Introduction
The aim of this business plan is to provide direction in coming up with a new business and also to assist in obtaining funds for the business. The name of the business is going to be “Integrated Chinese Oversea Student Services Program”. This business is going to get involved in providing specific services to the new Chinese students taking their studies in Canada. This business is going to capitalize on the opportunity that is presented in this industry. There exist a large number of Chinese students who are going to take their studies in Canada. Yet, those agencies that provide the services to these students are not providing specific services to the new Chinese students entering Canada. This is a problem that is going to be solved by this company.
A strong management team is going to be put in place to ensure the success of the operations. A marketing plan is going to be put in place that will serve to attract more customers; offering high-quality services at an affordable price. The propriety position will be set up to ensure the company is ahead of the competitors in the industry.
The initial investment to be made will total up to ten million US dollars. This amount will be used to set up the necessary structures and be used to finance the labor required. More so, this amount will be used to finance the marketing activities such as advertisement and personal selling. This amount will also be spent on carrying out further research to ensure the stability of the business. The expected profit in the first year is three million US dollars and this amount is expected to double in the second year and even go higher in the subsequent years.
Company description
This is a new business that is going to be set up. The name of the business is going to be “Integrated Chinese Oversea Student Services Program”. This business will involve offering specific services to the new Chinese students who will be studying in Canada. The new students coming from China to study in Canada have lacked specific services that need to be offered to them to ensure their comfortable stay.
The activities that this company is going to engage in include; providing one on one academic program consulting that will be provided by the current students to the new students, offering assistance in regard to the process of admission, the acceptance of the offer and in the engagement of the process of the application for the visa. More so, the company is going to offer services in relation to the flight’s pick-up as well as the students’ settlement. These students will also have to be provided with services that are related to landed inquiries which will involve their accommodation, using the phones, how to operate the bank accounts, how to obtain and use driving licenses and how these students can obtain permits to engage in working part-time to get some extra cash for their comfortable stay.
This company is going to set up offices both in China and Canada. The headquarters of the company will be in Canada and the company will be headed by a CEO and under him, there will be managers that will be in charge of specific services that will be offered.
Services (Product)
New Chinese students who come to Canada are not accessible to some specific services that can enable them to undertake their studies in a comfortable manner but rather take too much time to adapt to the new environment (Chen, 2007). This may in turn affect negatively their academic performance. The existing agencies do not offer all the necessary services to Chinese students. This business is going to offer these specific services to the new Chinese students while they are still in China and also at the time they come to stay in Canada while taking their studies.
The existing companies that are in charge of offering specific services to the Chinese students who are to carry out their studies in Canada have not served these students to a satisfactory level. This brings about an opportunity that needs to be capitalized on. Setting up this new business will have to take the advantage of the weaknesses that have been portrayed by the companies or agencies that are participating in offering services to the Chinese students who undertake their studies in Canada.
This business is going to offer services to new Chinese students to ensure that these students do not encounter any problems or even not problems in the course of their undertakings to pursue studies in Canada and also to enable parents among other people in China who may want to take students to Canada to study there to have the assurance of the safety and welfare of the students while in this country.
While these students are still in China, they will be provided with one on one academic program consulting that will be provided by the current students. Assistance will also be offered in regard to the process of admission, the acceptance of the offer and in the engagement of the process of the application for the visa. More so, there will be putting in place programs that will facilitate prompt feedback.
More so, while these new students are in Canada, the services that will be offered to them will be in relation to the flight’s pick-up as well as their settlement. These students will also have to be provided with services that are related to landed inquiries which will involve their accommodation, using the phones, how to operate the bank accounts, how to obtain and use driving licenses and how these students can obtain permits to engage in working part-time.
Market Analysis
According to British Council (2010), China’s Ministry of Education indicates that 229,000 Chinese students went to study in the learning institutions in overseas countries. It is also forecasted that by the year 2020, there will be over three hundred thousand Chinese students going to study abroad. According to the survey carried out, the report given out indicates that that the favorite countries were chosen by these students to go and study include the United States of America, Australia, Canada, France and Australia among a few others.
About 37 percent of them to go take their studies for one year, 25 percent want to and stay for two years and about 12 percent want to go and stay for about six months. This gives an indication that going to study abroad by the students will turn out to be a strong trend in China in the course of this year (2010). Among these Chinese students who intend to go to take studies abroad have intentions to go take a master’s degree abroad (Anonymous: Survey: More Chinese students considering studies abroad, 2010).
