Comprehensive Business Plan: Live-In Care Agency Development

This project presents a detailed business plan for a Live-In Care Agency, addressing the growing need for elderly care services. The plan outlines the agency's core services, including live-in care, and its unique selling proposition (USP) which emphasizes client involvement in caregiver selection. It analyzes the target market, focusing on urban areas where families often require external support for their elderly members, and proposes an emotional branding strategy. The marketing strategy incorporates social media, SEO, website development, media advertisements, and door-to-door selling. The operational plan covers legal requirements, staffing, and logistics, while the forecast and planning section includes a five-year development plan and a breakdown of usage and costs for essential items such as laptops, software, and marketing activities. The plan concludes by highlighting the potential for success given the increasing demand for such services and the agency's strategic approach to market share acquisition.

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Building a Business on
LIVE IN CARE
as an Agency Company

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Section 1 – Products and Services...................................................................................................3
1.1. Core Services........................................................................................................................3
1.2. USP of the Service Offering.................................................................................................3
1.3 Other Offerings......................................................................................................................3
Section 2 – The Market....................................................................................................................4
2.1 The Typical Customer...........................................................................................................4
2.2 Customer Centricity...............................................................................................................4
2.3 Branding Choices...................................................................................................................4
Section 3 – Marketing Strategy.......................................................................................................5
3.1 Marketing Strategy................................................................................................................5
Section 4 – Operations and Logistics..............................................................................................6
Section 5 – Forecast and Planning...................................................................................................6
5.1 Development Plan..................................................................................................................6
5.2 Breakdown of Usage..............................................................................................................7
Summary..........................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
Developing a business is challenging in today’s scenario where competition is very high in
almost all sectors. As the current population of the country is growing of age, so is the
requirement of staying independent and free even at old age. The necessity of a care taker,
outside family, has been realized evidentially and there are many service providing agencies that
employee care taker for the care needy. Below is a small business plan for setting up an agency
delivering compassionately connected ‘Live in Care’ services.
Section 1 – Products and Services
1.1. Core Services
The Concept of Live-In-Care has been realized into business setups and has turned many
establishments shifting or expanding services into this newly identified domain of hospitality
sector (Osterwalder, et al., 2014). The core offering from the Live-In-Care Agency comes in the
form of hospitality and serving to people coming of age, who wants to remain independent and
yet do not intend to bind the family members to themselves. The Live-In-Care offers a friendly
companion to those staying alone and needing a support system that remains with them as their
shadow.
1.2. USP of the Service Offering
The Unique Selling Proposition is an idea that leaves a substantial impact on the readers or
viewers of the idea, eventually bringing them to service trials (Teece, 2010). It is used to mark a
business its distinct footprint in the market. With Live-In-Care, what we offer is a very simple
yet unique in itself USP, which is interviewing of care givers by the clients. A client is proposed
certain care takers that have something in common with them, a habit or a sentiment or a belief
that they commonly share. The proposition also includes 2 to 3 prior meetings for shorter
duration to check the compatibility and then finalizing the decision of final employment.
1.3 Other Offerings
With the core service facility of Live-In-Care, the business would also like to introduce another
chargeable offering of outing with clients on preferred and safe places. This event would be
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available at an extra cost over the normal facility but would enable the client to have a shorter
visit outside the home and everyday premises, to a safer heaven that the clients would like to
explore. For each client, a travel plan can also be arranged post precautionary actions, on request
basis, keeping the associated conditions of client in picture. A safe yet exciting trip will be made
possible for the realization of travel and outing goals with the Live-In-Care Agent by their side.
Section 2 – The Market
2.1 The Typical Customer
For a service offering in hospitality sector, where the functionality offers more humane and
emotional connect with clients, the typical customers broaden the window to a large number of
clienteles that are looking for reliable companions and trustworthy support system. Forming the
major support structure, will be people needing support due to old age or certain medical
condition or any other relative reason that creates the need of full-time assistance with someone
steady and firm in duties. But the customer base can also be extending to clients looking for
companions and support system to leave the lonely and weary aura for a more fulfilled life
choice.
