Team 2: CourseSmart
CourseSmart Final Paper
By: Judge Lynn, DiBella Tyler, Boliver Brett, Mitkonis Marilena,
Tsatsopoulos Despina
4/28/2010
Introduction:
Recently there has been an increasing amount of disruptions in the textbook publishing
industry due to the up and coming of e-Readers as well as online textbook distributors such as
CourseSmart. The later generations have grown up in a tech savvy era and less and less physical
textbooks are being using in schools. Throughout the semester four teams have been studying a
different technology that has affected the publishing industry along with 1 team looking at the
affect these technologies have on the publisher and another team coming up with a new
technology all together to compete in the e-reader market.
As a team, we have been assigned to look at the online textbook distributor CourseSmart
and see how it stacks up against the competition within the publishing industry. CourseSmart is a
service that offers textbooks in two formats, downloadable to the computer or an online only
viewable format. The two options have slightly different price points; however both are cheaper
than buying the physical textbook at your everyday college bookstore. The people at
CourseSmart believe that this online and downloadable platform is the best way for students to
get the most out of the materials that have been assigned to them. The idea is that all college
students have a computer (or at least will have access to one) and that they will be able to read
their assigned readings anywhere they go. CourseSmart provides a lot of convenience to both
students and teachers alike, in the way that learning has become more accessible than ever.
However, there are a number of different way students and teachers can achieve the same, if not
a slightly different result with other products that exists in the market. The Amazon Kindle, the
Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony e-Reader, and the Apple iPad, all provide similar experiences
each with one significant difference. All of the alternatives above are separate devices to a
computer, which means they need to purchase these devices in addition to the digital content to
put on the device. As CourseSmart, we define winning as being in the top 5% of the online
textbook distributors in the world. Along with that 5% goal, we want to try to revolutionize
everyone to online books to help save the environment and our planet. We want to show our
customers that we care about our environment and they should too. We will to continue to sell
our products at half price to win over more customers because times are tough right now and we
want to help the people of the world afford textbooks they wouldn’t normally be able to
afford. Our final way to measure winning is to eventually have at least 50% of colleges
worldwide using CourseSmart instead of the physical textbooks. Our strategies are simple; they
are to keep our prices low, easy accessibility and differentiation from our
competitors. CourseSmart is a very effective way for people to utilize their “green sense” and
get the books they need at a cost that’s affordable.
As mentioned before, CourseSmart is an online textbook distributor that offers textbooks
at half price and that are easily accessible from any device there is internet access. Our mission
here at CourseSmart is to break into the textbook market by providing e-textbooks that can be
downloaded and viewed online for a lower cost. While, our vision is to be in the top 5% of
distributors of e-textbooks and to eventually have all colleges and universities switch from the
regular books to these e-books to eliminate textbooks all together. CourseSmart is structured
very easily so that almost everyone can navigate through it without a problem and find exactly
what they are looking for. We have 3 levels of leadership at CourseSmart; we have the CEO
Sean Devine, Frank Lyman the executive vice president of Marketing and the Chief Technology
Officer Tom Hadfield. Each of these men plays a key role in the success of our company.
CourseSmart has many different stakeholders that affect their strategy but the most
important one out of them all is the publishers. We strive on keeping our relationships with the
publishers strong and intact because without them we are nothing. We rely on them to keep our
business afloat and prosperous. Other stakeholders of our company are the colleges and
universities that use our website along with the students that attend these colleges and the
professors that work there. The students affect our strategy because we keep our prices low for
the students because college is already expensive enough, they don’t need to be spending an arm
and a leg on a book too. As for the professors, they affect our strategy because they decide
whether they want their students using the online textbook or a regular book.
FIVE FORCES
Above is the Five Force diagram for the publishing industry. The Five Forces above shows how
the current rivalry in the publishing industry is supplied and distributed throughout the market.
The diagram also shows the current substitutes to those rivalries, as well as what new entrants to
the market could present in which to compete in it. On the further down the diagram will be
broken down and explained to show how CourseSmart stands up against the rest of the devices in
the market, and also how its unique platform will be able to evolve potentially faster than the
rest.
Rivalries:
CourseSmart is a strictly online platform that you need the internet or a computer to access. The
platform allows you to login anywhere and view all of the materials that you have subscribed to
in a rich color format that is both pleasurable to read as well as having the ability to be
interactive. The books are completely searchable and you are allowed to annotate pages and take
notes when needed. CourseSmart is rivaled by the following e-Reader devices: Amazon Kindle,
Sony e-Reader and the upcoming Apple iPad. These e-Readers have some advantage over
CourseSmart but in the end they all achieve the same thing, they allow you to read on the go.
