The objectives for this assignment are to:
- Conduct a program of analysis on the commercial merits of your package of products and services
- Provide an objective assessment of the commercial potential for your technology and possible new products and markets
- Provide you with an objective assessment of its business model so that it can be jointly refined to better reflect the needs in the marketplace
Proposed program
To achieve these objectives, we offer to conduct a three-stage, interactive program, consisting of the following components:
Stage One – Project Initiation and Orientation. The objective of this stage is to conduct an evaluation of your capabilities and your current base of knowledge. We will begin with an in-person project initiation meeting intended to:
– Review and refine our understanding of your goals, objectives, and expectations for this assignment
– Jointly identify potential market segments
– Discuss in more detail the specific technical and commercial issues to be addressed during our research and analysis
– Review the preliminary feedback available on your solution, and determine the content of the non-confidential descriptions to be used in our research
Stage Two – Commercial Potential Determination. Immediately following the project initiation meeting, we will conduct an internal preliminary assessment of your business model and its value proposition. This assessment will be conducted by our experts comprising both technical experts and strategy analysts. The focus will be on evaluating and clarifying, in a pragmatic sense, potential commercial impact rather than purely technical attributes, with an eye toward identifying the most appropriate target customers to examine. These efforts will include existing solutions/approaches and how your solution can address the inefficiencies in current technology.
The field research will constitute the single most important source of information for this analysis and will focus on developing the following key information for each target market:
1. Develop initial estimates of the current U.S. market
2. Discuss and summarize initial perceptions of your product descriptions from the companies interviewed regarding:
– Apparent level of interest in your product descriptions
– The commercial potential
– Specific situation the interviewees can potentially use the solution
– Your value proposition
– Internal evaluation and approval procedures currently required
– The apparent strengths and weaknesses of existing solution(s) and your offering
– The probability of success for your solution
3. Evaluate the perceived value-in-use for your product versus existing processes in order to better understand likely substitution potential.
6. Analyze the key economic (e.g. current prices paid, price sensitivity, willingness/ability to pay a premium for higher productivity), regulatory, and technical forces driving purchasing decisions in the market, as well as the market's structure and probable growth.
8. Identify and characterize the key potential customers for you.
9. Develop a preliminary assessment of the potential revenue you might attain at various price levels, including the time frame for reaching these levels, based on a defined set of scenario assumptions.
Upon completion of this research, we will compile and further analyze the base of information and insights developed during the field work.
Stage Three – Critical assessment of the business model. Immediately following the completion of Stage Two of the program, we will conduct a Stage Three effort to
1. Technology and product development
- Provide a detailed outline of the next steps in completing product development
- Required tasks, work effort, and recommended sequence of activities
- Timeline to success
- Estimate of costs
- Typical approval processes
- External resources and technology partners
2. Business plan and commercialization process
- Identification of most attractive markets and end-use applications
- Recommendations and evaluation of your business plan
- Best possible strategies for market entry
- Identification of strategic partners and other value chain participants
- Possible barriers to entry
- Competitive position strategies
- Pricing strategies
- Channel management options
- Marketing and communication strategies
- Identification of licensing opportunities and strategies