What's Next?

Existing Market

Step 1: The next step for this venture is to look into expanding to other colleges and universities around the state that don't have a similar software feature implemented into their ticketing offices for their sports programs. If we want to be successful as a business, we can't be complacent with where we are right now. We need to be looking into what we can do with our service and what kind of opportunities are available to us. After we have become comfortable with testing the software at the University of Florida, we will look into approaching other colleges and universities across the state to pitch our software to them.

Step 2: I decided to sit down with two people that I interviewed previously about the opportunity I originally presented to them, Hannah and Chad. The third person I sat down with for these set interviews was a new person that I haven't interviewed before, Lucas, who used to work at the ticketing office in the past. Since they are all students that have attended football games in the past or will attend in the future, they fall within my primary and secondary target audience and will see a lot of the benefits from the implementation of my service at the Gator Student Ticketing Office.

I sat down with each of them separately to figure out the question "What should we be doing that we aren't planning on doing?" Chad brought up that I could look into expanding the service to other sporting events even though they are free events. He mentioned that he lost a basketball ticket and since he already claimed one before the game, he wasn't able to claim another one nor have his old ticket reprinted. Hannah couldn't think of much about what we could be planning to do in the future of the business but could look into providing safety nets for students that buy tickets from other students to prevent issues like fraudulent tickets being sold to them. Lucas brought up what I was thinking beforehand about expanding to other schools around the state and country once the system has become stable and there is sufficient support to maintain the software.

Step 3: When it comes to growing the service to others around the state and across the country, I think the issue that we need to keep in mind is to not grow too fast that it becomes too much of a burden to operate and starts costing us more than it is making for us. What I will look at is a timeline of where we should be with our service currently and where we should be in the future and figure out an efficient plan to make those targets for the business. I still want to expand to other universities around the country, but I believe we will need to be realistic and limit ourselves until we were ready for it.

Along with that, we will look into perfecting the software while we remain 'local' at the University of Florida and make sure that it is perfect to work here. We will then continue adding safeguards and features that truly benefit both the primary and secondary target audience of the software. We will try to avoid becoming too comfortable with what we are doing and try to continuously innovate our product to be the best it can be.

 

New Market

Step 1: For the new market, I decided to talk to two employees that currently work at the Gator Student Ticketing Office about my venture and the potential I have since they will be the people that work with the software feature on a daily basis when handing out tickets.

Step 2: I believe the value that the employees will see from the software is that it will improve the customer service experience for the students that pick-up tickets from the ticketing office and have them reprinted if they are lost or stolen. It is hard to find a drastically different target market because the specifics of this opportunity and limitations that come with it.

The hard part of seeing how much value this will provide to the employees depends on how each employee cares about customer service and how much of an impact that they will have on the students that have their tickets reprinted after losing them. This will be a business-to-business focus so the amount of value when it is first introduced to them is less than how much value is added later on once they are using the software feature and dealing with lost tickets.

Step 3: The two employees that I sat down with that work at the Gator Student Ticketing Office were interested in my venture concept that I proposed to them and how it would be implemented into the system they are currently using. Both stated that they always wondered why there wasn't a system already in place that can track lost tickets for students because the tickets aren't exactly cheap compared to other universities across the state that have free tickets for football like the University of Central Florida.

I explained to them on how the process will work when it comes to attaching the tickets to the student's UFID card and how they would be tracked if they were lost or stolen from that student. They mentioned that it sounds like a good idea because it is common for students to lose their tickets after picking them up and there isn't anything they can do because there is no way of finding it for them. The only issue they brought up is that it could take time to train staff on the new system and when it gets busy, it could slow down the ticket dispersal process. However, they felt that it would be valuable for them because the students they serve would be happy to find that they don't have to worry about buying a new ticket if they lose theirs.

Step 4: I think what surprised me the most about this target market is the amount of support and interest both of the interviewees's that I sat down and talked about it with. Since they are actual employees at the ticketing office and deal with the software on almost a daily basis, I thought it was encouraging to hear that they liked the venture that I proposed for them. As for my expectations, I was correct with them before I interviewed them and what I expected to hear. I have worked in the service industry for a long time now and it is nice to be able to provide good customer service to people and for them to be happy with the overall experience.

As for the attraction of the new market, I think it is on par for my venture that I am proposing. They are a good target audience that I could take advantage of with the venture. I believe they would be a good representation of the whole target market, but more research will have to be conducted to provide an accurate picture of what I will be working with this venture.