First Iteration Report Completed

The following report is a document that is used as a means of formal reporting on the status or/and the progress of the master thesis to key stakeholders, including the academic supervisor, industrial supervisor, and the examiner.

As stated in the “Project Plan”, the thesis work is composed of two iterations and the first of them is completed as of today. So this report includes reflections upon the completed iterations and suggestions for the upcoming iteration.

First Iteration Report

Forteks Implementation

It’s a great pleasure for me to announce that every thing that has been listed in the Short-Term Action Plan has been accomplished on time !

So now, you can check the new face of the Forteks WebShop. The great thing is that we have done all the settings so that the Forteks.se domain points directly to the WebShop. Thanks to the SEO Add-On packet from Textalk, now we are using static page names, which will let us have better PageRank in the Google Search results. Static page names means that now we will have pages called “Amx530.html” instead of “article.php?id=31434” which does not give a clue about the page content.

I have also added “Google Analytics” code to every single page on the system so now we will be able to have advanced statistics about the users and their behaviours.

The next step is to write the “First Iteration Report” which will summarize all the actions that have been carried out and revise the strategy. Meanwhile, I will also work on the Google AdWords Campaign and “Landing Pages”.

Situation Analysis Report

This week, I have been writing my “Situation Analysis Report” which will be a part of the “First Iteration Report” according to my plan.  So far the outline of the report seems to be like this:

Executive Summary
Company Introduction

• Background
• Products and Services
• Competitors

Target Market

• Customer Profiles

Positioning

• Workshops
• Car Dealers

E-Marketing Goals

• E-Marketing SWOT Analysis

Current E-Marketing Methods

• Websites

• Analysis of the Websites

• Appearance
• Structure/Navigation
• Content
• Search Engine Optimization
• Marketing Communications
• Statistics
• Conclusions

Advertisements

• Blocket.se
• Google (adwords)

Abbreviations

I have been reviewing the literature and this seems to be the best plan for me as I will be able to “take a picture” after I analyze everything that is stated on this outline.  While writing the report, I needed Rogerio’s (CEO of Forteks AB) input on some issues. He really liked the “Decisions Positioning Statement Tool” that we have learned during our master studies. (See Table below)

For	Car Dealers	Workshops	Workshops
Who	Don’t want to lose money when buying or selling cars	Want to create new sources of revenue	Need advanced repair manuals to perform services in all car brands
The	AMX530	AMX530	Vivid WorkshopData
Is a	Small and fast fault code scanner with convenient report printing	Small and fast fault code scanner with convenient report printing and complete gas emissions testing	Modern and up-to-date electronic repair manual
That	Provides information about real car conditions instead of traditional visual/external inspections	Allow workshops to scan every car in their garages instead of only occasionally which increases the chance of finding issues that need to be repaired	Contains all the essential information for repairing and maintenance services
Unlike	Cheap and bad quality scanners,	High-end equipment which can make complex analyses but is not practical for daily use	Autodata, the traditional player
Our Product	Contains specific manufacturers fault codes and allow professional real time emissions testing.	Allows easy report print outs that can be provided to customers, improving the professionalism and credibility of the workshops	Allows 4 users with one license, provides a better user interface and more graphical and drawings rather than text

The tool that we have used above helps the manager state the product’s position in the customers’ mind. In today’s me-too market place, it is crucial to position the products in order to find the right message that will be conveyed to the respective customers. So it was really great to stimulate at least the thinking behind the messages.

Then we have decided that  “focusing on sales (building Internet sales of a product or increasing the frequency of sales from regular customers)” will be the key e-marketing goal of all online activities. Meaning that, it is not awareness raising or internal efficiency but sales !

The E-Marketing SWOT Analysis revealed that, we have many strengths especially because of the fact both the CEO and his partner are ex-Ericsson employees and have a very succesfull career in IT-sector. On the other hand, the competitors are more experienced in the automobile industry. One of the clear opportunities is that there is not much information about EOBD,OBD and scanners online in Swedish. Creating online content can make Forteks’ website a reference point for the information seekers.  We also found that there is a spot to be filled in the online space. Not many companies are using e-commerce to sell similar products.

We have also set some rough estimations about e-marketing goals and written them down. Seems like, things are shaping in my mind better after a week of hard work. I hope that I will finish this report next week.