Summary and conclusion

This thesis preliminarily explores an elder care startup service model, marketing strategy, and finance calculation skills. Some articles could be further explored and discussed in the future. The results of this thesis may provide an example for the entrepreneurs to organize their home care business plan and use the financial formula to predict cash flow. In the following paragraphs, we will try to summarize the results and conclude the findings.

6.1 Analysis result description

According to the statistics, it shows that ratio of people aged over 65 will increase from 9.0% in 2002 to 10.4% in 2011, and then it will be a steep ascend to 29.8% in 2051. Due to more and more aged population, workers percentage is decreasing, and taking care aging population becomes more and more expansive in the future. Only few people, especially the rich can enjoy the benefits of servant service due to high service fees. Remote monitoring and quick response service can be used to reduce elders caring cost and medical treatment. Besides, a wide range of health and social services will gradually be delivered at home to recovering, disabled, chronically ill, or terminally ill people. Everyday health will be monitored through everyday devices, everything has a touch point connected to everything else, every device has a chip, and every chip has a radio transmitter attached. Hence, providing health monitoring device and quick response service will have a lot of business opportunities in home care markets.

Yet, few companies can provide such service due to long development period and huge investment. Yet, competition in oligopoly market is relatively less than that in other industries, so it may produce extra benefits. Therefore, elders care industry will provide an excellent opportunity for small and medium size enterprises to play some role in it. New business opportunity awaits further exploration of the entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs entering this field

need to integrate several technologies into a system. The tiny SOC sensor could potentially open new markets for proactive computing. Communications technologies have a big impact on future applications for healthcare, agriculture, public safety, transportation and environmental management. When alerts occur, quick response caring service can be used to assist the elders to solve their physical problems. Hence, elders care service may assist the elders to solve their problems when living alone and keep dignity when facing their children. Hence, economical service procedure and practical business plan determine whether an enterprise can survive in elder caring field. In chapters 3 and 4, a simplified business model is used to calculate the net present value of this business in the following 5 years after investment. The revenue is predicted and the net present values in different profit margins are calculated using scenario analysis and sensitivity test. According to the simulation, attracting elders to adopt this service is the most important goal of service based enterprises. The SWOT analysis, 5 forces analysis, and competitive advantage analysis of Michael Porter are also used to estimate the environment climate and analyze the opportunity of this business. Although low ROI ratio caused some troubles in management enterprise cash flow, leveraging value chain enterprises resources will decrease the investment. Keeping at least 30% gross margin and creating extra value are still the most essential core competence of service based enterprise. Finally, the financial values of these 7 medical enterprises in 2003 are calculated. We found that the enterprises which create extra value return rate focused on specific medical device manufacture. Hence, creating core competing advantage and maximizing the market share will keep this business profitable.

6.2 Conclusion

The criteria for the successful development of ageing care startups include matching clients’ needs, reliable service procedure, proper marketing strategy and financial management capability. Among them, developing reliable service

flow seems to be the most important concerns of elders which create extra value.

Technology development seems cost dearly from client’s pocket. Aids require longer time to develop their technology. Hence, financial support becomes a major driving force for most of the enterprises to grow up. Yet, enterprise should not focus on low ROI product development unless they can leverage enough free resources. Besides, manufacture spends a lot of resources and it takes time to manage workers, inventories, raw materials ordering and product logistics. Hence, leveraging existing enterprises production capability and focusing more on service items design might be the survival strategy for small and medium size enterprises. Alliance and technology transfer from existing labs will save time and reduce the development risks. Finally, we believe home care or health care device enterprises need to find certain niche market. They need to keep gross margins higher than other industries. Besides, they should have patents to protect their IP in order to avoid competition. Finally, for keeping enough cash flow, enterprise should focus on few product development and marketing. Manufacture is not the core competitive advantage of the aging care enterprise; they should leverage the existing sources unless revenue reaches break even point.

6.3 Research contribution and suggestion

Internet and globalization make most of the enterprises’ profit shrink rapidly. Hence, most of the manufacturers in Taiwan have no choice but move assembly lines to China in order to reduce mass production cost. Propose a service based business model to create value may provide an option for such enterprises to stay in Taiwan and find new development opportunity. This thesis describes elders care service flow chart, service models, bottleneck, promotion 4P strategy, and value creation strategy. Then, this thesis provides an example for service based enterprise to define their business scope, business plan and

predicts pro forma financial report. Besides, SWOT analysis, competitive advantage analysis provides an example for them to find their positions in the value chain. And also, this thesis also studies enterprises how to calculate financial performance and financial health. Finally, we sincerely hope all of the suggestions and information in this thesis will assist the government and the individuals with some directions in establishing elders care service business.

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