Space Antenna Industry Business Plan

Executive Summary
Space Antenna Inc. is a company that has started up to produce antennae for the telecommunications industry. The antennae will communicate with satellites in space. This is a growing industry, which creates opportunity for new entrants. The key success factors are to be able to innovate, which typically results in antennae that not only have more features and better performance than their predecessors but come in at a lower price as well. Thus, engineering skill is one of the most important things that will drive success. The organization has therefor e been built with the needs of R&D in mind, in order to ensure that we can bring to market the best products, and start to build market share that way. We are backed by a venture capital group, and they have brought in a professional management team, which will allow the founders – all engineers – to focus on doing what they do best, which is make the best antennae in history.
3. The Business
The business is a space antenna making operation. At the heart of the business is that idea that antennas can deliver more features at a lower price. This means that the current technology needs to be leapfrogged by the next generation of technology. Antennae are essential to communicating with satellites, and a lot of communications in this world are dependent on these aatellites to transmit information quickly from one part of the world to another, and in some cases to communicate information that is gathered by the satellites themselves back to the planet. The focus of Space Antenna, Inc. is to deliver the next generation of antenna that can do more, which in turn carries with it several benefits to the end user. The end user will be able to do more, which should allow it to be more efficient, and that in turn leads to higher productivity, greater efficiency, meaning both increased revenue and decreased costs, for dramatically increased profit.
The company will therefore be heavily invested in research and development, but there are several areas where we believe that technological breakthrough is close, and if we can achieve it, we will be able to win a lot of market share fairly quickly. We have founded this company with an engineering-forward mindset, because we believe that it is essential to success that we be the technological leaders in the business. Lagging in technology will only put us in a position to land smaller deals from less desirable clients, and we are seeking the big fish, and over the course of a few years a rather high market share. Thus, engineering is really the main point of emphasis at this point.
4. The Industry
The antenna business is part of the greater telecommunications industry, so the clients are usually large telecoms, military and government. The keys to success in the industry are to continually increase transmission capacity and better connections, in particular to support high definition programming, or the transmission of massive data sets (Silverstein ,2013). Buyers want equipment that is "more reliable, easier to use, smaller and less expensive that before, just to stay competitive" (Silverstein, 2013). This is why our motto is "Include more, save more" because buyers want not only a feature-rich system, but one that is reliable, and cheaper. This sounds like a difficult task, but the reality is that this is where the antenna business is going, and with each technological innovation, those seemingly disparate goals can and are often met.
The overall size of the industry is substantial, when you think about how much we rely on telecommunications in our lives. The global antenna market is worth an estimated $17.54 billion today and will be worth $25.46 billion by 2023, given a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.61%. This means that the industry is growing faster than the economy as a whole, the result of our increasing appetite for connectivity (MI, 2017).
In general, there are a handful of major companies in the industry. There are a few different reasons for this. One, startup costs are relatively high. Technological advances are frequent, so any company wishing to enter the antenna business needs to have on its team engineers who are up to speed with the latest advancements. Capital requirements are high, and if the team cannot deliver a superior product there will be little demand for what it does produce. Research and development are essential to success. Most companies seek to create the best possible antennae at a low price, because the industry is highly competitive. However, the strong demand in the industry also means that there might well be room for an innovative new player. The buyers are generally large, and the antennae are critical to their business, so there is some bargaining power over buyers, but not a lot because of their size. There is probably bargaining power over suppliers, except in the case of rare components. The intensity of rivalry is high, because there are only a few major firms in the industry, and a few major customers. Each deal is actually quite important, especially the bigger deals in major markets. Competition for smaller deals is less intense. All told, the space antenna industry is moderately attractive to be in, and how attractive is more or less dependent on the state of your company's technology. With technological leadership this is a great industry, but without it, the industry could actually be quite unfavorable (QuickMBA, 2010).
5. Product Development Plan
The emphasis is on research and development, which requires two key resources. The first is people – without the right people this will never work. To that end, we have put together a team of experienced antenna engineers who have worked in many of the companies that our now our competitors. This experience, we believe, will allow us to develop a superior antenna, and from there we should be able to leverage our superior product and extensive contacts among the leading customers to gain a foothold in this business.
The other thing that you need to develop antennae is money. To that end, we are backed not only by the founders of the company but by venture capitalists, who have brought in their own professional management teams to help get our business to scale and ensure that the marketing and sales functions are performed to the highest standard. We believe that there is considerable synergy between our engineering expertise and the business talent that our financial backers have brought in. We have sufficient capital for about two years, without tapping additional funding, and that buys us time to start to get products to market, which we feel will happen in about a year.
6. Management Team
The venture capital-backed management team has experience in telecommunications, including from our future customers. This team brings years of experience scaling small technology-driven companies. The founders come mainly from the engineering side, with a couple have MBAs as well. These are experienced antenna professionals who believe that the key to their financial future is run their own company, creating significant motivation to work hard to bring great products to market.
7. Operations Plan
Antenna are usually customizable. They are typically made to order, and our strategy to to have an inventory on hand with the basic components produced, and the customizable part of the antenna being more in the areas where technology changes quickly. It would be like having a basic car model, but leaving the flexibility to change out computer hardware and software to ensure that those things remain completely up-to-date. This design should allow us to build in more features, a more customizeable antenna to suit our clients' needs, but also do this with a faster turnaround time from when the order is placed. The antenna will be produced from components sourced globally at a site in Colorado, and then shipped around North America. While most of the market is on the East Coast, most of the raw materials and parts come from Asia, so we are seeking a central location in order to reduce shipping times and costs to the East Coast market, while allowing us to get critical supplies in from the Pacific Coast quickly as well. We fill orders and then produce the final antenna to spec. We will also install the antenna, and test it, for a price, or allow some of our clients to do their own installation and testing – the military likes this, in order for certain things to be proprietary.
8. Organizational Plan
The organizational chart will be focused on engineering, with much smaller functional units for things like Sales and Human Resources. Sales and Marketing will be one team, as the marketing function in this business is highly technical and thus there is a limited workforce of people to perform sales/marketing; plus as a B2B company with a physical product marketing is less important to what we do. It's a small business, it will not take long for the major buyers to know our name. The Chief Engineerng Officer will be the second most important person after the CEO, owing to the criticality of the engineering function. The Board will have both engineers and business representatives appointed by the venture capital group, in order to strike a balance between the corporate and technical branches of the company.
9. Marketing Plan
The actual marketing will be somewhat limited, because this is a B2B company. There are only a few major clients, and their requirements are highly technical. Our marketing materials will be produced largely by the engineers, but with a small marketing team to help make sure that the documents are professional caliber – you need proper designers, writers and editors for that. The marketing team will be relatively small, and most of the work will fall to the Sales side of the team.
The sales team will be mainly technical sales people. They will have an engineering background and will be able to discuss technical specs with prospects. The reality is that in this business, technical specs are what matters. The other side of sales is the finance side – things like financing and pricing are critical to success. All told, sales will be an important function, and will draw our sales team from the industry, either by poaching competitors, leveraging their turnover, or by looking to our potential customers for sales talent.
References
MI (2017). Global antenna market. Mordor Intelligence. Retrieved March 11, 2018 from https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/antenna-market

QuickMBA (2010). Porter's five forces. QuickMBA.com. Retrieved March 11, 2018 from http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/porter.shtml

Silverstein, S. (2013) Antenna industry: Tuned to the future of satellite communications. Via Satellite. Retrieved March 11, 2018 from http://www.satellitetoday.com/uncategorized/2013/02/01/antenna-industry-tuned-to-future-of-satellite-communications/