My introduction to BM362

Week 4 :

This was my first class, a follow up of the meeting with the professor on the previous day. I won say that I wasn’t apprehensive but I was more expectant in what I would be learning.

Well when you are introduced to a class through your first presentation ever it can create both a positive as well as a negative impression. Fortunately for me it proved to be the former. The class commenced with a discussion on the case assignment of developing a mobile network at Jurong Bird park for assisiting non-english speaking visitors. An interesting task I must say though I mst admit my technical knowledge did do me in fair stead. I presented my idea on a single power point slide and recommended having 3 servers in the entire park, a registration by vistors with their preferred language. After this, the visitors could just visit any bird in the park, type in its id and retrieve a detailed voice commentary or a short text based information tag on it. My idea was inspired by what I had seen in the Lourve in Paris where you could borrow such devices and use them to give yourself a guided tour of the museum. My suggestion was critiqued and we moved to the next group. Before I forget to mention it, my group was also formed that day and I was teamed up with Minh Nhat.

The next group had an extremely innovative idea of what they called the “bird buddy”. I was quite impressed I must say for they had a complete business model and technological model identified. This bird buddy was like a toy that would not only assist you in the language you bought it but could be bought later to serve a souvenir. The technology of pre-recording the commentary was cheap and simple. I liked the name the best. If I were to be a non-english speaking tourist, I would definitely buy a bird buddy. Their targeted segment were children and revenue. Smart, I must say.

The next group that presented spoke about incorporating the Bluetooth technology and about having pre-recorded guided tours. So all in all we reached a consensus in building a Bluetooth based network at JBP and our revenue would be earned by typing up with the weakest service provider in Singapore say M1. The tourists would register with M1 and use it even after leaving the park, a definite value proposition for them. We discussed the possibility of having guided tours which would ensure that the tourists cover most of the attractions and also make it in time for most of the shows that take place in the park. To sum up the initiation stage would consist of awareness, registration procedures and payment. The entry stage of a guided tour and the like. The completion stage of returning equipment like the bird buddy or FM based radios and the retirement stage of leaving the park with the equipment which could be used in other tourist attractions if we could have a tie up with the Singapore Tourist board. What a flow of ideas! Maybe this is what collective intelligence is all about. Great minds may think alike but the perspectives are always unique, which unravel a whole bunch of new thoughts.

Having finished this, we discussed all about business models where we identified revenue generation as the top line component of a business model. The cost structure which speaks about the cost involved in maintenance of a product, the infrastructure as well as the services provided are important as the profit generated is really he difference between the revenue and the cost. He idea of different types of pricing such as fixed as well as spot pricing is very interesting where our pricing strategies may be metered, subscribed, commissioned or subsidized. There was a mention of the consumer to consumer, the business to business as well as the M-commerce models. We spoke of vertical marketplaces and different business strategies such as differentiation, cost leadership etc.

Differentiation made the most sense to me, as I personally believe that if you offer something that the others do not, there is a definite value offer involved in that. At the end of the day a definite focus is required, a differentiation and cost advantage to suit different market segments.

This was not quite the end, as the next 15 minutes revealed to us what we were to do in the following weeks. An elevator pitch business proposal with the theme tourism on the go that was not only informative but also introduced an element of play was on the agenda. Flash? Video recording ?.........not that I was competent in either but this project excited me as it gave me the opportunity to learn.

So there we were at the end of three productive hours, I was happy I had learned new things and was up to the challenge of learning new software for the coming week left me quite excited.