One of the major advantages to the CourseSmart system is that a customer of the service does
not need another device in which to obtain the content. The computer that they already have will
be able to load all of the content in either a downloadable version of the text or the online only
version that the custom will log on to, to get the text.
Buyers:
The people that are going to be using these services can be just about anyone. Educational
institutions and business seem to be the ones that most people tend to think of when discussing
this topic, but we also believe that individuals or families are just as likely to use e-Readers as
the rest. When it comes to CourseSmart, they deal specifically with textbooks, whereas the
others not only provide textbooks but also provide “regular books” as well (fiction, nonfiction
etc).
Suppliers:
Mostly all of the major publishers in the industry work with all of the rivalry companies to
provide their content in a digital format. Although there is quite a bit of disagreement over the
price at which the publishers are allowed to sell their content in the digital format, there have
been recent changes to the price structure that they previously were required to follow.
CourseSmart and Apple allow the publisher to have control over the price of their books, as
opposed to the Kindle which has a set pricing structure.
New Entrants:
The newest entrant to the eBook industry is Apple. A few weeks ago Apple announced a new
product named the iPad. The iPad has many features which trump all of the current e-Readers in
the market. It has a color display, full internet capabilities and impressive battery life for the
things that it can do. However, not everybody is looking for a device with all of these features
due to the fact that they already have other devices that do exactly the same thing, and in most
cases their existing devices do them better. The major feature to a product such as the e-Reader
that we see new entrants improving in are:

Duel eInk and color displays

Exceptional battery life

The ability to share books

Larger displays

Thinner device bodies
Substitutes:
There are a number of different ways to enjoy reading other than using an e-Reader. Using a
device to read off of it very convenient, but can also be very costly or in some cases not always
appropriate. The optical that is going to be the most tough to overcome is adoption of the
technology and the format that the content is being displayed. For some, there is no substitute
that can achieve the same feeling you get from a physical book. Alternatives that we have
identified are:

Physical Books

Audio Books (CD and mp3)

Libraries

Exchange Programs
PESTEL ANALYSIS
In conducting a PESTEL analysis for CourseSmart, we must closely analyze the six
factors which play a significant role in understanding the “big picture” of the company’s
environment. In this case, we will consider the Political, Socio-cultural, Environmental,
Economic, Technological, and Legal aspects of CourseSmart in order to gain a better
understanding of the threats and opportunities for future success.
Starting with the Political factors concerning CourseSmart, it is necessary that before
operating in a new market the stability of the political environment must be on a certain level in
order for the company to maintain progress. For CourseSmart, the level of importance for this
category would be Medium-High because many political factors that are not followed up on and
abided by could eventually result in hurting CourseSmart rather than helping it.
Next we look at the Economic aspect of the PESTEL analysis in that this focuses on the
macroeconomic factors of the particular market that CourseSmart will have to take into
consideration in order to plan for proper strategy execution. This section for would probably
require, Medium-High concentration as the economy can hurt or help CourseSmart based on the
current status of the economy, and how well course smart can work around current economic
conditions whether they be favorable or unfavorable.
Next we will look at the Socio-cultural aspect of the PESTEL analysis. The socio-cultural
aspect comes with a High level of concentration for CourseSmart because we are looking at
social trends within the target society. Based on trends such as attitudes toward consumerism as
well as the attitude in individuals CourseSmart must look to continuously keep up with the social
characteristics as they are constantly changing. Also, continuous up keep with social trends will
allow CourseSmart to continually provide and satisfy the consumer.
Following, we will look at the Technological factors of CourseSmart. Technology plays a
High level of importance as CourseSmart relies on technology in order to provide the target
society with easy access in the purchase and use of online books. Constant research and
development in facilitating the process of reading books within CourseSmart should be
conducted so as to allow for the consumer to continuously be satisfied with their experience and
continue relying on CourseSmart.
Continuing, we now look at the Environmental factors of CourseSmart which come with
a Medium level of concentration. Since CourseSmart does not rely too much on raw materials, it
might be safe to say that things such as waste management and product distribution are not
crucial to the company since everything is accessed and viewed through the internet. Though, we
cannot eliminate environmental factors completely in our strategic analysis, we definitely must
also take into consideration energy consumption which plays an important role in the usage of
computers used to access the CourseSmart material.
