Inti College-assignment Report Tmk2111

Marketing Plan: INTI College EXECUTIVE SUMMARY INTI College is preparing to offer new courses for its IT faculty starting early year of 2009. With fierce competitions from other local and private education institutions, INTI College believe these new courses will be choose by their potential customers as all courses introduced are still new in Malaysia. With the return on investment on 1.46%, it is profitable for INTI College to proceed with their plan in introducing the new courses in IT faculty. We believe that we could compete with other universities or colleges as we offer new and unique courses to our customers. With the collaboration with other international universities, INTI College is able to provide a well-certified certification for our fresh graduates which then will help them to land a better job once they are finish. INTI College is targeting a specific target segments in the consumer and business market as we believe that education now required by many regardless of their level in the society. In order to maintain the quality and our well-known education reputation, INTI College ensures that all lecturers meet the qualifications required by our partner universities. They are experts in their fields, approachable as well as understanding towards the students needs. The primary marketing objective of INTI College is to achieve first – year market share of 2 percent with unit sales of 200 students. The primary financial objectives are to achieve first-year sales revenues of RM600 000, and to keep first year losses of the new introduce courses to less than RM150 000 and break even early in the second year.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College PURPOSE AND MISSION It has been our mission to provide quality education that will enrich every student. The College uses its resources to offer various quality programmes. Counseling, guidance and other educational support services are available to enrich students intellectually, culturally and socially. By providing the basic needs, we aim to reach all the potential of a person beyond intellectual. This can be proved by INTI College milestone statement; “A college degree is not a sign that one is a finished product but an indication a person is prepared for life”. To further explain about the uniqueness of INTI College, it can be described by its Vision, Mission and Values that has been acknowledge not only among the students but also to the public. This statement has been part of INTI College since the beginning as to emphasize the importance of not only being a provider of knowledge but also becoming a center for human development ability. Vision

Mission • To develop human capital with global To be the preferred provider of holistic education competencies through career focused quality education • To cater the intellectual, social and cultural needs of learners • To enhance all stakeholders values Values Quality Objective • Quality To Provide education through effective and • Integrity efficient academic programmes and processes • Innovativeness Professionalism Quality & Policy To continuously improve the quality of academic programmes and services towards excellence

Founded in 1986, INTI College is governed by a group of concerned academics and professionals who believe the College has an important role to play in the human

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Marketing Plan: INTI College resource development of the country. It provides a caring and conducive study environment for inculcating in its students a POSITIVE attitude and PROGRESSIVE approach leading to PRODUCTIVE effort. It adopts a holistic approach to learning and training while widening the intellectual horizons of students.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS The ability of private tertiary education to give emerging economies a shot in the arm has been debated by many globally. In a conference briefing note, it explained: "In the past five years it has become evident that private education can have a significant impact on emerging countries. Many governments are promoting private sector growth to increase educational capacity at all levels, while working to meet relevant standards and quality benchmarks. Maintaining their reputation as one of the state’s best educational institution, INTI College continues to chart the course of distinction through the provision of a wide range of academic programmes. It has gained international recognition for its quality educational programmes and uncompromising academic standards, making significant inroads overseas with international associate campuses in Beijing, China; Jakarta Barat, Indonesia and Hong Kong. The new main branch for INTI College which is INTI UC is located in the vicinity of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). The college has been received diverse student population, 25% of whom are international students from more than 47 countries providing true international exposure to all INTI college students. The institution's holistic education focuses on academic achievements, leadership qualities and social responsibilities. Besides all the courses that INTI College offered to the local and international students, the College also cooperates with other overseas educational institutions to expand our programme offerings. The programmes offered at INTI-UC include American Degree Transfer Program, Australian Degree Transfer Programme (Commerce & Science), Pre-University Programmes, Business/ Commerce Programmes, Computing & IT Programmes, Engineering Programmes, Law Degree Programme, Pharmacy Programme, Professional Programmes, English Language Programmes, and PostGraduate Programmes.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College INTI College is very aware of its services and support to its customers, therefore the College willing to provide all the facilities needed at any expenses. By doing so, INTI College is able to compete with their competitors at any rate to ensure their services will be customer’s first choice. The main rivals that INTI College is having are mostly private universities and college such as Multimedia University, AIMST University, HELP University College (HUC), KBU International College, Kolej TAFE Seremban, Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT), and many others

