HOWTOGET.HR
KAROLINA URBANIAK
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Essay Scope and Purpose
The purpose of this essay is to introduce an innovative e-business model. I will present the main concept of this service, potential users, the strategic background, marketing and financial aspects. The main purpose is to provide all the necessary information for potential investors and convince them to choose this specific, innovative service. 1.2. Data Sources and Collection Methods As the nature of this project is strictly virtual, internet will be the tool to collect all the necessary data. I will use and analyse some information about similar services to show that there is gap and the example of another countries will show that there is a big demand for such a web page. 1.3. Essay Content and Structure The essay will be divided in few parts- I will introduce the reader to all the aspects of this innovative business model. The first part will be strategic background, after that I will show the detailed description of the model. The next parts will be innovations, finances, clients and partners, associates and competitions, then the technical aspects and marketing. Finally I will describe the mobile and web technologies, show the SWOT analysis, project starting costs and website prototype. 1.4. E-business Model – Short Description Howtoget.hr is a tool for planning travel within the city of Zagreb from point to point using public transport. Service answers the question posed in its title- how to reach the indicated address. It is a source of complete passenger information containing the timetables for all bus and trams stops and information about various types of obstacles in the cities.
2. STRATEGIC BACKGROUND 2.1. Mission The most important is user and its needs- therefore, we take care of the fastest, most convenient access to information that are desired by the consumer.
We are constantly
searching for innovation of our service, we update the data in the shortest possible time to provide the best service. In co-operation with the cities and public transport authorities we are building a platform which every modern city in the twenty-first century should provide for their citizens or tourists.
2.2. Vision In the next 5 years our web page and service will be recognised as the most useful tool to calculate the most convenient journey through biggest cities not only in Croatia but in the whole Balkan area. 2.3. Project Goals The main goals of howtoget.hr is to : -enter into the use of tools that already exist in modern cities in the western countries. A big, capital city like Zagreb should provide their citizens a quick access to information that they can choose in everyday life- how to get to their work/school/home in the most convenient way. - In the twenty first century, century of technology and event faster development of virtual services it is necessary to combine information which can be found via different tools in one, specific service. -On the other hand the trend of healthy lifestyle and preserving our planet will increase and if Croatia would like to decrease pollution and convince their citizen to use more ecological, public transportation- howtoget.hr is the first step. - The tool can also help to personalize the way of transport for users- they can use different means of tarnsport or different routes. - It can also help create a valualble database which can be used by ZET for improving their services for clients. 3. Business Model 3.1. E-business Model – Detailed Description
As I have mentioned before- howtoget.hr is a tool for planning travel within the city of Zagreb from point to point using public transport. Additionally, it will prompt, at what hour should we leave the house, where is the closest stop and calculate the average time of the journey. The service enables you to plan a trip in the "door - to - door" from any point A to any point B, showing episodes of walking, stops: the initial and final, it calculates if (and when) the user should change mean of transport and how
much time it takes. The service is available as a web-based service and application on smartphones. Users interested in traveling urban buses or trams can select different rout options - fast, optimal or convenient. Depending on which option was chosen, the system will show the route that takes the least time (fast) or balanced way, where sometimes you will have to walk (optimal). There is one option (comfortable), which can be useful for older people or those, who does not depend on time, because in this case the system does not care for the duration of the journey, but to get around on foot as little as possible. Additionally, you can check the timetable for the various stops. The service will be available in two languages- Croatian and English. At the moment howtoget.hr operates only in Zagreb but there are advanced plans of widening the market to other big cities in Croatia – Split, Rijeka, Osijek and Zadar. 