Scenario 2

Scenario2

Sabancı University is an institution that provides higher education in Tuzla, İstanbul. The university consists of huge number of students and employees, at the same time the size of the campus enables accommodation for lots of people. In order to guarantee people’s health, Sabancı University is planning to cooperate with a healthcare service provider for the campus. As a result, they open a bid to be able to receive the offers. According to the university’s provisions, the agreement will last for 5 years. They will announce the bid via their e-bid account. This declaration will be charged with a fee, and the fee will go to GOB team. The team will also earn money according to the attention to the bid, that is to say, the more companies apply for the bid, the more GOB team will earn credits from the bidder. As a result, the university will choose the lowest or at least the best offer among the others. What are beneficial for Sabancı University to choose this online platform are that it will reduce bribes and frauds, it will provide more profit because of the increasing rivalry, it will be more trustable against the disrepute companies, and also the university will practically reach the conclusion faster and easier. 

H.Bahar Özer & Bilal Kuru)

Business Model Canvas - version 3

Interview with General manager of Nova Yapı. ( Cem OMEROGLU)

For the group project, I made an interview with Hasan Dalgıç, who is the general manger of Nova Yapı.  I mentioed him about our project and asked him what would be the advantages and disadvantages of  this sort of aproject for their business.  He told me that for their sector, there would be huge advantages of this project.  First of all, bribery and intermediary would be removed out of their way and this is important because in our country goverment biddings are won by certain dominant companies through bribery.  These companies get the information from people who are related to the bidding and use them for their sake.  This type of a project will raise the number of the attendants to the biddings and the small companies could get the chance to attend these biddings.  Thus, the competition between the companies will raise and accordingly the prices will decrease.  At the same time, this project will inform the public about the bidding process.

Interview with Suleyman Kuru

Interview with Süleyman Kuru

            He has a company that provides maintenance and repair services for schools and some institutions of public utility. That is to say, he generally needs to bid so as to take responsibility of these services.

            I informed him about our business model canvas and shared our thoughts with him. He liked this and found it feasible. He said that thanks to this system, time concept may be removed and everything may be clear and transparent. Moreover, recycling time may be reduced. Many companies would like to use this system, and people can find myriad of options. Also, ruinous prices guarantee can be provided for the people who really want to seek differentiated options.

            He also recommended that we can take money from our customers for subscription and periodical subscriptions fees like Digitürk. You pay money first, and after subscription you also pay money monthly or yearly. Thanks to this, you can increase your revenue, he said.

            He also added and recommended that you should choose and hire qualified and well-experienced employees, and so you can reach more people and companies.

BİLAL KURU (20703859)

Interview with Onur Özer

I could find a chance to talk with Onur Özer, my brother, and I told briefly about our business model canvas. My brother graduated from METU, Civil Engineering in 2004, and he used to work in private company as civil engineer for that time. His company establishes hydro-electrical power plant by bidding.

            He liked our business and this application. This online system can be fairer than today’s bidding system in the world. He said that I remember that I heard as if this system was established, and everyone may like this because sometimes rig and bribe can be conspired to the bidding. He emphasized that this system can be applicable for only private sector, not governmental works. People can find more options and appropriate prices for what they need to buy. Moreover, he mentioned that the system and application have to be upgraded from time to time. With the help of upgrades, people may find information about the biddings. So this can also increase rivalry and decrease the prices.

            I asked him that how can we gain more customers and how can we address more customers. He replied that online social network, newspapers, and even public surveys may be beneficial for this aim.

            My brother and I couldn’t go deep into this business model because of his business travel. He will come back within a few days. We will talk about our business model deeply and find more opinions as soon as possible.

H. Bahar Özer

Scenario 1

Intel is a worldwide company which has an headquarter in İstanbul. The company outsource catering services for its employees during lunch time. Since the headquarter has more than 100 employees and the agreement will last 3 years, the cost will be considerably high and they want to open bid to allow offers from different catering services. Intel has e-bid account and announces the bid. Intel just paid for 2 year membership and pays nothing more. Near announcement, it declares list of conditions and needs which is not visible to everyone. The catering services has also accounts to enter bids. After announcement, a notification will be sent to them. If they are not willing to open bid, they will not need to pay anything for membership to our web based application. However, to see the list of conditions, to enter the bid and to offer price to Intel, they have to pay the organizers of the bid, which is GOB Team. Intel will put a bottom price to say us that "If you application manages to get offers lower than the bottom price, we will pay you x% of the difference." All companies pays for entering bid will look for earlier prices and conditions from our database to determine the offering. Intel will also look for the ealier prices to plan expenses and to determine the bottom price. At the end, the ones that offers the lowest price/performance will get the bid.