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Marketing Plan: INTI College However, to differentiate INTI College from many other that available all around the country, a detail analysis on its SWOT analysis has been done. Such results are as followed:

STRENGTH •

SWOT ANALYSIS FOR INTI COLLEGE WEAKNESSES

Degree offered by our partner universities are

•

recognized worldwide. Students will be

Greater costs are required in order to maintain the facilities for the students.

awarded prestigious degrees. •

INTI College has created a conducive English speaking environment that helps students improve their English Proficiency.

•

With relatively smaller class size, students and lecturers can interact actively both inside and outside classrooms

OPPORTUNITIES • •

THREATS

Save up to 75% from tuition fees and living

Diversification of students may create

costs, and almost half of your study time.

conflicts that need a longer period to

INTI College graduate are acknowledged by

overcome. •

business in the region. •

•

INTI College try to adopt an out-going

INTI International Education Group has

culture where all students regardless of

transferred thousands of students to accredited

nationality, gender and other factors

universities in US, UK, Canada, Australia and

could assimilates as one.

New Zealand.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College MARKETING STRATEGY & OBJECTIVES INTI College aims to position their product based on customer needs. By identifying their target, INTI College aims to minimize their work operation so that it is more effective and efficient. Having a smooth operation will help INTI College to provide best services to satisfy the customer and assist INTI College to focus on services that most profitable. However, as much as it is important to identify the potential customers, it is also vital to find the most efficient ways to deliver the company services to attract them. Starting of the year 2009, INTI College will be offering a few new courses in the Information Technology faculty. The introduction of these new courses is as to fulfil the demand of other business sectors that requires specialist in these IT areas. Similar to other courses before, INTI College main target for the course are students who have just finished from primary school with SPM certificates and students that have finished STPM certificates. Besides that, INTI College are also targeting students who have professional certificates in IT courses or A- Level certificates to further their studies. To assist student make selection on their career path, INTI College provide four parts of studies which are; Foundation Certificate, Diploma, Degree and also Professional Certificate. For fresh graduate student that hold SPM or STPM certificates, they may choose to continue their education by doing Foundation Certificate, Diploma or Degree level. INTI College has set a minimum requirement for student to apply for the courses. For SPM students, a minimum of 5 credits in the subjects such as Mathematics, English, any Science subjects, History and Bahasa Malaysia are sufficient for them to apply for Foundation Certificate, Diploma or Degree level. As for STPM students, they can apply with the result of CGPA 2.0 that include three best subjects and General Paper. As for holders of A-Level certificate or any other certified education record they also encourage to apply for courses in INTI College.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College

Figure 1: INTI College Academic Pathway

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Marketing Plan: INTI College

To build profitable relationships with target customers, INTI College has used product differentiation to position their services.

As always, INTI is committed to

uncompromising teaching excellence. The marketing strategy for the new courses will focus on latest programmes that match the industry needs nowadays. Such new courses that will be offered by INTI College are as followed: 1. FOUNDATION • Foundation in Management Information Technology • Foundation in Multimedia Information Technology • Foundation in Computer Science & Technology 2. DIPLOMA • Diploma in Information & Multimedia Technology • Diploma in Information & e- Business Technology • Diploma in Information & Communication Technology 3. DEGREE • B.A.(Hons) in Multimedia Computing • B.I.T(Hons) in Business Intelligence • B.Sc.(Hons) in Network Computing • B.Sc.(Hons) in Software Engineering • B. Sc. (Hons) Games Software Development • B. Sc. (Hons) Network and MobileComputing 4. PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION • CISCO Local Network Academy To add value to the new courses, students of INTI College can select 4 out of 6 areas in soft skill training incorporated into the programmes to enhance proficiency. The areas are entrepreneurship, problem-solving skills, personal financial management, communication skills, learning skills, and critical thinking skills.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College