3.2. E-business Model Values Values of this e-business model are important to all the units of society- people who live in Zagreb and also other Croatian citizens and foreign students and tourists. Zagreb today is not an easy city to travel in for people who did not live here for years. There are no timetables on trams and tram stops, in Tourist Information can not be found any map with buses connection. Howtoget.hr can solve all of this problems- you should simply put the address that you are at and search for the connections. The biggest value of the service is it usefulness in everyday life. On the other hand in can convince people to use alternative methods of transportations and resign from cars that cause severe pollution. 3.3. Project Organization This project could not exist without cooperation with authorities of public transportation. The changes in schedules will be sent to howtoget.hr and provide the most actual data. One team will consist only informatics who will work on technical aspects of creating and maintain the web page. The other one will work on marketing and cooperation with our partners. We will use outsourcing companies for services like accounting. 4. INNOVATIONS 4.1. Innovation List - obstacle detection
- accurate line route - option to prefer a specific mean of transport - accurate time of travel - introducing the webpage in other languages 4.2. Project Innovations – Detailed Description 4.2.1. Innovation 1- OBSTACLE DETECTION In order to provide the most accurate measure of time the service should detect different obstacles, such as water(lakes, rivers) , railroad tracks and most of all- traffic jams. 4.2.2. Innovation 2- ACCURATE LINE ROUTE The real line route is now a little bit different from the proposed ones- now we measure the distance in a straight line, from stop to stop. It can cause some differences in the real time of the journey and time provided for changing the mean of transport, walk to the place of destination etc. 4.2.3. Innovation 3- OPTION TO PREFER A SPECIFIC MEAN OF TRANSPORT The last proposed innovation is type option "Prefer trams" or "avoid buses" so he user could have the best connection in tram + bus journey. Some people prefer a specific mean of transport and in order to provide them the possibility of choosing the most conviniet way of travel for them we will enable this option in the future. 4.2.4. Innovation 4- ACCURATE TIME OF TRAVEL Choosing an option where we would avoid the most intensive traffic will provide the fastest journey routes for people who are in hurry. In the nearest future all the trams and buses should have installed GPS devices and then the signal could automatically transfer the data to the howtoget.hr’s database. 4.2.5. Innovation 5- INTRODUCING THE WEBPAGE IN OTHER LANGUAGES In order to provide a better service for our foreign users we plan to introduce the menu in other langiages- croatian and english is just a start. As statistics showes Zagreb is visited also by tourist especially from german italian and spanish speaking countries so we want to allow them to use our tool.
5. REVENUE MODELS 5.1. Revenue Model List - subscription for the service - income from advertisements on the web page - funding from the city - after joining UE- from Operational Programme (structural funds) - donations 5.2. Revenue Models – Detailed Description
5.2.1. Revenue Model 1- SUBSRIPTION Subscription will be the great way for financing our project. Generally users with internet connection could access the web page for free, but as application for smartphones it would cost a small, yearly fee. Additionally- people who want to use a version without any advertisements could have such an option for a similar, small yearly subscription. 5.2.2. Revenue Model 2- ADVERTISEMENTS The most common and efficient way of funding the service- the free access to the web page is related with the necessity of add’s existence. It will be a very attractive web page for promotion as it will be used for a big amount of citizens of the city. 5.2.3. Revenue Model 3- CITY FUNDING We will be working in cooperation with the City Hall and ZET (Zagrebački Električni Tramvaj) therefore we can apply for additional money because the service will be in use for all the citizens. 5.2.4. Revenue Model 4- UE STRUCTURAL FUNDING The problem with UE funding is the fact that services that wish to obtain it should have at the beginning their own funds to finance the investment, as the Union gives back the money that
is already spent. Any company can get funding for new e-services that will serve the public through its innovation. Our project meets all the coditions. 5.2.2. Revenue Model 5- DONATIONS Because we will become a recognisable webpage in short time there will be many articles about it in the press- if a company/person would like to offer us some money we will write about it in special thanks for helpin us modernising the City of Zagreb.
