PoF - PLENTY OF FISH

PoF - PLENTY OF FISH

AGENDA

Group Members:

Haran Alagarajah

Justin Fallis

Abeer Mohammad

Krima Patel

Arifur Rahman

Anh Duc Tran

• Issues the company faces
• Recommendations
• Analysis
• SWOT Analysis
• Porter's Five Forces Model
• Competition
• Sustainability
• Environment/Capabilities
• Alternatives
• Implementation & Issues
• Conclusion

Internal Capabilities:

Current Strategy: Cost Leadership

• simple interface
• few employees
• few servers

Stakeholder's Preferences

Technological resources:

• ASP.NET
• SQL server 2005

Human resources:

Frind and 1 support employee

• User experience most valuable capability

Ability to generate revenue via advertisements

Recommendations:

Frind:

• Low cost
• Efficient Server
• Application Familiarity

Users:

• Control
• More Moderation and better user experience

Advertisers:

• More users
• Greater exposure to their offering

External Environment:

ISSUES

Grow the Business:

• Scale-Out (i.e. addition of more smaller servers that divide tasks)
• Upgrade servers to SQL 2008
• Expand to global markets

-Saturated market

-Different avenues for generating revenues (i.e. advertisements)

-Loyal customer base

• Sustainability
• Competition
• Technological advancement

Implementation

Overview

• Buy additional servers
• Hire customer service personnel
• Specializing by local language
• Region-based advertisement opportunities

Conclusion of Porter's Model

Conclusion:

Markus Frind founded PlentyofFish.com in 2003

One-employee company

Their slogan: "100% free. Put away your credit card."

$10 million in revenue per year

Risks:

Where the industry stands:

Conclusion of SWOT Analysis

• Greater costs
• Potential technical problems
• Altering existing organizational structure

• Intense rivalry in industry
• Low barriers to entry in the market
• High switching costs for customers/users (buyers)
• Low switching costs for advertisers (suppliers)
• Availability of substitutes (i.e. Speed-dating and other matchmaking agencies one can go to in person)

Based on what we discussed, we recommended Global Expansion as a common solution to address existing issues.

Even though, there are elements of risks associated with this recommendation, we expect the company to reap long-term growth benefits.

Thank you for listening :)

• Many threats (i.e. Facebook)
• Opportunity to globally expand
• Would need additional servers/capacity
• Low operating cost & loyal customer base

Sell the Business

Pros:

Enjoy the revenue

Invest somewhere else

Start a new venture

Cons:

Losing viable business

Possibility of continued growth

Cost of updating business to make it sellable

Grow the Business

Alternatives:

Maintain Status Quo

Pros:

• Grow customer base
• Higher traffic and in turn, higher revenues via advertisements

Cons:

• Costs associated with upgrading and possibly adding additional servers
• Resources might not be readily available

• Pros:
• Continue to enjoy revenue with low cost
• Cons:
• Potential to lose market share (i.e. not sustainable)

• Sell the business & Exit the Market
• "Do nothing" - Maintain Status Quo
• Grow the Business:
• Scale-Up or Scale-Out
• Upgrade servers
• Global expansion

Scale-Up vs. Scale-Out

International Expansion

Upgrade Servers?

Pros:

• Greater market share; growth opportunities
• Greater revenues

Cons:

• More personnel required
• Costs & Reduced short term profit
• Failing to adapt to different markets
• Possibility of losing control depending on strategy used (i.e. Transnational)

Pros:

• Better, improved technology
• More efficient
• Better encryption (with SQL 2008)

Cons:

• Costs associated with switching
• Time to learn new system
• Possibility of downtime

Scale-Up: (Single, larger server)

• Pros:
• Less personnel required
• Simple to maintain and operate
• Cons:
• Regular upgrading of hardware
• Added costs

Scale-Out: (several smaller servers; divided tasks)

• Pros:
• Hardware upgrade not required
• Reduced risk of downtime
• Technology does not become obsolete (i.e. you would not be required to replace it every so often)
• Cons:
• Costly
• More employees required to manage
• Might take long to purchase additional equipment