Finally, we look at the Legal factors facing CourseSmart. Legal issues for CourseSmart
come with a High level of awareness in that CourseSmart must have a set standard of rules and
regulations complying with e-book industry. Also, copy write laws play a significant role in this
industry and CourseSmart must take every action in order to provide the proper laws that will
prevent potential future problems.
Political (Medium-High):
1. How stable is the political environment?
2. What are the local taxation policies and how does this affect your business?
3. Is the government involved in trading agreements such as EU, NAFTA, ASEAN, or others?
4. What are the foreign trade regulations?
5. What are the social welfare policies?
Economic (Medium-High):
1. What are the current and projected interest rates?
2. What is the level of inflation, what is it projected to be, and how does this projection reflect
the growth of your market?
3. What are local employment levels per capita and how are they changing?
4. What are the long-term prospects for gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and so on?
5. What are exchange rates between critical markets and how will they affect production and
distribution of your goods?
Socio-Cultural (HIGH):
1. What are the local lifestyle trends?
2. What are the current demographics and how are they changing?
3. What is the level and distribution of education and income?
4. What are the dominant local regions and what influence do they have on consumer attitudes
and opinions?
5. What is the level of consumerism and what are the popular attitudes toward it?
6. What pending legislation affects corporate social policies (e.g., domestic-partner benefits or
maternity/paternity level)?
7. What are the attitudes toward work and leisure?
Technological (HIGH):
1. What is the level of research funding in government and industry and are those levels
changing?
2. What is the government and industry’s level of interest and focus on technology?
3. How mature is the technology? (Medium-High)
4. What is the status of intellectual-property issues in the local environment?
5. Are potentially disruptive technologies in adjacent industries creeping in at the edges of the
focal industry? (Medium)
Environmental (MEDIUM):
1. What are local environment issues?
2. Are there any pending ecological or environmental issues relative to your industry?
3. How do the activities of international pressure groups (e.g., Greenpeace, Earth First, PETA)
affect your business?
4. Are there environmental- protection laws?
5. What are the regulations regarding waste disposal and energy consumption?
Legal (HIGH):
1. What are the regulations regarding monopolies and private property?
2. Does intellectual property have legal protections?
3. Are there relevant consumer laws?
4. What is the status of employment, health-and-safety, and product-safety laws?
Vrine Model
Valuable
Rare
COURSESMART USING VRINE
ANSWERS
MODEL
Relationships between the
Yes
publishers
Accessible from everywhere
Lower cost
CourseSmart Name
Only online full textbook distributor
Yes/No
You can read it on any computer
Inimitable
It’s easy to copy
No
Nonsubstitutable
People can use regular books
E-readers, Kindle, iPad, Nook
Decide not to use books at all
Yes because there is not a lot of
people in the same business.
We are making money off it
No
Exploitable
Yes
The VRINE model is an analytical framework that suggests that a firm with resources
and capabilities which are valuable, rare, inimitable, Non-substitutable and exploitable will gain
a competitive advantage. CourseSmart is a company that has the competitive advantage in the
online textbook distribution industry. CourseSmart is used in classrooms everywhere and when
people think online textbooks, CourseSmart is the first name that comes to mind.
The V in the VRINE model stands for valuable and there are a few important aspects that
are extremely valuable to the success of CourseSmart. The most valuable aspect CourseSmart
has is their name, their name is extremely well known in the digital textbook industry as well as
in the education industry. Another valuable aspect to CourseSmart is the relationships between
CourseSmart and the publishers. Without the publishers, this company would be nothing; they
need those relationships in order to survive in the digital world. The ability to access
CourseSmart from anywhere there is internet access along with the low cost to purchase an
online textbook are extremely valuable to this website and helped in developing the well-known
name CourseSmart has today. These aspects are things CourseSmart value so highly because
they have been the heart of the company’s success.
After deciding what is valuable to CourseSmart, you need to decide what aspects are rare.