6. CLIENTS 6.1. Main Clients - permanent city residents - temporary city residents - tourists - ZET - City Hall 6.2. Main Clients – Detailed Description 6.2.1. Client 1- PERMANENT CITY RESIDENTS At the moment only people who are constantly using public transportation do not have any problem with choosing the most convenient mean of transport. Those who use it only from time to time (for example- normally are using a car o bicycle) will encounter many difficulties. 6.2.1. Client 1- TEMPORARY CITY RESIDENTS People who have just arrived to town (in search for jobs or just begun their studies) do not know how the public transportation in the city works so we want to provide them with best information.
6.2.3. Client 3- TOURISTS
Tourist – especially from abroad, who do not speak Croatian language at all- will get a great tool which will help them ride around the city without such big troubles as nowadays. Howtoget.hr will be also available in English in order to help them to get from one indicated address to another. 6.2.4. Client 4- ZET ZET will send us all the necessary information but our company will be the one to gather it and create a database. It could use it after for many purposes. 6.2.5. Client 5- CITY HALL City Hall is one of the clients because it will use the database and tools to provide a better tourist infrastructure. Better infrastructure means more tourists and that menas more money to develop the city of Zagreb.
6.3. Markets and Website Language At beginning the target market is only Croatia, but in the future it will be the whole Balkan area. The service will be available in two languages- Croatian and English. 6.4. Client Registration There is no need for any registration- free access to the database is one of the key features of the
service.
6.5. Registered Client Benefits OR Direct and Indirect Benefits of Free Content For those users who had applied for the subscription – the service free of advertisements.
7. PARTNERS 7.1. Main Suppliers and Associates The main supplier for the service will be Zagrebački Električni Tramvaj (ZET) 7.2. Supplier and Associate Description 7.2.1. Supplier and Associate 1- ZET
ZET is a branch of the Zagreb Holding specialized for passenger transportation in the city of Zagreb and one part of the Zagreb County. Zagreb. It will provide the web page with all the necessary data about the transportation. CITY HALL - not only provides us financial support but also introduces howtoget.hr at its webpage HŽ PUTNIČKI PRIJEVOZ is a company with which we could cooperate- its main acctivites are public railway transport, public transport of passengers in domestic and international rail traffic, public transport of passengers in domestic and international road trafficand other transport supporting activities. TOURIST INFORMATION CENTER - especially the one on Trg Bana J.Jelacica which could inform tourists who seaking for information about existance of our webpage. AKZ- Autobusni Kolodvor Zagreb- in coopoeration with it and its Tourist Information Center we could leave there our flyers and information about howtoget.hr Zračna luka Zagreb - similar to AKZ but for those tourist who come to Zagreb by plane Glavni Kolodvor Zagreb- for tourists travelling by train AdriaGUIDE Zagreb is a Travel Guide which you can load into the Garmin GPS device. This guide contains useful information about city and it’s used for guiding tourists and other users to them interesting points of the city of Zagreb. It is a product of Navigo Sistems Company Ltd. which is the general distributer of Garmin GPS navigation devices for Croatia. This is an electronic travel guide that allows its users a detailed, easily, quickly and plainly touring to the various and interesting destinations in the city of Zagreb. Every point contains text (point description), photography, location with the exact coordinates, contact information (address, phone number, fax number, website and e-mail address), and other necessary information to make user easier to find an interesting destination for sightseeing and to receive necessary information about them Zagreb Card - Travelers who are staying for several days should consider buying the Zagreb Card. The card offers unlimited travel on public transport in Zagreb, discounts at virtually all of the city's museums, reduced prices at many restaurants, shops, and service providers and many other concessions. There will be information on the card about existance of our page. http://www.zagreb-touristinfo.hr/?l=e&id=35 - Zagreb Tourist Board in Croatia.
