Stepping up to own the software

the product’s versatility, lest you design it for a market so small that commercialisation is not viable.

Once you have identified exactly what it will take to make the product attractive, assess where you sit in the market. Doyle suggests using the tried and true business tool of the SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Get some perspective
When you reach the point of SWOT analysis, working with professional business development agencies can be a more than useful step to help you get the perspective needed to understand your prospects.

The SSHED is a prime example of a business incubation service where professionals can help you understand these issues and many others. “Basically we offer ‘Business 101’ to a wide range of companies,” Doyle says.

Frith suggests a similar process of ‘stepping back’ from your idea and looking at your business as a whole. “Why are you trying to sell this product? Is it a new source of revenue, a diversification of the business or are you planning to move away from reselling?”

Finding answers to these questions will help you to focus on how you want to take your product to market.

Whether you plan to sell it over the Internet as a sideline or box it
up and sell it off the shelves at Harvey Norman, you need to give serious consideration to the pros and cons of each sales channel. If
this really is a sideline to your reselling business, Frith suggests there may be a third way: “For some businesses it may be better to license the product to a third party, someone who has experience in sending products to market.”

Sydney company GetData went through this process in 2001 when business partners Grahame Henley, John Hunter and Brett Hunter left the forensics team at PricewaterhouseCoopers where they provided forensics services and gained valuable experience investigating the likes of HIH and One.Tel.

That experience in a services organisation led the trio to believe the tools and techniques available in the marketplace for data recovery left a gap they believed they could fill. They left to pursue the new business.

At first their focus was on building a software product that would speed up the process for other data recovery companies – aiming the product at people like themselves. But it soon became apparent that the horizon should be broadened. “We realised that if we could produce a product useful to the big end of town, it could also be used by the person sitting at home in front of their PC,” Henley recalls.

From that analysis, the company’s signature product Recover My Files was born. The GetData team now acknowledges the importance of that insight to the current success their business enjoys.

Get help with support
Another important step in GetData’s success was finding a way to
support their product – a step that both Doyle and Frith warn is a significant issue for launching a software product.

Having boxes of software walking off the shelves is all well and good but if your profits are being eaten up by the cost of 24x7 support, particularly if you sell overseas, you are not achieving your objectives. You will need to consider who is

own software stepping the to up