and services. On the other hand, parking lot real-time occupancy system is no longer the new and expensive technology, while the concept of customer satisfaction gains its popularity and attracts people’s attention. Also, Niagara College has received No. 1 ranking in student satisfaction, which makes them cares more about how students feel about their on-campus experience. All of those factors suggests that this is a right business to be introduced at this particular time. Moreover, there is no competitor currently approaching to educational institution like Niagara College, while most of competitors emphasis more about commercial market such as shopping mall and casinos. The competitive advantage is not only the experienced technology support from our powerful corporation but also the customized design special for serving college needs.

Start-up Summary

Before we start up our business, our target market Niagara College has already existed. Since we are the degree program students of Niagara College, and we have been with this institution for almost four years, and have well understanding about this target market, and we clearly know what the students of Niagara College are expecting for to their on-campus parking experience. So, we have already have our target market which we are familiar with and a big number of potential customers while they have urgent desire to our products and services. On the other hand, all technologies we need for making our business concept reality are available in the current technology market. Those technologies have been developing for at least ten years. The supplier for each part of the system is easy to find, and it is also easy to hire IT professionals as technical support in this technology information era. In addition, we have the framework for our wireless vehicle detection sensor system, analytic system platform and smartphone application clients. Besides all those current “assets”, we need to seek for investment or fund to start our product development. At the same time, we need to reach the partnership agreement with ideal suppliers for our hardware facilities as well as looking for a creative programmer to design our application and analytic system. At the beginning of this business, we might not specially rent an office to save the budget; instead, we will contact each other with the current communication technology or take advantage of college resource for meeting up.

Financial Needs

We need about $60,000 for completely developing the smartphone application which will run on IOS and Android system and data center according to the result of Kinvey app cost estimator. Also, we need additional $10,000 for advertising and covering the start-up cash flow.

Liability Insurance

We might face financial crisis for the beginning of operations since we never know when can we make our first deal and generate any revenue for us to cover our cash flow or pay back our monthly fund interest. It is important for us to have liability insurance as our back up. Also, it is a protector for our investors once we have liability insurance from the beginning because it is like our organizational credit, and investors will be more confidencial to invest in our business if there is any insurance company is willing to cover our debt, which will also help us to attract more investors so that we can have more start up fund and maximize the development of softwares.

Human Resources

Vision: “ We intend to use our technologies and ideas to make the convenience to our customers , save their time and change the rhythm of life”.

Mission Statement: “Taking advantage of current technology and coming up with more efficient analysis system combined with smartphone application for our customers to reduce the time wasted on looking for available parking space. Also provide more comprehensive parking occupancy analysis for system owners to help them managing parking operation as well as increasing revenue”.

Overview

Our team will manage the app for the first year, our image about the app after that is to engage with student and staff daily routine. Our mission statement is to make all the students and staffs in Niagara College to find parking space easily through the use of sensor-enabled mobile and web applications.