8. COMPETITION 8.1. Main Competitors There do not exist right now any competitors- the schedule can be found only on ZET web page and since we will be working in cooperation with Zagreb Holding we could not consider them as a competitor. www.buscroatia.com-as they call themselves- "We are a group of volunteers, working with tourism in Croatia. Through the many bus related question we have received from tourist from all over the world, we noticed that finding a Croaitan bus timetables on other languages than Croatian, was not an easy task, (partly impossible) so we decided to create www.buscroatia.com to finally make it easy for tourist to find information about buses in Croatia on varius languages". They work also in Zagreb. http://www.mydestination.com/croatia/usefulinfo/6174517/croatia-by-bus- it allows to buy tickets
of
different
bus
companies
such
us
Autotrans,Autopoduzece
Imotski,Brioni,Cazmatrans,Croatia Bus, Panturis, Samoborcek- some of them operate also in Zagreb and surroundings. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g294453-c138045/Croatia:Bus.Timetables.Stations.html similar to mydestination.com http://www.croatiabus.hr/index.php?lang=hr- similar to the previous ones. http://www.akz.hr/default.aspx?id=260 - the wep Radio Taxi Zagreb - the biggest taxi company in Zagreb: it is sometimes cheaper to use a taxi therefore people will not use public transportation and there is no use for our services 8.2. Similarities and Differences with Existing Projects in the Market There is no threat for us in the Croatian market but there already exist similar projects around the world which we can consider as competition. London's very informative website could serve as a model- even the reduced version in 16 languages features a fully translated timetable and tariff information with searching options. Another examples of good functioning are Prague and Vienna. All the companies that provide information for these cities have expansion plans which means they can become a threat to our projects.
8.3. Project Competitive Advantage According to the report Testing local public transport systems in major European cities published by http://www.eurotestmobility.com Zagreb is on the last place in rank (considering transparent transportation information). Apart from Ljubljana in Slovenia these are the only two cities in the test that failed to provide timetable information on the Internet with a route search function. The fact that there does not exist such a service yet is a big advantage for our project. 9. WEB HOSTING AND DOMAIN 9.1. Project Web Hosting As there are some limitations in free Web Hosting. The best option for our service seems to be VPS hosting (Virtual Private Server) which is- according to definition-
specifically
designed for business oriented webmasters in need of a more comprehensive solution for multiple websites that are constantly expanding. VPS comes in all shapes and sizes that are perfect for an online business owner with a large number of web sites or a single site that is experiencing lots of daily traffic. http://webhostinggeeks.com/ offers such a possibility. 9.2. Project Web Domain Because at the moment there expansion on foreign markets is only in plan, for our purpose the domain .hr seems to be enough. Nonetheless we are taking into consideration changing the domain’s name for howtoget.eu.
10.
CONTENT
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM
10.1. Possible CMS for Project 1. Joomla is considered to be a more advanced system, but it can be handled after a short training. The model is a little bit similar to working in Microsoft Word. Systems s still being developed and fully free. 2.MODx like TYPO3 the system not suitable for novice webmasters. Its operation requires an extensive knowledge of programming. The system allows free editing if you have the experience 3. Drupal is an interesting hybrid, including it is also extended by a system of blogs, forums, newsletters and photo gallery. Although valued for its functionality, is also criticized by expert webmasters for having too poor functionality, and for beginners- too difficult. Also, this system is free and is still being developed. 10.2. Best CMS for Project - Description
After creating the web page it would not be that difficult to manage it- the only task (apart from implementing some innovations) is to put in the database the newest data- it can be done also by the less expirenced workers which lower the costs of salaries. That is why we will use a simple CMS - Joomla. It is a second popular one in the whole word (11% of users). It allows to publish any type of content (text, images, graphics, documents, multimedia). It is also a free software , so we do not have to incur expenditure on expensive commercial software.