Along with the courses offered by INTI College, it also brings wider internship opportunities to its students. Internship enables students to understand the real working environment in the industrial and business sector and it requires the student to perform tasks in the companies that they are assigned to. The employers are expected to guide the interns and at the end of the internship, assess the performance of the interns. This assessment is important because it will reveal the weakness and strengths of the intern’s capability and knowledge that they have gained whilst studying. The result of this experience will then use as the students and INTI reference to help students build their strengths and overcome the weakness. For the new course offerings, the proposed price is as below: Fees for the new IT courses (RM) Registration Fees (one time fees)

RM1250

Application Fess (non-refundable)

RM60

INTI College Study Support Fees

Minimum of RM230(per subject*)

Deposit (refundable)

RM150

General Administration Fees

RM1600

Resource fees

RM170 (per trimester)

Student health Insurance

RM100 (per year)

Note: All fees are subject to change without prior notice

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Marketing Plan: INTI College With the economic downturn and fierce competition in education opportunities now, INTI College try to reduce the expenses that student need to pay. Therefore, INTI has revised on many aspects before setting the fees for the new courses. This includes the costs for manpower, facilities and also study materials. An amount of RM1400 for registration fee requires which is much lower from other private colleges. All other expenses also have been set to an affordable price in order to attract more students to further their study in INTI College. Setting the minimum price of subjects at RM230 also is consider reasonable as IT subjects could be costly as it may requires the use of computer and equipments, experienced teaching staff

and also

laboratory. Even though the price offered for the new courses is economical compare to other college or universities, however the quality of the course offerings is high. INTI College ensures that all of the new courses follow the certified syllabus released by the Higher Education Ministry. Research also has been done on these new courses to guarantee that these programmes are suitable with the job market demands in Malaysia. All academicians that involve with these new programmes also required to undergo a series of workshop and seminars in order to sustain their ability and knowledge with the new subjects. INTI College wishes to establish these new subjects as a long term product line to the company. For the distribution strategy, INTI will use the selective distribution through its own chain of colleges all around Malaysia. During the first year, all new courses will be offered to the main branch that has more IT programmes. Such new courses will be available in Selangor, Penang, Sarawak, and Negeri Sembilan. This is done to measure the effectiveness of the new courses before it is implemented in other branch. This is more cost effective as INTI could reduce their risks and still focusing on promoting the existing programmes at the same time. In order to support the introduction of the new courses, INTI College will provide promotion and advertising about it to the public. Such activities will include exhibition all - 11 -

Marketing Plan: INTI College around Malaysia, participation in Education Fair and also promotion through mass media such as radio and television. Application form also will be distributed through major newspapers in the country, among primary schools and also through the website of INTI College.

A team of spokesperson also will be provided to increase customer awareness about the new course offerings where this team will be responsible to explain and answer all doubts that they have about it. To increase understanding among customer, a full- color photos and explanation brochure of INTI College and the courses offering also will be distributed in all colleges, to the public and during the events that INTI is participate. This information also will be available at the main website and website of all INTI colleges. By integrating all the information about INTI College and the introduction of the new programmes in all main media, the company will reinforce the brand name and the main points of its product differentiation. Research about media consumption patterns will help INTI College to choose appropriate media and period to reach potential customers with the introduction of the new courses. After the introduction, advertising through radio and television will appear on pulsing basis to maintain awareness of INTI College and its course offerings. Through the research on higher education patterns and trends in Malaysia, INTI has identified specific requirements and benefits that the target customers will value. Through the feedback, survey and observation of current education trend help INTI College to introduce this new programme. Along with the introduction, the company also measure and analyse the customer’s attitude towards the competing rivals of INTI College and their course offerings.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College TACTICAL PROGRAMS This is the part where we show our tactical strategies as to how we will achieve our goal and that is to conquer any obstruction INTI may encounter when promoting their IT course, and so therefore hopefully we will be reducing any obstruction to the minimum. The strategy we are going to use is quiet big, we intend on making the IT course of INTI to be more attractive and interesting when compared to our competition. To do this, our plan is to other than of course mixing and combining our course plans for IT to make it more attractive, we will have to also invest plenty in both our internal and external factors, which could play a big role to making our IT course successful INTERNAL STRATEGIES These are strategies which should be done to the inner circles of INTI which basically revolves around lecturers, facilities, and programs. With this, it would mean that there have to be a lot of improvements on those 3 key factors, if we are to get the IT course running well. Firstly, we would have to keep our current students in IT to be satisfied and happy, so we will do improvements on our facilities, however we know we can not improve all our facilities at the same time, so the first thing is to get the student’s opinion right from their own thought. We will conduct a survey on which facilities the students think will need the improvements in the shortcoming, the options can be on the facilities inside the classrooms (tables, chairs, projectors, etc) or it could be those within the faculty building (stairs, lifts, bathrooms, library etc) or facilities inside the lab (computers, internet connection, etc). We have spared a budget in which we think we could spend on 2 of the 3 available on the survey, which means, it could be spend on either facilities inside the classroom alongside facilities in the lab or in the faculty building, or maybe it would be facilities inside the lab with facilities of the faculty building.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College

