This is a cell phone application that helps small and micro entrepreneurs keep track of their business expenses and sales more easily, streamline financial information, and analyze it on a more regular basis. BizWiz allows the creation of an immediate record of the transaction as it happens, ensuring that costs and sales are properly managed.
BizWiz - the Business Helper- is a cell phone application that helps small and micro entrepreneurs keep track of their business expenses and sales more easily, streamline financial information, and analyze it on a more regular basis. BizWiz allows the creation of an immediate record of the transaction as it happens, ensuring that expenses and revenues are properly managed.
Most micro and small business owners in developing countries currently lack the financial tools and knowledge to properly manage their businesses. They rely on scant financial records and rarely are able to accurately analyze them and effectively utilize them to make sound business decisions. Business owners frequently don’t have access to computers and technology to streamline and keep financial information and such tasks as calculating the operational efficiency of an enterprise can be quite onerous for an entrepreneur with a very limited amount of time and resources. Micro and small business owners need a simple and easy to use tool to record and analyze financial information in order to make better business decisions and ensure not just a sustenance-level performance, but achieve real growth.
Biz Wiz will be developed by a small team in accordance with the main producers of mobile devices in order to ensure compatibility and high performance. It will be a mobile phone application distributed through telecom providers and service centers and will serve micro and small business owners in both urban and rural areas in developing countries to help them track their expenditures and their incomes, as well as to forecast their cashflow and predict their needs and constraints. This application is intended to provide entrepreneurs who do not have the proper technology and financial knowledge with an easy and quick way to record transactions and use these records to generate ratios and analyze their business performance, providing them with a more solid backing for making sound business decisions. It will include graphics to mark and illustrate the categories regarding inputs (ex. energy expenses, taxes, labor) and outputs (ex. sales of product). The application will be user-friendly requiring minimal financial and math knowledge, performing most categorization and calculations behind the scene. It will be able to generate a number of important financial ratios and help the entrepreneur interpret their meaning for his/her enterprise. Further, the application will also provide the opportunity to forecast expenditures and incomes in order to help business owners predict their cashflow and business growth.
BizWiz will be first developed in English, and during the second phase will be translated to other languages and include country-specific details (ex. tax %).
This project is intended to start in May of 2009. The first phase will take about 6 months and the second phase is envisioned to take about 2 years.
Past research conducted regarding this project:
We have interviewed micro and small business owners about their knowledge level and financial needs and based on conversations, we have been able to establish a basic need level. We have also conducted research on currently available accounting and financial reporting tools designed for and geared toward small business owners and have not found evidence of such existing tools. Further, we have conducted research on the resources and tools necessary to develop this application as well as on potential partners.
Past experience of main project managers:
The two project managers together combine over 10 years of experience in the interactive industry developing web applications for computers as well as for portable devices with five years of international development experience in Central Asia, Latin America, and Asia. One of the project managers has extensive business knowledge and has conducted business trainings for small and medium entrepreneurs in Paraguay.
How to develop the software application so that its compatible with existing technology.
Most resources will be utilized to develop the software application and test it. Marketing and promotion will be conducted through mobile carriers. This is a highly sustainable financial model as it requires a large initial investment and relatively smaller ongoing support in developing manuals, training materials, and support to telecom centers and users of the application.
Potential obstacles with regards to the users include:
- Lack of comfort of applying new tools in one's daily routine
- Concerns regarding security of data and potential use of data by govn't or others.
- Basic needs assessment was conducted during a visit to Paraguay where micro and small business owners were interviewed regarding their financial knowledge and needs. It was established through interviews and observations that the level of technology use was limited - while most entrepreneurs had cell phones, very few had cash registers or computers. Further, most entrepreneurs had very limited knowledge of their financial performance and how to improve their business performance.
| Additional Project Idea Representative: | Stefka Hristova |
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