The rare aspects are what make up the R in the VRINE model. Right now in the digital world,
CourseSmart is the only full online textbook distributor. Therefore they have the competitive
advantage in the industry above all the rest. Another rare aspect is that you are able to access
CourseSmart from any computer or internet capable device. This is something that the Sony Ereader, Kindle and Nook cannot do. They are only able to read books downloaded onto that
specific device and cannot be read of the others. Just because an aspect is valuable to a company
does not mean it’s rare. For example, the valuable aspect of the relationships CourseSmart has
with its publishers is something that is not rare by any means. The publishers want to make sure
that they have relationships with multiple textbook providers or distributors to make money as
well as keep their name known.
According to the I (Inimitable) and N (Non-substitutable) of the VRINE model,
CourseSmart’s business is something that can be easily imitated and substituted for. What
CourseSmart is doing is something any company can do because it is only the capability of
purchasing online textbooks and being able to access them via any device with internet access.
As for being substitutable, that is easy as well. There are other devices out there that people
would much rather use than read a computer and those are the Sony e-Reader, Amazon’s Kindle,
Barnes and Nobles Nook and then Apple’s newly released IPAD. Also, many people may want
to use regular books rather than any technology at all. Then you always have the possibility of
people deciding not to buy any books at all, therefore CourseSmart wouldn’t be needed. In the
end, it is all about preference of the reader and if they can stand to read a computer or e-Reader
for hours, or if they would rather use a hard copy of the book instead.
Finally, the E in the VRINE model stands for exploitable. This asks us if this product can
be used for a purpose, aka make money and that answer is yes. One reason is because there are
not a lot of other companies in this business so not only do they have the competitive advantage,
but also the company with the most recognizable name. CourseSmart is making a lot of money
off what they are doing right now by selling textbooks and it is something that will continue to
profit them in the future as long as they keep up their good name.
Company Value Chain
The Company Value Chain is based on the accessibility of the material, the value that the
device or program gives the textbook, the price of the device, the quality it brings to the table,
the ease of use and the experience you receive when you use the device. As you can see
CourseSmart is outlined in blue, E-readers in red and regular books in green.
The value curve is based on a scale from 1 to 10 with ten being the highest possible
points given. As you can see CourseSmart was the most inconsistent compared to the E-readers
and regular books. We decided that CourseSmart deserved a 10 on accessibility because it is
easily accessible from any location as long as you are connected to the internet. We also gave
CourseSmart a 10 on ease of use because it is the easiest to use if you know how to enter the
internet.
We compared CourseSmart to its biggest competitors which are E-readers and regular
books. From the value curve shown we have decided that E-readers have the best value for their
product. They are fairly accessible and the experience is a lot better than using the CourseSmart.
With the regular books we decided they were better in most areas. The quality and ease of use
are very good with the regular book. It is easy to read and people have been using them for many
years.
Profit Pool:
Before Disruption
After Disruption
The categories with in the Book Publishing profit pool include:





Author/Content
Publishing
Distribution
Advertising
Retail
CourseSmart would fall into the "Retail" segment of this profit pool because they do not make
a profit in any other segment.
Profit Pool Percentages:
Actual
Our Projections
Author/Content
2.19%
3%
Publishing
3.21%
1%
Distribution
.381%
.2%
Advertising
.019%
2%
Retail
4.255%
3.8%
This profit pool depicts the segments within the Book Publishing Industry (SIC# 2731). This
profit pool helps us identify which segments along the value chain in the Book Publishing
Industry are the largest and/or most attractive.
Starting at the beginning of the value chain is the Author/Content that makes up an estimated
21.9% of the industry at $18.4 billion in revenue. This revenue comes from contracts and
copyrights between authors and publishers. The second segment is then publishing and printing
which one company usually does in-house. This step however can be outsourced but we
combined both processes total revenues into one, since we could not separate the process. The
combined revenue of publishing and printing is 27 Billion making up 32.1% of the profit pool.
Distribution is a relatively high cost with in this industry at $3.2 Billion making up 3.81% of
the graph. This is due to manufactures producing on average 30% of excess books, which are
then repurchased by the publisher. Advertising in this industry is very low at $162 million
making up .16% of the profit pool. This segment is very small and relatively unattractive for
companies to be involved with when looking at the rest of the value chain. Retail is the largest
revenue producer and is the most attractive segment of the industry making up 42.55% at $35.7
Billion. Retail consists of purchases made directly from the publisher or from alternative
sources. Overall the profit pool helps show us that Retail and Publishing are by far the two best
segments to target.
Industry Value Chain
The value curve is a visual depiction of how a firm and its major competitors are
competing across its industry’s factors of completion. The CourseSmart industry value curve is
based on the factors of accessibility, value, price, graphics, ease of use, experience, publisher
relationship, and textbook availability. Each competitor corresponds to each category according
to how it competes in the industry.
