The client’s business offers a technology enhanced tour guiding app for mobile devices. The business’ strategic alignment now calls for a new business model. The environment is not well researched, and it is difficult to find a good model that fulfills the client’s requirements: easy distribution of the mobile app, efficient processing of payments and the automation of business processes that have traditionally occupied much of the client’s time. Furthermore, the pricing of the product is a big question mark and finding the right pricing strategy has been included in the project goals.

A framework to define the business model has been found and used to analyze the competition. Market participants had then been determined and analyzed, using the predetermined business model definition and framework. The competition had been analyzed on their strengths and weaknesses by their value generating features. Further, the work included defining which of those features should be applied, resulting in a blueprint for the new business model. Finally, a model was presented, constructed according to the previously derived blueprint, and using common e-business tools and procedures.

The resulting business model is built on commonly available information systems tools, most importantly on a platform as a service e-commerce website. The business model is driven by the fundamental aspect of simplicity, outsourcing the payment processing to a platform-specific application at a marginally increased fee. Furthermore, a high degree of automation is introduced by the e-commerce platform specific automation tool, covering especially the tasks of marketing and customer claims. Business processes are streamlined by a third-party workflow automation tool, creating the possibility of managing a business with a very low staff count, thus increasing the profit margin, and allowing for lower product prices. Automated workflows further increase the efficiency of information flows and allow the client to focus on the strategic development of the business as well as product development, and in return creating a better customer experience. The business model is made sustainable by the high degree of automation, leading to easy scalability which then allow it to adapt to changing market conditions without sacrificing quality or availability of the product.