Conceptualising business and pricing models for ASEAN expansion
DCI (Digital Commerce Intelligence Pte Ltd) is a start-up based in Singapore. It is committed to build South East Asia’s most sophisticated digital commerce intelligence platform that enables consumer goods brands to better understand and effectively drive their eCommerce Performance. By applying Data Science techniques to capture digital data points from the web, and then using Artificial Intelligence technology to analyse the data, DCI generates commercial insights and provides actionable data dashboards & predictive analytics to guide brands on their digital commerce performance. Currently, DCI is providing 2 data service offerings – (a) a competitive intelligence / market research offering that gives brands a holistic view on their whole market at an ongoing (weekly) basis, and (b) a brand’s KPIs monitoring tool.
Through performing an in-depth market analysis of other similar businesses in Singapore and other parts of the world, students are expected to identify specific opportunity, gaps, threats & target market that DCI’s service offerings can exploit based on the competitor analysis. This includes possible new product mix or pricing strategy. This will culminate in the design of a Business Model Canvas for the service offerings.
Students came up with interesting ideas on modularizing DCI’s current product/service offerings. In particular, as DCI is currently only targeting the large multinational FMCG brands, it is missing the possible revenue streams from smaller brands in Singapore (and the ASEAN region) are somewhat not considered. Therefore, several groups have recommended addressing the needs of these smaller local brands to tap into opportunities to expand DCI’s presence in the region. New pricing models on the modularized product/service offerings were also proposed to make the offerings more accessible, especially to the smaller brands who may only have limited budgets.
Overall, these recommendations on modularizing the product/service offerings were well-received by DCI’s CEO and COO, who attended the Final Presentation session, through a hybrid mode (as one of them was still based in Dubai then).
Digital Commerce Intelligence:
“I’d like to once again express my gratitude for the opportunity we were given to participate in the 2019 SMU-X module of “Accounting of Entrepreners”. The collaboration with you and your students was not only a great experience, but was also a highly beneficial one for our business itself. Your students, despite their young age and various backgrounds, demonstrated an impressively professional but also creative attitude towards our business problems. Acknowledging that the issues that small startups like us are facing in their markets, are not fully covered by literature, it was also great to see that your students were able to make the distinction between the books and the real world, adapting their knowledge and thinking into match our situation and propose reasonable solutions. Am sure your guidance was
fundamental to that. Thanks again for this opportunity. I hope you get to continue this engagement with the industry and rest assured it will be hugely beneficial for students and companies alike.”
Students from the Accounting for Entreprenuers - X course
“The client was very forthcoming with information that could help us along the way. There was a lot of good communication that was facilitated by putting us in the same communication channel on Slack. Moreover, they were always keen to arrange meetings online to go through any questions that we may have about any part of our presentation.”
“Both DCI's CEO and CEO are super supportive in this journey. Firstly, they were keen to share with us their financial reports as well as costing breakdown which are private and confidential. In addition, whenever we proposed our ideas to Mr KZ, he will give us feedback which allow us to refine our recommendations.”
“The project was quite difficult at the start as we lacked the knowledge but the industry so we were lost at first but the client was very helpful and patient with us by explaining in greater details about their company which then allowed us to better understand their needs and recommend more suitable solutions for them.”
Associate Professor Yuanto Kusnadi, School of Accounting (instructor):
“The three-partite interactions between myself (and the adjunct teaching mentor), with students and the project mentors assigned by the client are crucial for students to provide useful and relevant recommendations to the client. These mentoring sessions allow feedback to flow and we all gained from this interactive process throughout the semester. Moreover, they provide a useful platform for myself to bond with the students, especially in a semester when all classes were held fully online.”