Project Proposal > Target Audience and Benefits

Project Information

Project: PROJECT-NAME
Internal Release Number: X.Y.Z
Related Documents:
Process impact: This document helps identify potential customers and their defining aspects. That helps to suggest and give weight to requirements. The list of benefits gives the sales team information on how to sell the product, and highlights important use cases and test cases.

Target Audience

TODO: Fill in the information above and below. Provided answers are only examples. Delete them and answer in your own words.
What market segment is this product in?
E-commerce shopping website engines.
Full-featured stock trading applications.
Anti-virus software for cellular phones.
Real estate sales force automation.
What is the target market for this product? Include specific defining characteristics.
Small- to medium-sized businesses that sell to consumers who expect full-featured shopping sites.
High net-worth individual investors who trade more than ten stocks per week and prefer to do their own research.
Cellular phone users who frequently download ring-tones, video games, and other content to high-end phones and who are concerned about the potential for viruses.
What is the size of the total available market? Cite references for facts.
10,000 users [magazine article].
$10M, growing annually at 4% [industry analyst].
What are some other customer options or leading products that address the same needs?
Are there any known customers for this product?

Benefits to Customers

TODO: List high-level benefits that this product will provide. For each, identify the type of customer or user that will benefit. Each benefit should be in real-world terms, not involving just this product itself. You may want to highlight benefits that are not offered by competing products.
TIP: If you can rank benefits by value, use numbered lists, otherwise use bullet lists.
  • Increases value of individual products
    • Customers find more value in products when they are sure that those are the right products for them.
    • Customers find more value in recommended combinations of complementary products.
    • Customers find more value in products when they have easy access to on-line technical support.
  • Improves customer population
    1. Providing features aimed at business users will improve the ratio of business to individual customers.
    2. Product user groups help to organize the customer population and create channels of communication so that vendor information (e.g., about future releases) spreads more quickly with less advertising expense and delay.
  • Reduces current costs
    • Makes current processes more efficient
    • Reduces staffing and training costs
    • Reduces operation, maintenance, and upgrade costs
    • Reduces materials, licensing, and infrastructure costs
    • Reduces loses due to rework, repairs, rejects, returns, charge-backs, refunds, theft or fraud
    • Avoids penalty clauses of current contracts, fees, and fines
    • Reduces costs of acquiring and supporting customers
    • Reduces costs per transaction
    • Reduces average cost of acquiring customers
    • Reduces costs in DEPARTMENT FUNCTION
  • Opens new business opportunities
    • Opens new sales and partnership opportunities
    • Improves sales success rate or size
    • Opens new sales channels, regions, and markets
    • Creates opportunities to up-sell current customers
    • Triggers bonus clauses of current contracts
  • Satisfies stakeholders
    • Satisfies customer requests
    • Satisfies DEPARTMENT MANAGEMENT and executives
    • Increases conformance with government regulation or corporate policy
    • Satisfies clauses of current contracts
    • Improves customer satisfaction, employee morale, shareholder interest
    • Satisfies needs of DEPARTMENT, STAKEHOLDER, and PARTNER
  • Helps take advantage of changing marketplace
    • Speeds time-to-market
    • Optimizes supply chain
    • Reduces fixed costs of BUSINESS ACTIVITY
    • Reduces inventory, back-ordering, or need for advance planning
    • Enables future partnerships
  • TYPE OF BENEFIT
    1. MOST VALUABLE BENEFIT TO USER-TYPE
    2. BENEFIT TO USER-TYPE
    3. PROVIDES OR INCREASES A GOOD THING
    4. PREVENTS OD DECREASES A BAD THING
  • TYPE OF BENEFIT
    1. MOST VALUABLE BENEFIT TO USER-TYPE
    2. BENEFIT TO USER-TYPE
    3. BENEFIT TO USER-TYPE

Potential Downside

TODO: Could anyone be harmed or put at a disadvantage because of your system? List as above. Note, these are not risks to the success of your implementation, assume that you build the system as specified on time.
  • Privacy
    • Consumers may expose personal information in their product reviews without realizing that it can be read out of context.
    • Consumers opt into marketing lists without realizing all potential future uses of those lists.
  • Security gaps and limits
    • While we will take steps to secure our own system, the systems belonging to USER-TYPE, STAKEHOLDER, PARTNER are out of our control.
    • We provide information to STAKEHOLDER according to strict rules, but afterwards they are able to use it otherwise.
  • Direct physical harm
    1. If the system fails to DETECT-DANGER, it could ALLOW-DAMAGE-TO-HAPPEN.
    2. If the system RESPONDS-INCORRECTLY, it could CAUSE-DAMAGE.
    3. Incorrect advice to system operators could CAUSE-POOR-DECISIONS.
    4. Some system failures could INTERFERE-WITH OTHER-SAFETY-MECHANISMS.
  • Retirement of previous checks and balances
    1. STAKEHOLDER-1 will now make decisions based solely on reports from the system, which are based on data that may contain errors.
    2. STAKEHOLDER-1 will now make decisions that are implemented immediately, without further human review.
    3. Operations are performed on a larger sale, which can allow errors to have a larger impact.
  • In-house I.T. departments
    • Businesses that select our solution may choose to scale back their current in-house e-commerce efforts. Some STAKEHOLDERS could lose their jobs.
    • Our solution will not offer integration with all back-end systems currently in use, so some I.T. departments may need to change existing infrastructure.
  • Shifted power, responsibility, and accountability
    1. Decision-making will be shifted from STAKEHOLDER-1 to STAKEHOLDER-2.
    2. Responsibility will be shifted from STAKEHOLDER-1 to STAKEHOLDER-2.
    3. Decisions made by STAKEHOLDER-1 will be MORE-OR-LESS exposed, constrained, and reviewed.
    4. STAKEHOLDER-1 will be MORE-OR-LESS dependent on STAKEHOLDER-2.
    5. STAKEHOLDER-1 may be reduced, eliminated, or reassigned.
  • PROPERTY DAMAGE, PERSONAL INJURY, OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
    1. WORST DOWNSIDE TO USER-TYPE
    2. DOWNSIDE
    3. DOWNSIDE
  • EXPOSURE OF PRIVATE OR PROPRIETARY INFORMATION
    1. WORST DOWNSIDE TO USER-TYPE
    2. DOWNSIDE
    3. DOWNSIDE
  • EXPOSURE TO LEGAL ACTION OR LOSS OF LEGAL DEFENSES
    1. WORST DOWNSIDE TO USER-TYPE
    2. DOWNSIDE
    3. DOWNSIDE
  • DIRECT OR INDIRECT FINANCIAL LOSS
    1. WORST DOWNSIDE TO USER-TYPE
    2. DOWNSIDE
    3. DOWNSIDE
  • LOSS OF VALUE IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, REPUTATION, OR BRAND
    1. WORST DOWNSIDE TO USER-TYPE
    2. DOWNSIDE
    3. DOWNSIDE
  • COMPUTER OR PHYSICAL SECURITY COMPROMISES
    1. WORST DOWNSIDE TO USER-TYPE
    2. DOWNSIDE
    3. DOWNSIDE
  • TYPE OF DOWNSIDE
    1. WORST DOWNSIDE TO USER-TYPE
    2. DOWNSIDE
    3. DOWNSIDE
TODO: Check for words of wisdom for additional advice on this template.
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Copyright © 2003-2004 Method Labs. All rights reserved. License terms. Retain this copyright statement whenever this file is used as a template.