After we learned more about the CourseSmart Company our views have changed and
made therefore CourseSmart has become one of the better companies. The accessibility is the
first factor we took into consideration. CourseSmart had the highest points because it is very
accessible from any computer or any device that has internet on it. CourseSmart also will be
having an App on the iPad as well as any iPhone or iPod touch. This makes it even more easily
accessible than any other device. It will be more accessible because it will not only be available
online or on just one device like how it is on the Sony e-Reader or the Amazon Kindle. We
decided that CourseSmart did not have as much value as any of the e-readers because the content
is only online and the e-Readers themselves have more value because of the hardware itself not
the content. The Graphics on the e-Readers is not very good; the graphs are in black and white
and sometimes hard to see. On CourseSmart the graphics appear as they would in the book and
are in color. You can also resize them to get a better visual. CourseSmart is very easy to use if
you have the common knowledge of using a computer. It is very easy to read the content when
you are on your computer. CourseSmart has the lowest value compared to e-Readers and books
based on experience. When reading on the computer your eyes may get tired and therefore you
will not be able to sit for a long time to read the content of the books. On e-Readers it is much
easier to read content for longer periods of time because they do not have a backlight.
CourseSmart has one of the best relationships with the publishers of the book. E-Readers usually
try to surpass the publishers so that they can sell the book for a better price, therefore resulting in
the destruction of their relationships. If the e-Readers form relationships with the publishers and
CourseSmart they could end up being complements of each other. CourseSmart is known for
only having textbooks and therefore it is ranked one of the highest after books. E-readers are not
known yet for their diversity of textbooks but for regular novels. After reviewing the industry
value curve we have decided that CourseSmart is doing well in the competition for reading
devices.
General Strategies
Strategy is defined by the author as the coordinated means by which an organization pursues its
goals and objectives. As CourseSmart we have a couple different strategies in which we want to
implement in order to pursue our goals of being the number one in the online textbook
industry. The strategies we are trying to implement are keeping our prices low, our accessibility
high, differentiating ourselves from the rest, keeping our content up to date and making people
become more environmentally friendly. These strategies CourseSmart wants to implement will
help us become a better company and get our presence known more. All companies must be able
to execute on these specific strategies, as well as being aware of select a generic or overriding
strategy.
Our strategy of keeping our prices lower than those of other distributors is one thing
that will help us reach our goal of being the number one in the online textbook industry.
Everyone knows that times are tough right now and everyone needs a break, so by us selling our
books at half price we are helping people afford them. We want to make sure that people know
that they can buy books from us for half the price of the others. By keeping our prices low we
hope to connect with more publishers and keep our relationships going strong with the current
ones. We thrive upon on our relationships with the publishers. In the future, we hope to
accommodate everyone’s needs in the online textbook industry by hopefully soon providing
things such as newspapers and magazines while still keeping the costs low. Along with holding
onto good relationships with our publishers we thought it might be beneficial to connect with a
variety of schools across the country as well as our customers. While keeping close relationships
with our publisher, school, and our customers, it might be a possibility that in the future we could
gradually expand internationally starting with our neighbor, Canada.
Another element of our strategy for us is our easy accessibility. We give people the
ability to be able to access CourseSmart from anywhere there is an internet connection. This
puts us above and beyond the others such as the e-Readers because of their limited
accessibility. Some e-Readers may be able to go on to an online bookstore with an internet
connection but not have full access to note taking online, highlighting, and other techniques.
Also by people being able to access CourseSmart anywhere, they do not have to worry about
carrying around large textbooks. Accessibility is something that is extremely important to
CourseSmart because without it we are nothing but a place to store books. We want people to be
able to have access to their bookstore wherever they go. We feel as if this strategy will keep us
ahead of our competitors as well as keep us in the role as the leader of the online textbook
distributors. In addition to our strategy for easy accessibility, we feel that it might be beneficial
for us to have a CourseSmart application that will allow easy access to CourseSmart whether it is
through the e-Readers such as the iPad or through smart phones such as the iPhone or the
Blackberry. Therefore accessing CourseSmart can be done through your everyday handheld
devices as well.
