Friday 17 June 2016

QUESTIONNAIRE about school companies by Ted Time from Portugal

1.     Are you satisfied with your cooperation between members of  your school company? Why?

We are all satisfied with our cooperation because as a team we work really well together, we develop our expert services, we outline strategic advantages and we implement important marketing decisions. As a result, we also won the logo contest and the video contest.

2.     Did you have any problems with running your school companies? How did you cope with them?
At the beginning we had to build our team, we had to think outside the box and learn how to build a small business, in fact it was our first time. Also, we were the only company selling a service, so our major struggle was: how to get profit out of this business.

3.     To what extend did you manage to accomplish  all plans and activities which you had set  in your business plan?
As a team we discussed the ideas for our 3 packages (Tedventure, Tedseeing and Tedmade), but we cannot sell our packages because Portuguese law doesn’t allow state schools to make profit. Our next step is to develop a new strategy to promote and implement our services.

4.     To what extend did you accomplish your business plan?
So far, we haven’t accomplished our business plan because we are not allowed to get profit. Yet, we developed the whole process of a business plan and we are developing new strategies to implement our business ideas.

5.     What was the strength of your school company?
Our school company strengths are: strong relationship among co-workers; attractive products; young, energetic and motivated team; great marketing team and adequate training.

6.     What was the weakness of your company?
Our school company weaknesses are:  lack of capital invested; slow response to company growth and rely on public transportation.

7.     How successful was the school company and what are you proud of?
All the events released in our school supported by our company were successful and received a good feedback. We are proud because we are a young team trying to create a company and overcome obstacles and this will make us better entrepreneurs in the future.

8.     What knowledge did you acquire while running the school company?
We acquired marketing knowledge, we developed our creativity, IT skills, business skills and learned how to develop new ideas.

9.     What skills did you get while running the school company?
As our company is the only one selling a service we had to agree with specific marketing decisions that helped us, we developed our communication skills and our attitude in public presentations and this also helped us developing our soft skills: responsibility; autonomy; team work and social skills.

10.  Can you see any opportunities for development of your company as ‘real’ entrepreneurs in the future?
One of the future opportunities for our school company as ‘real’ entrepreneurs would be:  get another sponsor like YMCA, which is an organization aimed at young people that could profit from our services. To develop our company we could also add more walking tours in our packages. We could also prepare some working sessions on entrepreneurship for 9th and 10th graders.

11.  What opportunities and threats can you see?
One of our biggest opportunities are our partners’ support: the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, the YMCA organization. Besides this, as a company we have a unique consumer demand and continuous flow of costumers (Erasmus+ students) and new ways to encourage visits. Our threats are the law and regulations (not allowed to sell the product) and the indirect competition from our substitutes.


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