2.2 Customer Centricity
Customers locality and the area in which the business can hope for growth and plan strategic
development is what falls under the location of customer base, here referred to as the customer
centricity (Segatto, et al., 2013). For the Live-In-Care business agency, the customer base would
majorly be found and located into the urban living areas, where jobs and day to day service
population resides. The primary reason of the customer located in urban regions is that families
are closer in the country side with people collaborating and adjusting to the needs of old age
people at home. Wherein the services and jobs in the urban area do bound people to
commitments at work reducing the home time to take care of elderly people.
2.3 Branding Choices
The branding of an organization, that is planning to set foot in the market is crucial from the
perspective that a brand image stays for a very long time. Therefore, the brand value should be
established in such a way that it is a part of the vision of business (Baumgarth, 2010). Amongst
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various branding strategies, the method of Emotional branding would fit in the best for the Live-
In-Care Agency business. The obvious reason is, when it comes to care and support, emotional
connectivity would play a crucial role. It is necessary for business to establish channels to
connect closely with its customers and to interconnect various customers for better brand image
(Leek & Christodoulides, 2011). The key feature of the branding would help promote business in
a way that it would enable customers to feel that they are a part of the community and business
in some way.
Section 3 – Marketing Strategy
3.1 Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy is the strategic plan of action to promote business through sales, promotions
and other marketing efforts to turn the customers for the business (Amit & Zott, 2012). With the
current trend, apart from various advertisement mechanism, the use of social media is quite
extensive, when it comes to marketing features of business. Following will be the major business
promotion channels -
1. Through Social Networks – with more and more people joining the social media
platform, it is easy to expand the reach and communicate directly with the customers
(Grönroos, 2011).
2. SEO and Website – The websites and Search Engine Optimization are the new business
promotion tricks that play important role in bringing attention to consumers. For details
and other serviceability benefits, website has a long-term impact (Park, et al., 2012).
3. Media and Advertisement – usually old age people prefer reading newspaper for long
hours. Therefore, advertisements through brochures, small business pamphlets in daily
paper or a small section in newspaper attracting interest can be used as an active
marketing strategy (Morlidge & Player, 2010).
4. Door to Door Selling – The mechanism for door to door selling is very effective in case
of services like these, it helps in creating awareness, informs about the services, is of
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interest to customers and this way direct customers can be reached out to (Zott, et al.,
2011).
The market analysis is also necessary to reach the right customer and to collect the primary
data (Grönroos & Ravald, 2011). This data can be used to collect meta information about
customers and their preferences. The mode of data collection can be both primary and
secondary, therefore, the best form of marketing with data collection for business remains to
be door to door selling or advertisement.
Section 4 – Operations and Logistics
For the Live-In-Care business functionality, the requirements with operations is extensive, but
the cists for logistics is going to be minimal. The premises are to be owned by the clients
themselves, and the mode of transport to clientele place by the hired employee is going to self-
initiated, hence no such requirement. No specific equipment necessities are identified in the start-
up phase. The following would become the crucial requirements though –
- Legal Requirement
The business would need special legal permission for operations. Various licenses and
permits for executing the business would have to be initiated.
- Management and Staff
A small team of 2 to 3 people would require managing the sales and allocate and
coordinate between registered service givers with clients seeking services. Also, special
agreements to be executed for better serviceability and to make the service provider
accountable.
Section 5 – Forecast and Planning
Business Forecasting is an important part of business delivery services, as it envisions a long-
term goal into possible set of actions for converting them into realities (Veit, et al., 2014). The
business forecasting is a reference to the techniques and action plan for the coming future, to
expand business, promote growth and generate profit. Decisive and Risk mitigated action
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planning with environmental conditions are to be kept as key decision factors while planning
(Gupta, 2013).
