We Managed software development for a web-based photo books software and deployed beta-version of the software. by

To learn about Planning4Business  services you can now download Our Brochure by

Small business entrepreneurs often face a lot of questions such as who would become our customers, what product features are important, how much customers would be willing to pay for a new product or service. To address these questions you may decide to organise a whiteboard session to leverage expertise of your cross-functional team and brainstorm business activities required to develop and grow new lines of business. The result of this session may be various mind maps and flowcharts. However, there would likely be a number of assumptions requiring validation. You may make predictions about your customer demographics, about product…

Read More »

Over the last few years I talked to many customers who planned to reduce their printing budgets and searched for cost effective printers. In the past two decades China has been a destination for manufacturing of various goods including consumer electronics and clothing. Offset printing in China has also grown significantly over the past decade. Nowadays companies in North America, Europe and Australia offshore their book printing and brochure printing to China. We performed costs analysis of leading trade printers in Australia and China and listed several advantages of offshore printing in China. Significant (>200%) cost savings on offset printing…

Read More »

In the last two years I’ve been reviewing numerous business plans from young entrepreneurs looking to raise seed funding for their startups. Some business plans impressed me by the extent of research made to thoroughly assess a business opportunity. However, a number of business plans failed to capture some important components. Below are some of my observations. (1)  Business plan contains too many details about technology and insufficient research of the market, competition and customers A business plan is not a research article and as such there is no need to give in-depth analysis of all features that your technology…

Read More »

Are your a small business owner looking to outsource your IT / software development and achieve cost effective solution to your IT needs? In the last few years, I have been working with several software development projects which I decided to outsource. Unfortunately, many of these projects did not succeed for various reasons but provided me with a valuable opportunity to learn from failures. Our main objective for outsourcing was to reduce cost without compromising the quality. Software developers with many years of experience charged around $20 per hour in developing countries in contrast to over $100 per hour in…

Read More »

by

If we look at Australian startups the vast majority of those are in the software/IT industry. However, there is much smaller number of life sciences startups because they often have even higher risk of failure and require much larger upfront investment than their software-based counterparts. IT startups in Australia can leverage funding opportunities through crowdsourcing and angel investors. But majority of life science startups are deprived from these funding schemes. Except for several success stories such as CSL, Resmed and Cochlear, Australia does not have global pharma or medical device companies making partnering activities for local startups more challenging. Also,…

Read More »

Last week I attended a Professional Development Forum (PDF) in the Sydney CBD where Tony Surtees gave a presentation “How to create a successful global Start-Up Company in Australia “. PDF is organised about once a month, and is attended by a sizable group of young professionals from around Sydney. This forum features presentations by company executives and  entrepreneurs who shares their advice on how to build successful careers and build important skills & experiences for business success. Tony is the leading entrepreneur in Australia, a board member of Commercialisation Australia, a mentor and a startup founder. Before the presentation Tony…

Read More »

Do not be afraid to share your ideas to receive feedback When articulating your business idea to others try to be as specific as you can and practice your idea presentation beforehand. It can be useful to state your idea in the following format: I am developing (define your product or service) to help (define your target customer group) to (state a problem that you are solving) with (state any proprietary technology or unique solution that you are using). After you performed initial research of your idea, make a real-world test of your product or service. Your financial institution or investor…

Read More »