Group 94
Business plan
Faculty of Business and Economics The University of Hong Kong Zhang Ke He Xi Cai Wen Long Wu Mang Mang Zhang Yi Fan
Table of contents o Executive Summary
o The Social Concept element consists of: The Problem Vision, mission and value Theory of Change The Solution Social Impact
o Target market o Competition o Social marketing o Partnership o Team Plan o Financial Plan o Impact monitoring and evaluation o Risk and Opportunity o Implementation Plan o Funding Request
Executive summary:
We are a social enterprise dedicated to providing service to all disadvantaged people who have trouble in receiving hospital service. We will deliver quick, convenient, safe service at an affordable price to the general public. Our service includes accompany service, drug delivery, queuing and interpreting, all these are part of the hospital service.
Our mission: to help the disadvantaged person with their medical needs, providing comprehensive solution to people who have difficulty in seeing a doctor.
Our motto: along with you, you are not alone.
The Problem: The aged tendency of the population has become increasingly serious in Hong Kong nowadays. With a current population of 850 thousand people who are over the age of 60, Hong Kong has suffered from the average annual aged people growing rate of 5.1 percent, which is much faster than total population growth rate of 1.7 percent on average. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department said that the elderly population is expected to be increased by 12.5% to 33% to 2030. The elderly belong to one of the vulnerable groups of society with relatively broad and urgent medical needs. However, the fact is that due to the disability and the inconvenience the elderly patients have various difficulties to obtain medical service independently. On the other hand, the length of Hong Kong people’s working hours is among the highest class in the world. People are always too busy to accompany their parents to get the medical treatment in workdays. The situations of the elderly who live alone are even more serious. Because of the inconvenience to seek the medical treatment, many of the elderly have not been able to visit the clinics in time, and even miss the optimal time of curing. The problem that the elderly has difficulties to obtain the medical services is becoming increasingly grave. Moreover, there are some other people need help in the perspective of getting the medical services urgently, such as the disable and the children. Likewise, they may have various difficulties in obtaining the medical treatment. For the sake of going to the clinics, they have to rely on other’s help.
Vision, mission and Value: Our Company is trying to solve this problem with the approach of establishing a social enterprise. The services our company provides is to accompany the people who have difficulties in getting the medical services to go to the clinics, so as to guarantee them to obtain medical services timely and safely. Furthermore, our company can offer some working positions to unemployed underprivileged people at the same time. Eventually our company can raise the standard of social well-being.
Theory of change:
The Solution: To solve the above problems, our company is committed to providing the services of accompanying the people who need help to obtain medical services timely and safely, including: 1. Accompany the patients to the clinics, and ensure the safety of the patients on the way. In the event of emergencies, offer the first aid immediately and get touch with the relatives of the patients as soon as possible. 2. Assist the patients to register and fill out relevant medical information. 3. Take the medicine and stand in queue for the patients if necessary. 4. Help patients to solve other relevant problems in the process of getting the medical services if necessary. The whole cycle of services starts from the beginning of the application, and ends with the patients’ safe arrival to their home.
Social Impact: The problems of getting the medical services are eased due to the services our company provides. The elderly and other people who have difficulties in obtaining medical treatment independently are enabled to go to the clinics timely and safely. Consequently, they can get better medical treatment and will not miss the optimal time for curing. On the other hand, this kind of services does not require a lot of professional skills; so many working positions are available to the unemployed underprivileged people like some mid-aged laid off females. In this way, the problem of unemployment is settled down at the same time. This social enterprise allows some underprivileged people to help some other people of the vulnerable groups in the society, and generate profit at the same time. The revenue generated by the social
enterprise can also be used to expand and help even more people. ☏ Call for Service Our Company
Arrange Work
Customers
❤ Customers Pay the Fee
Known by other Potential Customers
Provide Service
Feedback from Customers
Service In brief, our service is to accompany patients to go to hospitals or private clinics. In more details, our service includes: 1. Accompany the patients to the clinics, and ensure the safety of the patients on the way. In the event of emergencies, offer the first aid immediately and get touch with the relatives of the patients as soon as possible. 2. Assist the patients to register and fill out relevant medical information. 3. Take the medicine and stand in queue for the patients if necessary. 4. Help patients to solve other relevant problems in the process of getting the medical services if necessary. 5. Provide language interpretation if necessary. The following picture shows the whole process of our service.