Our third strategy would be to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and make
CourseSmart stand out from the rest but to also keep our products up to date with the times. We
want to be able to differentiate ourselves from things such as Amazon and its e-Reader the
Kindle because they are one of our biggest competitors right now. On Amazon you can buy
books and place them on the Kindle, but unlike us, you have to always have the Kindle on you
and you can only read it on that one device. One way we wanted to differentiate ourselves from
the others is to put things on our website such as note cards to study from, practice tests, and also
we want to eventually be able to be accessed via blackboard. A lot if not all colleges have a
blackboard website so if we could get a link to CourseSmart via blackboard it would be
extremely beneficial to us. We also want to try our best to keep our content and books up to date
with what is popular now and what is the newest edition being used in the classroom. If we
decide to get newspapers and magazines we will constantly have the updated version available to
our customers at all time. Having these available to our customers via CourseSmart will keep
their knowledge of what is going around them current.
No other online distributor has these options, so if we were to implement this strategy we would
be the only one with those options.
Balanced Scorecard
In conducting a Balanced Scorecard for managing our strategy implementation, we focus
and analyze four major categories. The categories are as follows:
Financial: The financial performance is stated as “a lag indicator, measures the tangible
outcomes from the strategy.” The financial perspective states that “to satisfy our customers, what
financial objectives must we accomplish?” Following, the strategy for the financial perspective
asks, “If we succeed, how will we look to our shareholders?”
In conducting our financial perspective analysis our three main concerns are objectives,
measures, and targets.
1. Our first financial objective is low-costs, and success or failure for low costs could be
measured by being more affordable than regular college book stores. Our target would be more
students, professors, and more of the general public.
2. Our second financial objective is revenue growth, which could be measured by building or
acquiring necessary capital, with a target of revenue from new sources. Following, an increase of
value to customers would be another measure with a target of customer profitability.
3. Our third financial objective is Productivity. We would measure productivity by an
improvement of cost structure as well as an improvement of the use of assets and targeted by
operating cost per unit produced and asset utilization, respectively. Good
Following with the analysis of our Balanced Scorecard categories, we next move on to the
Customer/External Analysis. The Customer performance is stated as “The customer value
proposition defines the source of value.” The customer perspective states, “To achieve our
financial objectives, what customer needs must we meet?”
In conducting our Customer/External perspective analysis, our three main compliments of the
scorecard are, again, objectives, measures, and targets.
1. Our first customer objective is affordability with low-cost textbooks as our measure and a half
price reduction of books from original bookstore price as our target.
2. Our second customer objective is variety. Our measures would be an introduction of various
magazines, more books, and newspapers, as well as multiple publisher ties with targets of more
textbooks, and educational magazines and newspapers, and an increase in publisher ties,
respectively.
3. Our third customer objective is Loyalty. Customer loyalty is a key factor for this company,
with excellent customer service as the measure and an increased amount of representatives as the
target.
4. Our fourth customer objective is Brand Image. The measures for Brand image are
demographics and college campus advertising with targets as continuous upkeep on current
trends and advertising in college campuses, libraries, and café’s respectively.
5. Our fifth objective is customer accessibility. The books should be able to be accessed from
anywhere where there is internet access. Our measure for accessibility is continuous
technological accessibility and innovation therefore the customer is almost always satisfied with
purchasing their books anytime, anywhere.
6. Our sixth objective is Applications. As a customer growth strategy we figured that a
CourseSmart App would be popular and beneficial to many customers whose use Smart phones
such as the iPhone. The CourseSmart App would be easy access for the customer to get access to
their book wherever and whenever without the use of a PC.
7. Our seventh objective is customer relationships. In order for CourseSmart to excel in their
online textbook business, they must be able to acquire valuable and trustworthy customer
relationships so that they have better opportunities in expanding the business. The targets for
customer relationships would be an expansion to more colleges in more states, as well as the
possibility of expanding internationally in the future.
8. Our eighth and last objective for the customer analysis is an overall increase in customers. An
increase in customers will add more value to the company thus allowing for the company to
possibly expand as a whole as well as continuous modification to the strategy implementation.