Once the survey has been made and improvements have started on any of those, we will then go on to the next step in achieving our goal, which will focus on the lecturers, as we know that a student is only as good as their master, in this case being the lecturers. The lecturer’s quality must be improved especially in the IT courses, if we are to be even comparable to the reputable universities in South East Asia. There are a few steps for this matter, however we must figure out the best and cheapest possible way, the best way as according to our research is to recruit at least 2 higher educated lecturers than the current lecturers working in INTI, preferably lecturers who are very well taught in IT departments, one with experience in other universities. This is a cheaper method when compared to sending our lecturers from the IT faculty to trainings or seminars. Our final step for the internal strategies, is to offer new programs along with our IT, the idea is to have twinning programs, some sort of double degree program which we will try to cooperate with one or more universities in other countries, from our research, potential students prefer to go to Europe, therefore we will try to cooperate with a reputable university in Europe. This program should not be hard to do as we have already worked with other universities in the past.

EXTERNAL STRATEGIES

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Marketing Plan: INTI College These are strategies which are going to be implemented to those factors outside the inner circle of our university; these include agents, advertisements and events.Out of those, the things that have been running are the advertisements and agents only, however even the current advertisements and agents have not been focusing on our IT courses, therefore we will now need to focus them to our new IT course. Advertisements must be radically improved, our advertisements are now only on newspapers and magazines, we must think global if we are to make this IT course of ours a success, however we must always consider the budget for the advertising, so the proposed idea is to have advertisements on the internet, the best and cheapest way is to have them on web blogs, or forums. The other is to put advertisement of our IT course in other country’s newspaper, but to make this into our budget we will have to put them only to our neighboring countries first, for example Indonesia, Brunei and Thailand. When we have a good response from doing this advertisement then we may expand our ads to countries as far as Middle East and Oceania. Then there is always the flyers and brochures to be spread around Malaysia, We will be handing these out through out the year by hiring cheap labor to do this, eg: Students or part time workers. As for agents go, we should be recruiting new agents for our university, and once that has been done, we must train them to promote our IT more than any other courses, as well as the pricing of our IT courses, which are cheaper than some other universities. This method should be done slowly, and if we see there are significant improvements coming from these agents, and then there should be more recruited. We must also send our agents to education exhibitions as often as possible. The last, and most complicated method of all is to hold an events, why did I say this is complicated, it is because there would be more than our staff involved when holding an event, however this method may prove to be the most successful. What we have in mind is to hold a seminar, spoken by famous IT personnel, or government