5.1 Development Plan
For the next 5 years plan, from the day of the business operations, the key action points in
development would be –
- increase in customer outreach
- development of facility for short term care (hourly basis)
- Live-In-Care model for group caring i.e. group of customers in one cluster
5.2 Breakdown of Usage
The breakdown of physical devices usage and value function are expressed in the table below -
If being bought
Item Required Already
Owned?
New or second
hand?
Purchased
from
Price (USD)
Laptop Yes
Telephone Line New Yet to be
decided
~ 50
Software for
Reservations and
scheduling
New Yet to be
decided
~200
Sales and Marketing
activities – Free of
Cost
Yes
Sales and Marketing
activities –Premium
Services
New Yet to be
decided
~100
Printers and
Electronics
New HP/Dell At MRP
GPS devices for New Yet to be ~100
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tracking decided
Website New Yet to be
decided
~100
Tea/Coffee and Snacks New Yet to be
decided
Office Furniture Second Hand ~400
Rented Property New or Second
Hand
~500 per
annum
Expenses
(Bills/Salaries/Payouts)
New Recurring as
per
expenditure
Total 1450 +
Expenses
Summary
The business operations on the agency ground of Live-In-Care is envisioned with the perspective
that the requirement of similar facility is high in market (Hyndman & Athanasopoulos, 2018).
Identifying that there are not many contenders in the business line, with most of them offering
similar functionalities, certain add on feature in form of USP of business can act as a boosting
factor for gaining market share (Titman, et al., 2011). Initially as it is a small invested start-up
with fresh vision, the company intends to expand its business with strategic and risk mitigated
approach.
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References
Amit, R. & Zott, C., 2012. Creating value through business model innovation. MIT Sloan
Management Review, 53(3), pp. 41-49.
Baumgarth, C., 2010. “Living the brand”: brand orientation in the business-to-business sector.
European Journal of Marketing, 44(5), pp. 653-671.
Grönroos, C., 2011. A service perspective on business relationships: The value creation,
interaction and marketing interface. Industrial marketing management, 40(2), pp. 240-247.
Grönroos, C. & Ravald, A., 2011. Service as business logic: implications for value creation and
marketing. Journal of service management, 22(1), pp. 5-22.
Gupta, A., 2013. Environment & PEST analysis: an approach to external business environment.
International Journal of Modern Social Sciences, 2(1), pp. 34-43.
Hyndman, R. & Athanasopoulos, G., 2018. Forecasting: principles and practice. s.l.:OTexts.
Leek, S. & Christodoulides, G., 2011. A literature review and future agenda for B2B branding:
Challenges of branding in a B2B context. Industrial marketing management, 40(6), pp. 830-837.
Morlidge, S. & Player, S., 2010. Future Ready: How to master business forecasting.. s.l.:John
Wiley & Sons.
Osterwalder, A., Pigneur, Y., Bernarda, G. & Smith, A., 2014. Value proposition design: How to
create products and services customers want. s.l.:John Wiley & Sons.
Park, Y., Geum, Y. & Lee, H., 2012. Toward integration of products and services: Taxonomy
and typology. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 29(4), pp. 528-545.
Segatto, M., Inês Dallavalle de Pádua, S. & Pinheiro Martinelli, D., 2013. Business process
management: a systemic approach?. Business Process Management Journal, 19(4), pp. 698-714.
Teece, D., 2010. Business models, business strategy and innovation. Long range planning, 43(2-
3), pp. 172-194.
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Titman, S., Keown, A., Martin, J. & Martin, T., 2011. Financial management: Principles and
applications (Vol. 11). s.l.:Boston: Prentice Hall.
Veit, D. et al., 2014. Business models. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 6(1), pp.
45-53.
Zott, C., Amit, R. & Massa, L., 2011. The business model: recent developments and future
research. Journal of management, 37(4), pp. 1019-1042.
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