In the current day, the number of the Chinese students who are issued visas to go to study in Canada is increasing. This increase in the number of students started from the past few years. For instance, according to Wheeler (2009), in the year 2007, a total of nine thousand two hundred and twenty-eight students who originate from mainland China were issued visas to go and study in Canada by the Canadian embassy in China. Interestingly, the year that came after (2008), the number of students went up to a total of thirteen thousand, five hundred and fifty-two and this brought the total number to forty-two thousand.
Even if there has been a global recession, those agencies that engage in the involvement of carrying out the recruitment of students and in turn linking these students to the learning institutions in Canada have said that the level of the demand for the services they offer to the students has gone up and this brings up the level of expectations which give an indication that there has still been an increase in the number of students who go and take their studies in Canada (Wheeler, 2009). This offers an opportunity for more service providers to the students to come up with.
The learning institutions in Canada provide an education that is of high quality to the students and this education is affordable in comparison to other nations in the world (Ponmelil, 2007). However, there are other limiting factors that discourage parents from allowing their children to go study in Canada. Even if direct flights between China and Canada do exist, the reputation of Canada as being a safe place for students to go study is going down as compared to the reputation of other countries in regard to carrying out the attraction of the Chinese students (Wheeler, 2009).
Students mostly prefer going to study in Australia, the US, and the UK. Taking the case of Australia, this country is smaller in population size as compared to Canada but it was able to attract fifty thousand students originating from China in a period that stretched from the year 2007 to the year 2008 (Chao, 2010)
The number of Chinese students moving to Canada is not as large as that compared to those Chinese students who are going to take their studies in other countries like the United States of America, Australia and the United Kingdom among other countries. This might be attributed to students failing to obtain specific services that they need in order to stay in the country comfortably as they study. Setting up this business will help clear away this problem. By ensuring that the students are access to specific services, will serve to attract more students to Canada (Anonymous, 2010). This increase in the number of students will serve to help this company grow to a higher level.
Proprietary Position
This company is going to establish a strong proprietary position which is going to enable it to achieve a favorable position in the industry ahead of other business organizations operating in the industry. By this business organization making all the possible efforts to access a large number of customers, and by this organization serving the customers (students) from the start to the end (Serving them while there are in China and still going ahead to serve them when they get to Canada), this will assist this company to win a competitive advantage over the competitors. The company will have to get involved even to a higher extent in identifying specific needs of the students so that they can be served. This will be realized through carrying out thorough research.
Dealing with the specific needs of the students rather than just looking at the needs of the students in general terms is of great importance to this business as there are few organizations that take their time to identify particular needs of the students. By this company taking such a move, this will serve to enable this company to be viewed as being unique in a way and will have to attract more customers. This company will have to be innovative on a continual basis in its operations to avoid being imitated by the competitors in order for it to be a first mover to capitalize on any other opportunity that may come up within the industry.
Marketing Plan
Intensive marketing will have to be carried out to ensure that the target market is reached. TV and radio will be used as a medium for advertisement. Another important medium for effective advertisement is the internet. Since most of the students are access to the internet, the company’s services will be communicated to the potential customers through the internet. Advertisement will be carried out in a most strategic manner.
The information about this company and the services to be provided will be availed to the local learning institutions in China that may have the students who may later have to go and undertake their further studies in Canada. Pricing for the services will have to be carried out in a most careful manner to ensure that the customers are charged a lower price than the competitors.
In order to reach more customers, some staff members will be assigned to move from one learning institution to the other in China where there are students who might be willing to take their studies in China and inform them about the services that are offered by this company. The affordable costs for these services offered by the company will also be made known to these potential customers.
Management Team
The management team will comprise people with strong management skills. This team will be headed by a chief executive officer who has more than five years of working experience for a well-established company or companies that provide international student services in the same capacity. In addition to this, the person needs to have worked in senior management positions in the companies offering these services for a period of not less than ten years. Under him, there will be two managers with adequate experience in the field for a period of not less than five years.
There will be a manager who will be based in China who will be in charge of managing the services to the students while in China which will include offering assistance to a student in regard to the process of admission, one on one academic program consultancy and students obtaining the visa. Another manager will be based in Canada who will be in charge of managing the services offered to the students while in Canada to ensure their comfortable stay. There will be several assistant managers who will be working under the managers having experience of more than five years in this field.
Operations Plan
Setting up this business will require carrying out the recruitment of various personnel that will have to take up various responsibilities. There will be employees who will be based in China while others will be based in Canada. This will make it possible for students to get our services right beginning from China and these services will go on being offered to them at the time they go to settle and study in Canada.
Those who will be involved in offering one on one academic program consulting services will be based in China. This will be carried out by the current students who are taking their studies in Canada. These people will be working on a temporary basis and they will not be permanent employees. This is because they will have to travel to China to offer these services and go back to go on with their studies. More so, some of them will only be available at the time they will be on holiday.
