SUBJECT - MIT4203 ICT Entrepreneurship Refer to the below case study of LifeSaver Technologies as a successful ICT entrepreneur Question 1: [20 Marks] Suggest a questionnaire for Cognitive

SUBJECT - MIT4203 ICT Entrepreneurship

Refer to the below case study of LifeSaver Technologies as a successful ICT entrepreneur

Question 1:            [20 Marks]

Suggest a questionnaire for Cognitive assessment of Alzheimer's to design a Mobile App.

Question 2: Do a SWOT analysis.           [20 Marks]

Question 3: Draw up future scenarios for the company indicating how the original business model should evolve to accommodate possible changes in the industry.           [20 Marks]

Question 4: Draw up a business model for this company and visualize the possible growth of this model in the long term.

Question 5: Attempt all three parts.           [20 Marks]

A) [7 Marks] Recommend the key factors to describe the importance of business ethics.         

B) [7 Marks] Suggest adopted types of marketing strategies.

C) [6 Marks] Draw a sketch to represent the importance of a business plan.

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Case Study of LifeSaver Technologies for a Society

Overview

Two IT Professionals names Mr. Yip and Mr. Monkumar decided to introduce a new type of software into the market. They had designed this software to make the lives more comfortable for many who suffer from Alzheimer’s and those of their caregivers. Yip health care vocation and Monkumar meticulous technical Ltd., a company which has dedicated in today’s society offering mobile apps to make daily life easier.

The company has been reinforced as a result of the close association with a research team from the university where they studied. Today, Yip and Monkumar have more than 22 months of tireless work behind them and, although it is in its early stages, the business has a hopeful future and their potentials continue to grow.

Background and training of the entrepreneurial team

Yip and Monkumar decided one day that their final master academic dissertation, supervised by their researcher Dr Goyal at the Faculty of Information Technology, City University, Malaysia, should not remain as merely a good dissertation praised by the assessment board. So, after a major effort to finish their Information Technology studies, they joined various research projects at the City University, Malaysia. Encouraged by their seniors Mr. Amirul, Mr. Ahmed, Ms Randa, Mr Omar, Mr Adam, Mr Anthony, Mr Yousuf, Mr. Mazed, Mr Omar, Mr. Danniel, they become very enthusiastic about the idea of creating LifeAlz- software for patients with Mr. Sharma’s that they themselves had designed and presented as the grand finale of their studies at the City University, Malaysia. This software help patients with Alzheimer's, which is a terrifying disease that feeds on the minds of the elderly and erases their memories.

Yip always wanted to study medicine, but various circumstances led him to focus all his efforts on a career that was gaining his attention and her curiosity: information technology. Nevertheless, his health vocation was so strong that it did not take him long to convince his friend Mr. Shaun that the best option for their project was to focus on Alzheimer’s patients- a group that was in need of solutions. So with the help of their instructor Ms. Godiswary and inspired by the desire to “create something useful” combining medicine and information technology, they started the dissertation project which has now become their business.

Initially, the City University did not provide any assistance, so both chose to develop their business based on Windows Mobile, thinking that this would give them a speedy and relaxed introduction into the market. But after a brief period, they exposed its impracticability and appreciated that it would not allow them to achieve the results they were pursuing. They soon exposed that the development of the product they had assessed in the project they presented to the board had very limited marketable possibilities and so they decided to discard their novel idea in favor of a new Apple device interface. Finally, they produced a prototype to test on clinic personnel and Alzheimer’s patients.

Originally the business was created to support one of several European-Health-IT projects that were being developed by the research group they were involved in and had been recommended to them by their instructor.

As researchers with extensive experience and as a Ph.D. student- Vipin Arora from the University Toronto, they formed part of the research team at the Faculty of Information Technology, City University making them the company´s central axis of collaboration with the University.

Registered officially in Jan 2015, LifeSaver Technologies was established as a partnership between Mr. Yip and a personal friend-Mr. Sanjay from Germany, whom he got to know by chance on one of the multiple mediums for entrepreneurs that he regularly visited. This partner not only provided capital but also training and business experience, as well as a wide-ranging knowledge of the English language and culture in order to help conquer the non-German-speaking market.

This market is vital for the profitable aspirations of the company as it considers the European market to be the principal focus of the project. Thus, when they were hired by a local company to develop and continue a tourist guide, they were forced to start up the firm in order to provide them with a stable turnover. However, they were sure about what their main activity ought to be: the development of software for mobile devices.

This company offers types of services like a) Customer orders with maintenance, such as the tour guide and b) wine tasting, and their own telecare (service provider offer service through telephone and frequently follow up and maintain records) service for the improvement of daily life and disease controller and prevention.

This latter service is the main inclination of the company, and some elements of it could be sufficiently competitive to be incorporated in mobile apps for Android as well as Apple, who demand that applications are posted by companies rather than universities or research institutes, obliging them to produce a trading name to operate within the market.