The service begins with our customers’ request. After receiving calls from customers, we will plan the best route for our customer and arrange stuff that suits the customer best. When our customers have paid the service fee, we will ask them to fill in a form to see whether they are satisfied with our service or not. We will be able to do better with the complaints and suggestions from our customers. If the customers are satisfied with our service, they may recommend their family members or friends to come to our company when those people need such kind of service. The whole cycle of services starts from the beginning of the application, and ends with the patients’ safe arrival to their home. Customers may also choose to receive the service for a certain period according to their need. Here are some details involved in our service: 1. The service fee is 70 HK dollars per hour. 2. We will arrange our customer to take public transportation if there is no special need. Customers will be responsible for their own transportation fee.
3. If there is special requirements for transportation, customers should responsible for the transportation fee. 4. Our service hour is from 8: 00 to 23: 00. If the time exceeds 23:00, our stuff will accompany the patient until the medical treatment is over. However, customers have to pay additional fees. 5. If customers need service during off-business hours, we will decide whether to offer service or not according to the condition of the customer. For this kind of service, we will charge additional service fee.
Market Analysis
Elderly
Children
Disabled
Nonlocal Residents
Others
5% 10% 15% 10%
60%
The market facing us is a huge and unexplored market. We have several segment markets: the elderly, disabled people, children, nonlocal residents, other residents.
Our largest market has those elderly people as the customer. Hong Kong has 850 thousand populations who are over 60 and suffers an average annual aged people growing rate of 5.1 percent. The length of Hong Kong people’s working hours is among the highest class in the world. The opportunity cost of time is usually very high. The elderly need medical treatment but usually they have difficulties to go to hospitals by themselves and their children are too busy to spare them time. Based on the above facts, the needs for medical treatment accompany service exits. However, there are not so much organizations and agencies are developing this kind of service. So there is a huge market potential. The same is true to disabled people and children. Though some families have babysitters, the majority have to give up one day or one afternoon to accompany their sick children to see the doctor. People will be willing to pay for someone to do this work when they are busy. As for the nonlocal residents, they may have difficulties in communication. If there is someone who can help solve this problem, they will be willing to pay.
Customers and Target Customer
Our company provides accompany service to all patients in Hong Kong island. The expected portion of our customer is shown in the following chart: As is shown, our target customer will be those elderly people. Elderly people amounts to 850 thousand in number, which is approximately 12.5% of the total population in Hong Kong. About 18％ of the elderly people live in Hong Kong Island. The size of our target customer is expected to be 18% of the total number, which is 153 thousand. So there is huge market potential. We mainly targets in those who live along and those whose children are so busy that they don’t have time to accompany the elderly people to receive medical treatment.
As for other customers, the following table shows our company’s focus on these Customer Group
Focus those whose parents don’t have time to accompany their
Children children those who have difficulty to go to hospital along (eg. Disabled difficulties in listening or speaking) Nonlocal
those who have difficulty in communicate with the medical
Residents
stuff because they cannot speak Cantonese
Others
anyone who need this service due to a variety of reasons
people.
Our way of approaching our customers are as follows: 1. leaflets in residential area
2. online webpage 3. buzz marketing Since the distribution of our customers is quite decentralized, the most effective way of marketing will be buzz marketing. If the customers who have received our service are satisfied, then they will tell their family members and their friends, thus bringing more customers to our company. So a good reputation will be of great importance.
Competitive Analysis: Hong Kong is a sophisticated society where many efforts are made to ease various social problems. As a result, our company has some potential competitors.
The most influential and typical one is Outdoor Help Co-operative, who also provides similar escort service for patients. However, we have advantages in certain segments of the market.
Firstly, our target markets locate in different regions in Hong Kong. Outdoor provides service in New Territories (Yuen Long, Tin Shui Wai, Tuen Mun, Tsuen Wan and Tsing Yi). Our company decides to develop the business in Hong Kong Island. It ensures there is no direct contest, and both companies can concentrate on
providing good service to people in need in different regions.
Secondly, while Outdoor’s target customers are mainly the elderly, our company provides service to all people who need it. No matter it is the elderly or people with disabilities who have difficulties going to see a doctor alone, or children whose parents don’t have time to escort them to hospital, as long as one needs our service, he is our customer. It means our company has a potential to enjoy a larger customer basis.
In addition to the differences of target markets, Outdoor and our company are not the same in terms of employees. Outdoor’s employees are limited to middle-aged women, and we provide working positions to unemployed underprivileged people that have gone through our training and evaluation. One can be our employee as long as he or she is qualified, and age, gender and background are not barriers. It shows a probability that more diversified disadvantaged groups will benefit from our company.
Except Outdoor, some charitable organizations and volunteer groups offer service of accompanying old people, and a few of them have the branch of escorting patients. Our company’s core competitiveness lies in professionalism and efficiency.
