Hi-Tech Advisers (HTA) will be formed as a consulting company specializing in marketing of high technology products in international markets. Its founders are former marketers of consulting services, personal computer software and market research, all in international markets. They are founding Hi-Tech Advisers to formalize the consulting services they offer.

Mission
Hi-Tech Advisers offers high-tech manufacturers a reliable, high quality alternative to in-house resources for business development, market development and channel development on an international scale.

A true alternative to in house resources offers a very high level of practical experience, know how, contacts and confidentiality. Clients must know that working with HTA is a more professional, less risky way to develop new areas even than working completely in house with their own people. HTA must also be able to maintain financial balance, charging a high value for its services and delivering an even higher value to its clients. Initial focus will be development in the European and Latin American markets, or for European clients in the United States market.

Keys to Success

1. Excellence in fulfilling the promise completely confidential, reliable, trustworthy expertise and information.
2. Developing visibility to generate new business leads.
3. Leveraging from a single pool of expertise into multiple revenue generation opportunities: retainer consulting, project consulting, market research, and market research published reports.

1. Providing United States clients with development for European and Latin American markets.
2. Providing United Kingdom and European clients with development for the US and Latin American markets.

HTA will be created as a California C corporation based in San Jose, owned by its principal investors and principal operators. As of this writing it has not been chartered yet and is still considering alternatives of legal formation. The initial office will be established in a quality office space in the "Silicon Valley" area of California, the heart of the U.S. high tech and software industry.

HTA offers expertise in channel distribution, channel development, software and market development, sold and packaged in various ways that allow clients to choose their preferred relationship: these include small business consulting relationships, project based consulting, relationship and alliance brokering, sales representation and market representation, project-based market research, published market research and information forum events.

HTA offers the expertise a high-technology company needs to develop new product distribution and new market segments in new markets. This can be taken as high-level retainer consulting, market research reports, software applications and/or project-based consulting.

Retainer consulting - we represent a client company as an extension of its business development and market development functions. This begins with complete understanding of the client company's situation, objectives, business plan, and constraints. We then represent the client company quietly and confidentially, sifting through new market developments and new opportunities as is appropriate to the client, representing the client in initial talks with possible allies, vendors and channels.

Project consulting - Proposed and billed on a per-project and per- milestone basis, project consulting offers a client company a way to harness our specific qualities and use our expertise to solve specific problems, develop and write business plans, develop specific information, software.

Market research - group studies available to selected clients at $5,000 per unit. A group study is packaged and published, a complete study of a specific market, channel, or topic. Examples might be studies of developing consumer channels in Brazil or Mexico, or implications of changing margins in software.

In the future HTA will broaden the coverage by expanding into coverage of additional markets (e.g. all of Latin America, Far East, Western Europe) and additional product areas (e.g. telecommunications, web-based software and technology integration). We are also studying the possibility of newsletter or electronic newsletter services, or perhaps special on- topic reports.

HTA will be priced at the upper edge of what the market will bear, competing with the name brand consultants.

Consulting should be based on $5,000 per day for project consulting, $2,000 per day for market research, and $10,000 per month and up for retainer consulting. Market research reports should be priced at $5,000 per report, which will of course require that reports be very well planned, focused on very important topics very well presented.

The annual sales projections, gross margins and cost of sales are included here in the following tables.

HTA will be focusing on high-technology manufacturers of computer hardware and software, services, networking, who want to sell into markets in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Latin America. These are mostly larger companies, and occasionally medium-sized companies.

Our most important group of potential customers are executives in larger corporations. These are marketing managers, general managers, sales managers, sometimes charged with international focus and sometimes charged with market or even specific channel focus. They do not want to waste their time or risk their money looking for bargain information or questionable expertise. As they go into markets looking at new opportunities, they are very sensitive to risking their company's name and reputation.

The consulting industry is pulverized and disorganized, thousands of smaller consulting organizations and individual consultants for every one of the few dozen well-known companies.Consulting is a disorganized industry, with participants ranging from major international name brand consultants to tens of thousands of individuals. One of HTA's challenges will be establishing itself as a "real" consulting company, positioned as a relatively risk free corporate purchase.

At the highest level are the few well established major names in management consulting. Most of these are organized as partnerships established in major markets around the world, linked together by interconnecting directors and sharing the name and corporate wisdom. Some evolved from accounting companies and some from management consulting. These companies charge very high rates for consulting and maintain relatively high overhead structures and fulfillment structures based on partners selling and junior associates fulfilling. At the intermediate level are some function specific or market specific consultants, such as the market research firms or channel development firms.

Market segmentation

• Large manufacturer corporations - our most important market segment is the large manufacturer of high-technology products, such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft. These companies will be calling on HTA for development functions that are better spun off than managed in-house, and for market research, and for market forums.
• Medium sized growth companies: particularly in software, multimedia, and some related high growth fields, HTA will be able to offer an attractive development alternative to the company that is management constrained and unable to address opportunities in new markets and new market segments.

1. The most significant competition is no consulting at all, companies choosing to do business development, planning and channel development and market research in-house. Their own managers do this on their own, as part of their regular business functions. Our key advantage in competition with in-house development is that managers are already overloaded with responsibilities, they don't have time for additional responsibilities in new market development or new channel development. Also, HTA can approach alliances, vendors, and channels on a confidential basis, gathering information and making initial contacts in ways that the corporate managers can't.
2. The high-level prestige management consulting: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, etc. These are essentially generalists who take their name-brand management consulting into specialty areas. Their other very important weakness is the management structure that has the partners selling new jobs, and inexperienced associates delivering the work. We compete against them as experts in our specific fields, and with the guarantee that our clients will have the top-level people doing the actual work.
3. The third general kind of competitor is the international market research company: Dataquest, Stanford Research Institute, etc. These companies are formidable competitors for published market research and market forums, but cannot provide the kind of high-level consulting that HTA will provide.
4. The fourth kind of competition is the market-specific smaller house. For example: Nomura Research in Japan.
5. Sales representation, brokering and deal catalysts are an ad-hoc business form that will be defined in detail by the specific nature of each individual case.

The HTA business requires a very high level of international experience and expertise, which means that it will not be easily leverageable in the common consulting company mode in which partners run the business and make sales, while associates fulfill. Partners will necessarily be involved in the fulfillment of the core business proposition, providing the expertise to the clients.

The initial personnel plan is still tentative. It should involve 3-5 partners, 1-3 consultants, 1 strong marketing person, an office manager. Later we add more partners, consultants and and sales staff.

The annual personal estimates are included in the tables presented below.