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Marketing Plan: INTI College personnel (Minister of Education) which could use our INTI as a sponsor to their cause, and as well as to promote our IT courses. The other is to hold an event aimed at potential students meaning (SPM, high school graduates) whom are still confused on which University would suit them most, these events can be varied from a music concert, sporting/academic competitions, or even carnivals or bazaars. All of these steps to improve and promote the IT courses in INTI will be done by the management team of INTI, which have been working together for some time now, however this time there have been 2 new project managers that has been recruited by INTI president, which should be able to lead and guide the team to have a successful campaign. The current agents that are working for INTI will also have a role in helping the team. Student’s participation also helps.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College COST The president of INTI college have set a budget of RM200 000 for the team to help them with the campaign, there will be bonuses rewarded to the teams, when there are rapid improvements to the IT courses in INTI. When the budget have been set and are ready to be spent, then the strategies can be started, The best of timing for the Internal Factors will be in the middle to end of the 1st semester, which should be on the month of February. As for the External strategies, the best time is actually all year long, but it should be started from the end of 2008, which mean on the semester break, as well as the SPM holidays.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College BUDGETS Part of marketing planning includes the preparation for the budget in order to execute the plan. It is important to include the financial analysis for the products or services that is going to be sold. This is to ensure that the company able to sustain their capital in order to expand the production in future. Without any financial planning, it is difficult to measure the costs and profitability of the product if the company wants to continue producing or offering it. It also gives advantages to the company as financial analysis could be the benchmark for the company strategy in order to compete with their rivals in the market. As for the reason, it is essential for INTI College to provide sufficient information on their financial analysis as this may help the company to: •

Determine their cost for producing the product/service

•

Determine the unit price for each product or service that is going to be offered

•

Forecast the total revenue and total profit of the new introduce product or services

•

Stabilize the market

•

Emphasize the competitiveness of INTI College among its rivals

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Marketing Plan: INTI College In order to determine the price to be offered for the new courses, INTI College uses the value-based pricing method. The reason to use this method is because INTI intended to offer just the right combination of quality and good services to their valued customers at a fair price. After determining a few aspects, INTI College has suggested RM3 560 for the price of the new IT courses that will be offered. This price includes the fees for application and administration, other general fees and also fee for a subject enroll. This price will differ according to how many subjects taken by a student. However, only minimum fee of a subject will be included during the registration payments. As for the expenses, it has been identified by the management which includes the cost of facilities such as lecture and tutorial rooms, personnel planning and marketing operations. For the buildings, the costs has been fixed for all colleges to RM35 000 for each trimester. This includes the lecture rooms, tutorial classes and also laboratory. For equipment and fixtures, a total of RM15 000 will be spend each year. By introducing the new courses, the cost of hiring the new lecturers and tutors have been set to RM110 000 per trimester on average of two lecturers and two tutors for each subject. Under the marketing expenses which include the advertising and promotion, INTI College will be spending RM12 000 to promote the college and all its courses through newspapers, radio and television and also printing of the brochure. As for learning materials, INTI College has allocated an amount of RM7 000 for providing the facilities such as lecture notes, exam papers and many other.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College 1. Determine the unit costs. a. Assuming that INTI College will receive 200 students for the new courses, it is applicable to know how much the unit cost is for each student that enrolls in each course. UNIT COSTS = (VARIABLE COST + FIXED COST) NUMBER OF STUDENT = RM129 000 + RM85 000 200 = RM1 070 2. Determine the volume where the break-even point meets with the cost of the offerings assuming that profit of RM300 000 will be gained. BREAK-EVEN VOLUME = (FIXED COST + PROFIT GOAL) PRICE – UNIT COSTS = RM85 000 + RM300 000 RM3 560 – RM1 070 = RM385 000 RM 2 490 = 155 students Therefore, in order to meet the break-even point where profit of RM300 000 could be gained, 155 students must enroll in any of the new courses.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College

3. Determine the contribution margin for every RM spent to offer the new costs at suggested price of RM3 560. CONTRIBUTION MARGIN = PRICE – UNIT COST PRICE = RM3 560 – RM1 070 RM3 560 = 0.70% Therefore, for every RM1 of sales revenue from the new courses, 70 cent represents the variable costs. Whilst only 30 cent is spend on the fixed cost. From the contribution margin, break-even sales could be determined. 4. Assuming that INTI College is aiming to gain profit of RM300 000 for the first year, therefore it is necessary to find the total sales that will derived the profit using contribution margin. BREAK-EVEN SALES = FIXED COST + PROFIT GOAL CONTRIBUTION MARGIN =

RM85 000 + RM300 000 0.70

= RM550 000

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Marketing Plan: INTI College PROJECTED PROFIT AND LOSS STATEMENT PROJECTED PROFIT AND LOSS STATEMENT FOR THE 12-MONTH PERIOD ENDED DECEMBER 31,2009 RM 550 000 (129 000)