This group of people is chosen to offer these services to the new students since they have first-hand information about the academic programs that are offered in the learning institutions in Canada since they are involved and are going through the same programs.
This may enable the business to gain a competitive advantage over other companies that may use people who are not directly involved. In addition to the one-on-one academic program, this group may also provide any other relevant information to the new students since most of them fall under the same age bracket. The selection of these people will be carried out by visiting the institutions of learning where there is relatively a large number of Chinese students. These students should be the ones that have stayed in Canada for a period of a minimum of three years. They will have to be selected from the various academic programs that are being offered.
Another group of people who will have to be recruited to work in this program is the ones who will be responsible for offering guidance in the process of application for admission in the various academic programs offered in Canada. These will have to be those who have experience in the admission process, the acceptance of the offer and the process of the application of the visa. This will have to be people who have worked in the learning institutions in Canada, especially in administration positions. The people who will have to offer guidance in the process of the visa application may be the ones that are working in the Canadian embassy in China. A mechanism will be put in place that will ensure feedback is obtained about these services that are offered to the new students.
More so, offices will have to be set up in Canada where there will be personnel who will offer services to the new students upon arrival. The students will be guided to locate these offices. There will be a staff that will have several responsibilities of providing students with the specific services. Since these students are new in the place, they will need guidance over various issues. There will be a staff that will be responsible for offering guidance to the students on how to obtain accommodation and ensure that they are accessible to telephone services, and how to use or obtain driving licenses while in this new country.
Since there are part-time employment opportunities for foreign students in Canada, the new students need to be given guidance on how to obtain permits in order for them to engage in this so that they can be able to obtain some income for their own upkeep. Students who intend to work part-time are required to have a permit, especially when they need to work outside their institutions of learning (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2010). There will be a team that will be set up to move around to identify these employment opportunities, guide the students to apply for the appropriate positions in which they may be willing to work. These students will be presented to the relevant authorities responsible for issuing the work permits to the foreign students.
Finances
Several resources will be required to set up this business. There will be a need to set up offices, both in China and Canada. People will have to be employed to work in these offices. More so, the advertisement will have to be carried out in order to get the customers as well as engagement in personal selling. All these will involve incurring costs. This business will require a total investment of ten million US dollars. This amount will be used to set up offices and furnish them, provide payments for the employees, and carry out marketing.
More so, a budget will be set aside to finance research that will have to be carried out to identify areas of weaknesses and where strengths lie. The expected profit in the first year is three million US dollars and this amount is expected to double in the second year and even go higher in the subsequent years.
As it has been established the trend shows that the number of Chinese students is increasing with each coming year. It is projected that this business will even make this number go higher. The profitability of the company will have to increase on a gradual basis with each subsequent year.
Based on the intensive marketing strategy that will be put in place, this company is expected to capture about twenty percent of the market share in the first year of operation. It is expected that the percentage will rise to forty p in the year that will follow following the popularity that the company will have gained. This popularity will be realized by serving the customers to the highest level possible to ensure that their needs are met. Adequate research is going to be carried out to identify what the real needs of the customers are and all the possible efforts will be undertaken to ensure that these needs are met.
Conclusion
This business is a very important business for it will serve to solve the problems the new Chinese students who go to study in Canada encounter. The business will be offering specific services to these students. There are greater opportunities in this industry since the number of students moving from China to take their studies in Canada is increasing on a continual basis. More so, the present companies operating in this industry have not paid much attention to offering these services. More so, due to the increasing number of students; the existing companies have not been able o meet the rising demand.
The business will have to be managed by a competent management team consisting of people who have adequate experience to run the business. More so, strong marketing strategies will be put in place in order for the company to win a competitive advantage. This will have to be accompanied by extensive research that will seek to identify even more opportunities for the expansion of the business and for the business to remain ahead of the competition. The business will require an initial investment of 10 million US dollars. The expected profit in the first year is 3 million US dollars and this amount is expected to increase even more in the years that will follow as the business gets established within the industry.
Reference List
- Anonymous, (2010). Survey: More Chinese students considering studies abroad. Web.
- Anonymous, (2010). Take this opportunity to learn about Canadian a province of Quebec. Web.
- British Council China, (2010), China market introduction.
- Chao W. (2010), Foreign tuition fees, living costs on the rise in 2010. China Daily.
- Chen L., (2007), East-Asian Students’ choice of Canadian graduate schools.
- International Journal of Educational Advancement. (2007), 7.
- Citizenship Immigration Canada, (2010), Working temporarily in Canada: Jobs that do not require work permits. Web.
- Ponmelil A. V. (2007), Study abroad at Canada. Web.
- Wheeler, C., (2009), Canadian universities falling behind in drawing students from China.