The star products in this group are LifeAlz which offers dedicated support and specific services for neurological disorder’s dedicated to Alzheimer’s patients, another recent development for the control of patients with diabetes and hypertension, and LifeSync, which allows for rapid development of applications that require immediate synchronization between the web and mobile.

Overview of Business performance and industry

This project is running on the distribution channel and achieved through Apple Store. Other world-renowned brands in the field of software and utilities for mobile devices. For LifeSaver Technologies, especially important from a product development point of view, to create and design applications by the market and to be competitive in the Q&Q of services. This company knows that there are many competitors that exist in this line of business.

LifeSaver Technologies recognize the potential of their star product LifeAlz. Alzheimer’s is a global problem with 50 million sufferers across the globe. This figure is expected to rise to 105 million by 2035.

LifeSaver Technologies understands that their key market is Europe & America, with more than 4.8 million clients willing to devote money to their health, as opposed to the national market. In America it is normal, when you influence a certain age, to pay more than USD25 monthly for someone to check that you are still alive by making a simple telephone call, or up to USD1000 monthly for a place in a house for elderly people with some form of dementia.

In France, where the public SSS (Social Security Systems) provides more benefits, and where per capita income levels are lower, people receive these services for free and so they are not willing to pay more than necessary for them.

Thus, developed countries like the USA, Canada, Australia with poor SSS, offer an ideal environment to generate products and sanitary services valued by the client. This has forced LiveSaver Technologies to refocus the business project with a view to the global market, especially the USA. They have revised the unrealistic prices (In order to popularity to attract clients, irrespective of their purchasing power, they estimated a price in France that would not exceed USD8 a month for the general use of the system.) in their original business plan to fit in with that country.

In addition, this approach will require a bigger effort not so much in investment (they costed the business start-up at approximately USD8,000) as in human capital, making Monkumar the research team energetic to the project partners. Nevertheless, while entering the worldwide market may offer many opportunities, with such high visibility it could also create major threats.

While a major restructuring is coming, at present the establishment partner maintains a visible role as head of the company, and also deals with customers and carries out the administrative management of the business. He has seen the need for additional special training in the management a new business.

Other side, the senior partner shares own familiarity of the English language market and the language itself, which adds both to the profitable relations of the company and to the translation and adaptation of software for the user, one of the main costs involved in product development. The productive function rests on Monkumar, who primarily looks after programming or ‘puncturing codes’ as it is known in the jargon of the sector. Yip looks after the ‘capturing of requirement’, or in other words defining the design that will be useful for end-users.

Given the great importance of software configuration, the need for a detailed familiarity of the goal market for the final product needs that they continuously consult experts.

For example, in the production of their star product LifeAlz they had to carry out in-depth interviews with researchers, doctors, day-care centres and Alzheimer’s specialists, not only in the France, Canada, Australia, but also in the chosen market: the United States.

Thanks to their relationship with the University of Tornado and their contact with the American research groups, they have obtained important evidence for further development of their product. This allowed them to imagine the future scope of the product as covering not only patients who had already been diagnosed but those that have yet to be diagnosed.

The final aim was to provide a customized package of services including an alarm/ notifications for relatives, the life book, the appointment book and Global Position System locaters, amongst others. They also help caregivers and family members suffering from the ‘burn-out’ effect, which results from the crushing load that the patient adds to their lives, by offering them an activity planning and patient supervision service. Their interest in producing a comprehensive service for actual and future patients forced them to analyse current entrants for each of these types of service. This analysis allowed them to discover important insufficiencies that they have tried to incorporate into the services they offer, one of them being the practical/ technical difficulties that many users encounter with the current devices.

While they have had contact with possible business investors and business angels interested in investing in the business, they consider their problem to be not so much one of finance or the essential to invest in infrastructure, but of time. They believe that they hold the technical skills required to generate good products and there are various people in their circle willing to collaborate and join the project.

However, in their opinion, it is too early to expand. They want to consolidate their way of working and finish ongoing developments first. They have no lack of contacts either, as they maintain relations with interest groups and associations both in France and the United States which give them information and privileged relations.

For the sponsors of the project the key to its consolidation is in the time that they must invest to grow and test the prototypes before the applications are released into the market. Finally, they feel that this is highly competitive segment, mobile app technology is growing rapidly and software cannot be patented. Overall, there is no protection in this business.

The agenda is clear; in the second quarter of 2022 the first models of their star product LifeAlz will hit the market. Soon they will be relying on LifeSync and other projects emerging around it. They do admit that they are still working “for the sake of the art”. The awards won (–two in total, including, the prestigious Innovation Foundation Award) provided them with the necessary capital to reaffirm their intuition about the viability of the idea and it has given them new entrepreneurial impetus.