SALES - COST OF SERVICES SOLD GROSS MARGIN

RM 421 000

MARKETING EXPENSES PROMOTION EXPENSES

(7 000)

GENERAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES SALARY INDIRECT OVRHEAD

110 000 12 000 (122 000)

NET PROFIT BEFORE INCOME TAX

292 000

From the projected profit and loss statement, the first year of the new course offerings has returned a projected net profit for INTI College. Therefore, it is profitable for the College to proceed with the introduction of the new courses for IT faculty. From these results, the figures needed to compute for some crucial operating ratios could be determined.

1. Gross Margin Percentage indicates the percentage of net sales remaining after cost of goods / services sold that can contribute to operating expenses and net profit before taxes. GROSS MARGIN PERCENTAGE = GROSS MARGIN NET SALES

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Marketing Plan: INTI College = RM421 000 RM 292 000 = 1.44% 2. Net Profit Percentage shows the percentage of each sales ringgit going to profit. NET PROFIT PERCENTAGE = NET PROFIT NET SALES = RM292 000 RM550 000 = 0.54 @ 54%

3. Inventory Turnover Rate indicates the number of times an inventory turns over or is sold during specified time period. Higher rate indicates that lower investments in inventory are made, thus freeing up funds for other investments. INVENTORY TURNOVER RATE = COST OF GOODS/ SERVICES SOLD AVERAGE INVENTORY OF COST = RM 129 000 RM 64 500

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Marketing Plan: INTI College = 2 times in a year 4. Return on Investment measure managerial effectiveness and efficiency. ROI is always used to compare alternatives and a positive ROI is desired. RETURN ON INVESTMENT = NET PROFIT BEFORE TAXES INVESTMENT = RM292 000 RM200 000 = 1.46% Therefore this alternative is useful as the ROI has a positive percentage.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS AND IMPLEMENTATION Given a rapid changes in the education industry and also in the customers preferences of educational institutions, INTI College must develop a steady stream of new courses and services. This can be done through new-product development as the College requires new unique courses to attract its potential customers. Such steps will be taken to ensure that the introduction of the new courses to run smoothly: 1. From the profit and loss statement, even though the profit performance was less desired, management feels that this market have an excellent growth opportunities. Therefore, the introduction of the new courses will be continued. 2. To increase customer’s interest in furthering their study at INTI College, we will increase out distribution coverage by offering the new courses part by part to all branch college. 3. INTI College will initiate a RM12 000 trade sales promotion campaign and advertisement to raise the awareness of our potential customers. 4. INTI College will participate in many talks and seminars at the primary school levels to give an idea to future students about our background and courses offered.

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Marketing Plan: INTI College ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATION Introducing new courses may be applicable to many educational institutions to remain competitive relative to the market’s needs. In order to keep track with the success of each programme offered and to measure the quality of the services provided, collecting testimonial and feedback from previous students may help. Through their life experience with INTI College could be other’s consideration to choose INTI College to further their study. Ivan Raymond Diploma In Marketing INTI College sent me to Malaysia as representative to join the INTIMA (Student's Body Association) Conference Meeting. INTI College gives me the opportunity to meet and socialize with the other INTIMA members around Malaysia. Helmy Bachelor of Computer Science with Distinction (UoW) System

Analyst

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SJA

Technologies

With INTI College study fast track, I can graduate and work in international company before I reach 20 years old. Henny Tjin Bachelor of Business Administration (USQ) Deans Commendation for creditable performances Euroasiatic

Jaya

INTI College has brought me to the Australian Bachelor degree with affordable cost and time saving. Figure 2: Customer’s Testimonial on INTI College

Recently, new models emerging in public-private partnerships and private finance initiatives, ask how philanthropists and charitable foundations can generate more

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Marketing Plan: INTI College educational development, and examine creative new approaches for private investors to work alongside philanthropic bodies. To have private sectors working along in funding an educational institution may no longer bizarre to the country. This may become competitive advantages for INTI College to collaborate with them in providing scholarship or loan to students. Which may give ways to many potential customers to choose INTI College to further their studies.

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