Is this product or project worth it? It’s probably the most important and loaded question you can ask yourself when you decide to take on a new business enterprise. You can spend hours strategizing the different ways you’ll be successful, but in the end the only way you’re going to really be able to tell if something is worth your time and effort is by testing it out. That’s where a feasibility study comes into play. Dictionary.com defines a feasibility study as “a study designed to determine the practicability of a system or a plan”. It’s one of the most effective ways to determine if you’re new product or project is going to be successful and if you’re on track with your business strategy. So how do you put together an effective feasibility study?
- 1. Define why you’re product or project is necessary
Nothing is created without a purpose, so you need to immediately lay out the reasons that you’re product or project is something that is needed by consumers. What problems will it help to lessen or fix?
- 2. Summarize a market study
You need to be able to outline who your target market is, how they will benefit from what you’re providing, who you will be competing against (if anyone – is your product brand new or a spin-off of something someone else has already done?), what are the alternatives?
- 3. Research the potential for success
Now that you’ve determined what it is you want to accomplish, who your target market is, etc. you need to do your due diligence in figuring out if you’re solution is one that will actually work. This means prototyping, conducting research polls, finding out if other companies have encountered problems with a similar-type project or product and what they did to overcome those problems, etc. You need to be able to answer the TELOS of a feasibility study, which stands for the technical, economical, legal, operational, and schedule feasibility.
- 4. Reevaluate
Once you’ve researched the feasibility of whether you’ll be able to meet all of the different requirements to ensure success you can reevaluate what is working and what isn’t working in your marketing strategy. You’ve spent the time defining all the different variables, so tweak or throw out what isn’t working and then reassess the feasibility of your product or project again with the new solutions in place.
There are a few other things you will probably want to consider when conducting a feasibility study, such as the financial implications, how readily available and attainable resources are, and how you’re product or project will impact the local culture. You can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows about it because you’re operating with an ineffective marketing campaign it won’t matter. By conducting a feasibility study you can pinpoint the areas where you’re operating at your strongest and where you’re falling short and work on fixing what isn’t working and maximizing what is working.
Author Bio: This Guest post is by Christine Kane from internet service providers, she is a graduate of Communication and Journalism. She enjoys writing about a wide-variety of subjects for different blogs. She can be reached via email at: Christi.Kane00 @ gmail.com.