Had a meeting with my mentor today. We spent a good hour going over the business plan. Using my second draft we made changes and this afternoon I made the necessary updates. And here it is!
Behold! The business plan in all its glory.
The third draft now containing the new changes and updates along with the Cash flow spreadsheet have all been emailed off. I think there may be possibly one more change or two albeit minor issues I think I have picked up on. I have let my mentor know and either this one or the next one will be submitted for final assessment
I’ll find out by Wednesday hopefully either way. In the mean time I can concentrate now on building my own website. To which you can view my progress with it here http://gator4077.hostgator.com/~daverave/pertech/ of course that wont be the domain name when done. pertech.org.uk will take over when its completed.
I have another meeting to attend on the 17th with Enterprise First which is basically a start-up Q&A session with the chance to hand out business cards with other start ups.
Now over the worst of what was my cold. Which quite frankly was horrible. Meant I could sit down and spend time going over my service prices.
At the moment this list is far from finished at prices subject to change but be nice to get a feel of what people think.
Operation Installation: When I consider the dreaded “it needs to be formatted…” I consider the OS installation to include its service packs and drivers. However more and more computers are being shipped with no Windows disk anymore; rather there is a recovery partition on the device which is used to restore back to how it was the day you got it. Emphasis is now on user to backup their own system to retain a copy of their Operating System to be able to use should the partition backup fail. For standard Windows installation from disk after looking whats out there £25.
Operation Installation: Again?  But this time from the backup partition. This service would also include making that backup for the user also. As well as make sure everything is up to date Operating System wise again £25 for the service.
Fault Finding: Those moments when something just happens… That per verbal “It wasn’t doing that yesterday…” This is where something has happened. Something has broken and you don’t know what it is. Let me have a look for £20 and it’ll include everything from the next bit.
Maintenance: This is that odd service I see every PC guy offer and yet only really ends up as a freebie to another service (see above.) We all know what it entails; defrag, AV scan and general clean up and emptying of temp file’s. Yet never in my entire career have I’ve been out-rightly asked if I could scandisk and defrag a system by itself. Although I am sure there will be a first. For this I think £15 by itself.
Virus Removal: To be honest, again I see it offered everywhere but mostly consider this under the Maintenance part at £15 unless the virus has made a meal of the Operating System and has been left unchecked then obviously need to discuss needs with the client.
Hardware Swap/Change/Upgrade: For pretty much anything that isn’t a motherboard swap £25 and that includes all up to date drivers etc and Maintenance thrown in on top.  Motherboard/Case swaps at £30 simply because in layman terms its more fiddly. Not to mention to get it out to begin with normally results in everything else needing to come out anyway.
System Builds: Not currently in a position to offer hardware myself but can price up a system for clients and source out best prices and then build the thing and do the Operating System install and drivers etc all for £50 the consultation part is free.
Data Recovery: This is one of the first of the Data Management services being offered from the get go. It’s also one of the few things that speaks for itself in all honesty. After having a look at the prices out there and jaw having hit the floor a few times at how much some of them are. I’m starting at £40
This is just to begin; more to follow. Once I thought about it some more anyway…
Its taken about a month but I finally think I have a name. I have been bouncing name ideas around a few friends and see what grabs them what they like or dislike about various names and so forth.
From the beginning we Had:
JACS – “Just Another Computer Service”
What A Difference a Dave makes
DataSafe UK (Original name)
PC Blokey (yeah; okay…)
PuterTech
iFix
Dial a Dave (aside obviously stealing this from another popular firm. Did have people quote me back saying reminds them of “Dial a Drink”)
PerTech
There was plenty more but in the end PerTech was the most positive feedback I had on a name. Full title will more than likely be something like “PerTech PC Services” or just “PerTech Systems” maybe. But either way…
PerTech
In a couple of days I will be able to register domain names and print cards etc. But at least we have a name now 🙂
This is going so differently to how I originally thought I would be doing. I am actually well ahead of my own plan. First draft of business plan really just needs the first attempt at my forecast. I can more than likely do that by the end of this week at this rate.
Planning people! Its amazing stuff! Totally recommend it!
With a first draft plan nearly ready and as today officially marks the beginning of my second week on the course I have seven weeks left from today. I think the phrase I am looking for is “OMGWTFBBQ”.
Started checking out grants today there appears to be plenty of help out there and it all appears to be handled by local council’s. I am sure there are schemes and other things in place but it seems the local City Council do appear to have a fair bit of help. If you look in the right places and ask the right questions of course. Once I suss that part out i’ll let you all know accordingly 😉
Licenses was something else I have been looking into today. Although my line of work along as I am insured I am generally going to be okay but there is a couple I believe I need to apply for. I may have to collar my mentor for this. (If your reading this Tim…..)
Also today caught up with Sis for the first time in a while.
