Hi guys,
I'd appreciate it if you would take a look at the following and provide some constructive feedback on something I am currently working on.
This following is very broad brush and some details are missing - but essentially it's complete.
Technical BackgroundI'm currently working on what is essentially an asset management engine. It's a generic engine that allows temporary assignment of assets to be rented for pre-defined periods.
The first incarnation of the engine will be a system designed around restaurants - specifically allowing restaurants to find/attract booking during the quieter/more competitive days of the week.
Restaurants in this context are the suppliers. Customers are users who are visiting and looking for an offer.
Business Proposal backgroundRestaurants are expensive places to run and they need to ensure they have enough booking or covers - to ensure that they are in profit.
Like many businesses their main expenditure is premises, people and high-value stock (which for restaurants would be things like wine). While one of the main components that generate income is food - it's generally not one of their main expenses.
Cities have multiple regions or districts. Restaurants tend to deliver a type of cuisine (Italian, Chinese, etc).
The interface for both customers and suppliers will be simple and intuitive to use and operate. It is important that suppliers can quickly, easily and intuitively interact with the site.
The interface for customers should be clean & bold. It should feel interactive and "current" with modern internet standards. It should be clean and usable by those in the target age/income brackets.
The target customer audience are those in their early 20's to the mid 60's and it's intended to be use by city residents as well as people visiting (tourists).
The supplier interface should additionally provide them with business tools that allow them to manage their product in the content of the market they are in. Essentially this means providing some business analysis tools that allows them to see how their offering profiles against others in the same market.
Initially the system would cover the area & district where I live (Barcelonetta in Barcelona) but it's designed to cover any number of cities and any number of districts within a city.
The site will be multilingual in design and support all European languages. Ideally each city will be in both English and the local native language. This would allow the site to be usable by tourists as well as locals.
The design is such that I expect other cities to be covered and managed by people other than me - as such the administration of the site would allow the city owner to manage their city themselves.
They would be able to have an "overview" of their city in terms of coverage, clients, users, etc.
Business ProposalThe system I am developing will be a web based application - essentially a website - that allows restaurants to connect to customers to attract customers throughout the week with specials aimed at generating more business.
Initially the website would be accessible via the internet, mobile phone or WebTV - all known as the "Web Interface". Later the website would be accessible via SMS and telephone (via touch dialling).
Customers would visit the website and search for restaurants in their neighbourhood (or city region), a type of cuisine, or within a budget range. The system would allow customers to book a table through the website.
Restaurants would manage their offers by logging in and using the web interface. They would be able to create offers based on the size of the table (i.e. for 4 or 6 people), a theme (romantic meal, etc), day of the week, etc
They would be able to make offers which wouldn't initially be visible and to enable/disable offers. They would be able to create an offer and using the business management tools - see how the offer compares to others within their market sector - against those currently known on the site - and other restaurants that the site has harvested from other internet sources. (This means that the system will connect to other websites and profile restaurants for the purpose of allowing clients to profile their offering against the current markets in their city).
The system would allow customers to book a table at a restaurant - and the system would send a confirmation SMS both to the customer and to the restaurant.
Users would be able to "opt in" to specials via email/SMS/RSS from a specific restaurant or from anything that is searchable via the search interface (cuisine, region, etc).
The design also allows for a "White Label" approach - where restaurants can make their own website which will run and "hook into" the engine. This allows them to have their own web presence (their own domain name, theme, design, etc) which uses the information that has already entered for a delta cost above the service cost.
City Financial modelThis is a tricky one and I'm not set on the best approach yet.
The options are for a per-booking fee or a period fee (monthly, 3 monthly, annual) and probably payable by the restaurant.
Income would also be generated from the "White Label" implementation and would be an annual cost.
"Master" financial modelFor me this is clearer cut and the aim is to reward those who put effort and time into making their city successful.
10-15% of the income generated by the city would be used for marketing for that city and then city owners would be entitled to 75% of the remaining income generated by their city.
While the marketing budget is fairly small by industry standards - the architecture of the site is designed so that it is self-promoting in an internet sense. This means that the site is designed for optimal SEO and SER.
The remaining 25% of each city would go to a central pool.
The central pool would be used for operating costs to pay for hosting, general marketing. Of any remaining income 75% would go to the designer & maintainer (i.e. me
.
The remaining 25% would be divided up, every 3 months, and paid to city owners.
I know many of you are business focussed - so don't be too harsh!
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