Efekan Güven

About Scenarios..

We are going to write scenarios of usage of our product. Those fictional scenarios will helps us to tell about our product to interviewees, to the friends, to the followers of our blog and to the classmates. Anyone who listens it will be able to understand the product, the usage of it, the aim of its creation, the value propositions and the revenue channels with ease. Let me create the first scenario..

Business Model Canvas - version 2

Business Model Canvas - version 1

Interview with Carl Greppin (Arda Unal)

I am glad that I could find a chance to talk with Carl Greppin on 21 June. He used to work for Free Markets which is acquired in 2004 by Ariba which is a SAP company. In other words, company provides software solutions and services. We had our conversation via Skype which, I believe, is the one of the best ways of communication, if you cannot find a chance to talk in-person.

I have sent our business canvas prior to our conversation. He liked it, found it very organized and even asked whether we have done it for class or we are trying to start our own business. It has been so beneficial that I could walk through our business canvas with such a experienced entrepreneur.

First, he has informed me about the business briefly and advantages of the online auction system such as lower prices and faster process. He mentioned about the criteria which is generally different for each market. 1) If there is enough amount being purchased to make the suppliers interested. For instance, for manufacturing it is 0.5-1 million dollars to be attractive. 2) You need competitive suppliers, at least 2. 3) You need to describe exactly what you need. 4) You need a committed buyer willing to give information about what they want to buy. Advantages of online bidding according to him: Generally lower prices and reduced cycle time.

He expressed that since people are very familiar with online bidding software and it is usually pretty easy to use, it is hard to differentiate it. They expect cheaper prices for their basic needs. At the beginning, the customers wanted to see different options, but now cheaper prices and usability are more important.

I learned that the most of their customers come from referrals. They come from people who recommend them, almost all from recommendations. He thinks that the best way to communicate with them is the face to face meetings, so they travel. Sometimes they talk via Skype or phone. They usually do not prefer e-mails, since it is difficult to express all details and small points.
They have a partnership with Ariba. Ariba provides the software and they provide the service on that software.
He thinks that the most important key resource in this business is the people with knowledge, specialists. For that reason, employees are the most expensive cost unsurprisingly.
He mentioned about different models on the revenue stream. The subscription model is the most preferred one as we chose. However, they pay different price with respect to number of people use the software in the company unlike our model that charges for each bid. Extra prices for each bid may limit the flexibility of the company that makes the bid.

In addition to these, I asked his advice on entrepreneurship. He gives very valuable advices such as keeping the costs low(inexpensive office), specialty, small thing that they are very good at and gaining experience in a big company first.

It has been very beneficial and fun to have a conversation with Carl Greppin.

Arda UNAL

Interview with Tayfun Er (Efekan Güven)

I can say that my close friend, Tayfun, was a good choice to ask about our project. He currently works in IBM and worked in KocSistem for 1.5 year. His advices may change and resolves so many issue of our service. The rest of the writing is what I learned from him:

Michael said shrink your target market and it seems we have to do it by excluding governmental organization. They cannot use any application rather than government provides with Kamu İhale Kurumu (Public Bid Organization). It is an organization to manage government bids. If we cannot work with government, then who else we can sell out product? The answer is companies. The side of commercial organization are still empty in terms of e-bid web based applicaitons.

We could create side incomes by taking money for entering bid; since they already pay for it without e-bid application. additionally, we led companies to set a bottom price. By this method, if our applications manages to get lower than that price, we are going to get some percentage of the difference between bottom price and actual price. Last but not least, we may decide taking money for subscription of the firms that enter the bid.

We were planning to take money for upgrades and maintainance of application. But; It would be meaningless since the application will be installed to our cloud servers. We should not discourage customers with that additional price. They will just buy membership and hence their links to reach application.

So many points of this interview have to be taken seriously, Thanks Tayfun :)

Efekan GÜVEN