"At the beginning of our project we structured the elaborated business plan as well as the feasibility study. The structure was built from previous Nextsense business plans as well as acquired business knowledge.
Furthermore we had a kick off with the Styrian Business Promotion Agency ""SFG"". Our personal point of contact Mr. Kerschbauer thereby presented us the possibilities for support in the SME project. Together with him we defined coaching needs to choose from the wide business coaching data base of SFG. We chose coaches specialising in service engineering and the analysis of users and business models. This coaching led to very valuable findings and was useful to optimise CALIPRI Smart and the sales strategy according to the user’s needs. A mind mapping matrix was designed to structure the many possible applications of our profile measurement gauge. This overview contains existing and future measurement tasks. Some of them were already requited from customers or potential buyers.
We learned that the customers want the housings and the user interfaces of the optimised for their needs. A general purpose product is less attractive than specialised products. Hence we will develop different versions of housings and user interfaces which are optimized for the targeted industries and regions.
We performed the analysis of the following industries:
Railway, automotive, paper mills, steel mills, aerospace, household appliances and sheet metal working
The following regions were analysed concerning their potential for the introduction of CALIPRI Smart:
Europe, CIS, North America and Asia
The regions and industries were investigated focussing at the added value for the user, competitors, a SWOT analysis, market volumes, market barriers etc.
This made it possible to choose the regions and industries which Nextsense will prioritize in the years 2016 - 2020.
We also made a patent research to ensure the freedom to operate and identified the necessary steps to obtain the mandatory certifications and accreditations in the target markets.
The result is that there are no patents endangering our project and that the costs and expenditure of time related to certifications and accreditations belong to the critical factors of the project.
According to the findings above, a detailed calculation with a cash budget was made to evaluate the necessary funding for the project and its feasibility. This includes also the development of the production infrastructure, the strong growth of the staff, training, design, additional R&D, foreign subsidiaries, communications, trade fairs, marketing, organisational development etc.
The project we planned has ambitious but feasible goals and can be funded if the application for H2020 phase 2 is successful.
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