The above analysis shows that our company will be able to survive and expand in the market. Moreover, there is one point we would like to clarify is that as a social enterprise whose first priority is to help people instead of making money, our competitors are also our partners in many ways. We can exchange experience and set up a sophisticated network of escort service for patients. After all, we share the same goal of bringing good to society rather than sweep out the competitors, and it is important for us to work in joint efforts. Financial analysis We will put financial security as our primary concern You can observe from the table below, we construct the financial table in a very conservative way; it leaves room for further cost-deduction. But we hope that we
could create a convenient office environment for staff, mainly because the professional working environment will present a nice impression for visiting customers, nobody will feel safe to leave their weak relatives to someone that is not seemingly reliable. Our starting cost is satisfactory compared with similar firms; it will not require a big sum of money for us to implement the plan, Although we try to cut back on unnecessary operation cost, but we really offer very competitive salary for our staff, maintaining a balance between social outcome and business sustainability Assets(Office facilities) Office Supply Rent Advertising Cash Total
$12,000 $5,000 $30,000 $10,000 $10,000 $67,000
The major cost we incurred is the rent cost and the salary cost, at first, we mainly concentrate on customers in Hong Kong Island, for we can have smaller operational area, which makes it possible for us to start our service in a controllable manner. at the same time, we can save on the transportation costs. Advertising will be a critical stage for our development; we will allocate 10,000HKD to our advertising campaign, we will not expect quick return on that expense, but we wish we could make our brand known to more, gradually increasing the
Budget Estimated Statement
For the First Quarter Service Revenue Expenses: Rent Expenses Transportation Expenses Depreciation Expenses Salary Expenses Advertising Expense Miscellaneous Expenses Total Expense Income Before Tax Tax Expense Net Income
$324,000 $30,000 45,000 3,600 207,000 10,000 5,000 $300,600 23,400 $3510 $19,490
Appendix: we will recruit 3 persons as the management staff, 10employees as the operating staff. The head manager will receive 10,000HKD; the other two staff will receive 7,000HKD. From the financial analysis above, we will discover that the starting expense is not that formidable compared with many other complicated industry. It is convenient for us to maintain a sound financial position, as we are a social enterprise, we will not set our price at a high level, and we try to strike a balance between the business sustainability and social welfare. This is a conservative estimation for the financial data, but we make it that because we wish we could hope for the best, but prepare for the worst Revenue Operating
FY 2009 1,200,000 1,120,000
FY 2010 2,000,000 1,980,000
FY 2011 3,000,000 2,740,000
FY 2012 5,000,000 4,480,000
Income 80,000 120,000 260,000 520,000 Appendix: we assume the company follows a prudent but applicable way of development
Sustainability
We will try to maintain our operation mainly on our own earnings; we will keep the financial position in check. If the operation is successful, we will recover the initial cost in 6 months, in addition, as our operation expands, it is possible for us to be recognized by the general public, as we stated earlier, we made a very conservative estimate for our market capability, and we can earn much more the previous estimation very likely. We welcome charity donation as well as media coverage; both are very good encouragement and advertising for our company. We will definitely seek cooperation with local community, providing timely information for all. That will be a plus to our social network. Government preferential policy will also be a great advantage for us.\
Projected growth and market penetration We set our market target as the working middle class citizens who earns 10,000~40,000HKD per month. According to statistics, the number of that kind of family is about 55%of the Hong Kong population. So, it is reasonable for us to believe, the potential market will be very luring, many people are financially capable of the service. Senior citizens, handicapped and all kinds people who have difficulty in seeing a doctor will be our clients .Considering that the kind of people above are under more worse health condition than others, they are likely to require that kind service
From a very conservative estimation, there at least shall be 10,000 people in need of that kind of service in a day. Although we can’t take up all the market, but only a fraction of that will be enough for us already.
Expansion plan In short-term, we will establish effective service to local community, later, we wish we could delivery quick and reliable service in all areas in Hong Kong. Our longterm target is to set up branches in all major big cities in mainland China The expansion is divided into 6 stages: 1. Starting period 2. Market experiment 3. Community expansion period 4. Society recognition period 5Cooperation with hospital We will conduct advertising in local community, promoting our service in the area. Community is the basic living unit; a good reputation in the community will help more than any other form of ads. We will cooperate with community member, try to understand the real needs of the people, set up effective service network within the community
Later, we believe we shall step up cooperation with the hospital; we will try to set up special passage for disadvantaged people, telling the hospital about the needs of our
customer We also pay attention the website construction. Customers can find more about our company via the web, and they can also make reservation online, and put forward suggestion for further improvement.
Social charity: as our operation further develops, we will put forward more charity plans, including free service at some specific time, paying tribute to disadvantaged people and so on We will set foot on mainland market as long as we achieve relatively successful operation in Hong Kong, we will try to set up Shenzhen branch in a few years time if possible. We want to take advantage of the market before it is too late.