Internal Business Process
In order to satisfy both our shareholders and customers there are several internal business
processes CourseSmart must excel in. It would be beneficial to ensure excellent customer
service for students and professors to ensure that are product is accessible to all
consumers. Usable products sounds more like a customer or external factor than internal process
factor We will measure this by surveying our customer satisfaction levels and hoping to have
less than a one-minute waiting time to increase the number of repeat customers. Second we must
have contracts in place with our publishers to ensure consistent pricing and increase our selection
of textbooks. We hope to one day have all the publishers sign up with our service so we can
supply consumers with every textbook available in the marketplace. The heart of our operation
is our user friendly website which services as both our storefront and product. We will measure
the amount of users of our website by viewing the amount of clicks per week and hope to reach a
constant click rate of 1 million views per week. In order to support all of our operations we must
rely on a quality data storage system to store all of our online books and user information. To
measure this we look at our storage capacity and hope to reach 5,000 terabytes in order to hold
more textbooks. The last major process we must rely on is the relationships we maintain with
schools and professors. This is essential to both advertise and promote our products to course
curriculum. We will measure this by the amount of schools we sell to and hope to reach all
education providers in order to increase our bulk sales. These processes are essential to the
success and quality of CourseSmart’s internal operations.
Learning and Growing
As we look to achieve our vision to making CourseSmart a fantastic tool for all students
and professors to use alike, we know that the learning and growing of our company and customer
needs will need a lot of paying attention to. As CourseSmart continues to gain the appeal of
students and educators, we want to make sure that all of the content that we will be providing
continues to engage our users while also having it maintain the illusion of reading an actual
textbook. Through the use of all the current great web technologies out there, we are committed
to always stay up-to-date on the latest web standards to provide a pleasurable experience with all
the cutting edge tools the web has to offer, all while maintaining a secure environment in which
to browse in. In order to do this we will be working very close with the publishers of the
textbooks that we are offering on how to deliver smart and sophisticated materials that are both
educational and fun through the use of tools that will take their content to the next level. By
changing our relationship to one of collaboration instead of distribution, CourseSmart will be
able to continue a working relationship where our companies can work together to achieve
common goals.
The content that CourseSmart provide to students and teachers is like nothing else that
others are offering. The way CourseSmart makes itself available anywhere you are is truly a
great benefit to our users, and we want everyone who has to use a textbook to share that too. The
promotion of CourseSmart in colleges, universities and other educational institutions is going to
be necessary to our growth over time. However the real key to our continued success lies with
our current users. Through the use of a feedback system, good that we will be putting in place to
order to collect all of the idea and complaints that our users have, we will be able to make our
products better than ever. With all of the people that are currently using CourseSmart we are
confident that by making the changes that users wants to see in order to make their learning
experience more pleasurable, we will be able to draw in more users who will want to choose the
CourseSmart experience. With all of this in mind CourseSmart will be focusing on these
objectives (technology, relationships, promotion and feedback) to sustain our ability to change
and improve an already outstanding product.
Summary:
As CourseSmart we feel very strong about the future of the company. With the introduction of
all these new e-readers and app devices, we could be happier as we look down the digital road.
The CourseSmart platform is perfect for almost all of these devices, and small alterations can be
made to tailor it to all the others that need a certain criterion met such as the iPad. CourseSmart
makes the books of tomorrow (and today) better than ever with our ability to reproduce a true
representation of all the content the author wants the reader to learn about. This is the
CourseSmart advantage, and we believe that this advantage is proven in our analysis that we
have provided in the models above.
CourseSmart is committed to delivering content to both educator and students in both ways that
are affordable and convenient. Our delivery platform is easy use and easy to access. Accessibility
is one of the most important aspects of the CourseSmart experience. We understand that our
users will want to get their content wherever they are, and that is exactly what CourseSmart is
able to provide. Book no long sit in a bag or on a shelf waiting to be picked up, with
CourseSmart the book is ready when the user is. Whether online or downloaded to the computer,
CourseSmart is always available.
With the largest e-textbook catalog to choose from, we are confident that CourseSmart will be
the “go to” place in the very near future for people to get their textbooks. We are committed and
ready to develop for the current generation of tablet style computers. As these tablets become
more and more widely spread across campuses, we imagine a day that is not so far in the future
where we will be providing e-textbooks directly to students and teachers at a rate that will far
surpass our current sales.
CourseSmart’s secret lies in our differentiation within the market. It is extremely easy for us to
update our content so that the end user will be learning about current facts instead of ones that
are both outdates and perhaps no longer accurate. When the world changes, so does
CourseSmart. Our ability to provide rich graphics along with interactive tools makes
CourseSmart one of a kind. Take that, along with a smart set of tools for searching and
bookmarking, and you have a platform that is useful and functional to learn on. CourseSmart
proves the textbooks of today in tomorrow’s technology.