InitiaTEAM: nLife - Home Networking System
Have you ever forgotten to turn off the lights or lock the door when you are leaving your home? Or, have you ever looked outside your house to check if the home gas valve was turned off? nLife corporation provides you with a complete solution that will make customers enjoy a better life with the service packages it will market.- Business Overview
Have you ever forgotten to turn off the lights or lock the door when you are leaving your home? Or, have you ever looked outside your house to check if the home gas valve was turned off? nLife corporation provides you with a complete solution that will make customers enjoy a better life with the service packages it will market.
nLife stands for both "new life" and "network life". Its vision is to offer a new life and to make customers' dreams come true by providing home networking technology services. Home networking is the core technology, which enables the formation and operation of the digital home where the customer can turn on and off the lights from a remote location by just clicking a button of his/her cellular phone or PDA.
nLife corporation sells two service packages using home networking technology. The first one is called "basic package", which primarily offers home control services. Home control services include controlling gas valves, light switches, and heating valves. Basic package is designed to provide easy access to home appliances and to make the customers' daily living even more convenient. The second package is called "premium package" which provides not only home control services but also home security services. This package includes controlling the door lock system and protecting the computerized communication system from viruses. In addition to all the services provided by the basic package, the premium package is also designed to guarantee safety beyond the customers' expectations.
One of the most important factors that influences the success or failure of a business is the market conditions. Korea currently provides the home network industry with the best market conditions.
a) Physical condition: Korea has a high population density, which leads to the concentration of apartments in cities. This infrastructure enables home network companies to provide the enormous cluster of households with fast and safe wireless Ethernet
b) Technological condition: Korea has one of the best IT industry foundations with highest technology and fastest Internet service. Such a technological infrastructure facilitates the establishment and success of the Home network industry.
c) Market trend: Korea has recently undergone what is called a "well-being boom" where people pursue happiness and better quality of life by engaging in healthy life style practices. Home networking has welcomed this trend by enabling households to go out and enjoying hobbies, or allowing people to visit beautiful places without worrying about the security or wasteful use of electricity in their homes. Such technology will give customers a new, better, and higher quality life style.
d) Governmental policies: The Ministry of Information and Communication of the current Korean administration proclaimed the IT893 policy to support eight new services as the core driving forces to develop Korea. Moreover, the Ministry of Industry and Energy has established twelve development goals. Both of these ministries support the Home network industry, thus, the Home network industry is now highly supported by the government, financially as well as by building a legal framework that will facilitate the development of this business.
These market conditions serve as a strong and healthy foundation for nLife to start the Home network business with confidence. nLife corporation is very optimistic about its future given the originality of its concept, their potential to sell the packages mentioned earlier, and their competitiveness over other home network companies.
a) Service: nLife is a customer-oriented company; its ultimate goal is to provide the best satisfaction to customers, whereas existing home network companies only focuses on developing high technology, not on providing "well-rounded" services. nLife spends most of its resources, such as, time and money in designing the most suitable service packages for its potential customers.
b) Technology: nLife introduces a technologically innovative idea of using a broadband router as home gateway device. Home gateway is a central device, which transmits customer's command(s) to the home equipment, such as, gas valves or light switches. Using the broadband router as a home gateway has a significant qualitative and quantitative advantage since it works very well in the Korean infrastructure, which has a fairly low price by outsourcing, and it enables nLife to enter the existing old apartment market.
c) Cost: The core marketing strategy of nLife is the low-cost strategy for old apartment households. This is possible through outsourcing the mass production of hardware, using cost effective technology such as ZigBee and the broadband router, and targeting old apartments where the middle class reside, not the rich segment market of new apartments.
d) Market targeting: nLife targets "Niche market", old apartments and houses. Existing companies such as KT and SKT are focused on developing high technology and applying it to new apartments where setting new devices and infrastructure is feasible. nLife, however, will capitalize on the demand and potential magnitude of old apartments and nLife will capture this market as soon as possible.
nLife starts its business with four board members-CEO and three vice presidents for each department, and nine employees. It plans to enlarge its workforce to 28 employees within the next 3 years.
With the start-up money of 100 million won from personal assets and 200 million won from funding investment companies, nLife has set sales goal of 1.5 billion won and a net profit of 100 million won for the first year. The net profit will annually increase: 466 million won for the second year and 1.03 billion for the third year respectively. The balance sheet estimates a Net Worth of 1,027,756,000 won and cash balances of 2,186,199,000 won for the third year. (Since nLife begins its business in Korea for its great conditions, we used Korean won instead of US dollar for our currency.)
Among the ten "flatteners" suggested by Thomas L. Friedman, Workflow software, Outsourcing, The Steroids- are the cores of this business. With this business plan carefully written by InitiaTEAM members, we are confident of our great success.
Last but not least, the most important point of our business is that we aim at addressing the global climate change. Does our business seem irrelevant with global warming? Go on to the next chapter, "Mission"!
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