11. MARKETING PLAN 11.1. Project Marketing Plan Because howtoget.hr will be used only by those who have access to internet we will definitely concentrate only on promotion via internet. It is a big opportunity for our company that we are working in cooperation with ZET and the Mayor because on these two big webpages (www.zet.hr and www.zagreb.hr there will be information and link to our page. We will use also Google Adword, online banner advertisements, social networking and more traditional ways of marketing- Tourist Information Center, flyers, etc. 11.2. Project Key words how to get is the name of web page which also includes the key words. The others are public communication, trams and buses and Zagreb. 11.3. Google AdWords ad
Budget: because google AdWords is not the most important marketing tool for us we decided to pay the minimal amount - 1 HRK per day
11.4. Social Networks Advertising
We will actively use facebook fanpage and Twitter to promote our web page. 11.4. Marketing Plan Table 01.05.2013- start of marketing campain: information on zet.hr and zagreb.hr about introducing the howtoget.hr on June 1st 15.05.2013 - start of Google AdWords and online banners advertisments on portals of our associations and partners. 01.06.2013 - start of howtoget.hr, informations on Twitter and Facebook, articles about webpage on news in all the portals that have connection to the City Hall.
13. WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES 13.1. Project Facebook Profile
13.2. Project Author LinkedIn Profile
13.3. Project Tweeter Profile
14. PROJECT SWOT ANALYSIS STRENGHTS the only webpage of that kind on croatian market cooperation with ZET and Mayor webpages like that already succeeded in this form in other cities fully developed business model plan tourist's need for this kind of information
OPPORTUNITIES niche on market changing the form of webpage to the more fitting to Zagreb if needed young, energetic team using GPS devices in trms and buses using marketing in cooperation with ZET
WEAKNESSES
problems with access to newest data problems with counting the time of journey lack of experienced team problems with reaching the older generation which does not use internet webpage is not yet recognisable THREATS similar webpages can appear on market could not work in the exact form as in other cities in Europe no need for this kind of services for citizens- ZET webpage will be enough for them no need for tourists- they'll prefer other means of transport (by foot, taxi, etc) similar webpages with more experience from other countries could have competitve advance 15. PROJECT STARTING COSTS
16. WEBSITE PROTOTYPE 16.1. Project Website Structure
16.2. Project Website Structure Description The user can use markon the map the destinotions or put the adress/name of a place he wants to get (for example a museum or a pub) and where does he start the journey. He/She can also choose the specific date,hour , various ways (fast one, the one that allows you not to walk too much etc), means of transport (buses, trams, trains) or prefered number of line. The website can be find under link http://karolina-urbaniak.wix.com/howtoget.
17. CONCLUSION Howtoget.hr will be a tool for planning travel within the city of Zagreb from point to point using public transport. Service answers the question posed in its title- how to reach the indicated
address.
Because there is right now no real competition for our company we belive in our success. Such tools already exist in all big european cities and are very popular so we are sure that it will also be popular in Zagreb and all the region in the next few years.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Karolina Urbaniak Kościuszki 147/2, 50-440 Wrocław (Poland) +48663934914 karolina-urbaniak@hotmail.com http://karolina-urbaniak.wix.com/howtoget
JOB APPLIED FOR
WORK EXPERIENCE 2012 – 2013 Sassa Mode Poland, Wrocław (Poland) training in the administration department 2010 German Cultural and Social Society in Wroclaw, Wrocław (Poland) writing applications and organizing projects for the Ministry of Interior in Germany ("Konsolidierung der Begegnungsstaetten") 2009 Union of Youth German Minority, Opole (Poland) leading a SLGM- training (Young Leaders of German Minority) EDUCATION AND TRAINING 2008 – 2011
Bachelor degree Wrocław University of Economics, Wrocław (Poland)
2012 – 2013
Master degree Wrocław University of Economics, Wrocław (Poland)
2013 Univeristy of Zagreb, Zagreb (Croatia)
PERSONAL SKILLS Mother tongue(s)
Other language(s)
Polish
UNDERSTANDING
SPEAKING
WRITING
Listening
German
C2
Reading
Spoken interaction
C2
Spoken production
C2
DSD II
English
C1
C1
C1
FCE
Spanish
B2
B2
Levels: A1/A2: Basic user - B1/B2: Independent user - C1/C2: Proficient user Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
Computer skills
Microsoft Windows, Office
B2