MindValue is a start-up project in Sweden, providing e-business solutions and facilitating e-commerce by user identification. MindValue is in its start-up stage, which means that it has its own services and products in production and legally exists.
9.1. History Brief
MindValue started formally as a project at Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship, in 2006, by Robert Bengtsson and Andreas Sigurdsson, who both were Master graduate students of entrepreneurship by then. During the year of 2006, four computer programmers have been requited who develops the e-business tools of MindValue. Currently, MindValue have a few customers, the company is expanding fast, and are now on its stage to bring in venture capital, in order to grow further.
9.2. Business plan brief
9.2.1. The Problem
The increasing supply of Internet services, e-mail clients, web shops, and web portals has led to an increasing amount of log-ins for common people and for professionals. Today
authentication and identification of different e-services takes place with a large number of user names and passwords. The trend shows on an increase of information on the Internet and login services, and this causes trouble for the users. The phenomena result in the use of easy passwords and log-ins in order to remember them all. Passwords are both good and bad. They are good, since they give the user an integrity protection, but from a commercial point of view, they are bad, because they bring an extra moment when using e-services or e-commercial services on the Internet. This extra moment causes websites up to 70 percent loss of users and potential customers. Passwords are forgotten, and paths to certain websites, are easy forgotten too. This causes hurdles in the reach of websites, which is one measure of a websites
progress.
9.2.2. The Solution
MindValue’s solution to the problem in 9.2.1 is a personal portal of every user that collects the users all login information and passwords in one place. This system makes it possible to customize the portal after all personal preferences, and keeps track on sites that match the
personal preferences. This technique is not unique; many intranets work in a similar way, and the concept is called Single-Sign-On (SSO). MindValue differentiates from competitors in their revenue models.
MindValue has identified customer utility in three different segments: the user, the member portal, and the e-shop.
Table 9.1. Identified customer utility of three segments
The user The member portal The e-shop
• One place on Internet where the majority of all actions and events can be managed.
• Easier and faster log-in.
• Easier navigation on Internet
• Better updates thru action reports
• Easier new registration on portals and e-services.
• Easier registration for new members.
• Easy to log in.
• Better possibility to reach the users again thru the action report system.
• Opportunity of e-commerce.
• Higher ROI because of direct log-in in the e-shop
• Product offerings can be customized to specific user.
The benefits from the user standpoint are foremost, referring to figure 9.1, one place on Internet where the majority of all actions and events can be managed, which facilitates simplicity. Simplicity is a property MindValue is striving for in order to facilitate a high number of log-ins (MindValue, Company data, 2006). With easier personal administration, the value added is time saving and comfortable navigation on Internet, still with high-grade security where that is needed.
Every portal or community, which requires personal log-ins, is benefiting from an easier log-in. Portals visited, who requires members does not venture to be forgotten, which many portals suffer of today, popular sites included (MindValue, Company data, 2006).
E-shops and other e-commerce operations are benefiting from MindValue’s solution, since the rate of reach will be maintained. The purchasing procedure is faster and easier, why customers are motivated to purchases.
9.3. Strategic group affiliation of MindValue
Analyzing companies and businesses requires systematic techniques in order to come up with adequate comparable data. The use of strategic groups makes it possible to separate different firm’s operations in order to compare the essence of every business. Porter’s (1980) definition of a strategic group is “the group of firms in an Industry following the same or similar
strategy along the strategic dimensions.” Strategic groups are defined as sets of firms in an industry who compete with each other on the basis of similar combinations of scope and resource commitments (Cool & Schendel, 1988).
The outline of MindValues operations is: MindValue is an e-business company, facilitating e-commerce and providing profitable partnerships with identification and IT-security
solutions on Internet (company information, 2006). The outline puts MindValue clearly in the e-business segment, building systems and facilitating e-commerce. The segment of e-business is enormous though, and has to be divided more, to be able to analyze specific firms within it.
Companies that traditionally build systems and providing profitable solutions, are all from giants like Oracle, an enterprise software company, Accenture, an management and
IT-consultant firm, Microsoft, a software company, etc, to small and medium sized enterprises like MindValue (company facts). To be able to analyze the right comparables, it is necessary to examine the firm’s business model.
9.3.1. Mindvalue – Portal, Community or E-tailor?
It is very difficult to define a firm distinct, especially in the world of new economy. Looking at companies as Google and Yahoo, who started as a single search engines and made business out of one single function. Today Google and Yahoo, definitely are the biggest search engines of the world (Cooke, 2006). Both firms have expanded their business rapidly with a wide range of other services as well, but can still be considered as search engines. Search engines are great examples of portals, and gateways to Internet. This is also a clear example of the intermediate function, helping web users to find special content.
MindValue have a portal function, which would place the company in the group of portals.
However, MindValue also provides e-tailing and community services in order to attract users, which is superficially close to those strategic groups as well. MindValue is also software developers, which makes it even harder to be distinct in the group affiliation of MindValue.