Softsolve
SoftSolve aims to build WordPress products and provide customized WordPress solutions through
services like WP Plugin development, WordPress website design, Tailored plug-in development solutions
and training courses for beginners.
MANAGEMENT TEAM
Collins Agbonghama - Founder/CTO
A web developer with over 6 years experience,
and a technical writer with a National and Higher
National diploma in computer science.
Felix Appah - Chief Project Officer
16 years of experience in the follow areas
1. Budget planning and Management.
2. Project execution.
3. Team Building and Managing multifunctional
team.
4. Policy Analysis and Implementation.
5. Programming.
I’m highly motivated and a team player.
Henry Oroh - Chief Financial Officer
Training in Finance and Management, a
background in Law. Working experience in
Audit in the Manufacturing industry and over
25 years in banking, management, and
leadership. Strong people skills and proven
abilities in product and business development.
Patrick Usiahon Ejedawe - Chief
Marketing Officer
A proven leader with demonstrable business
management capacity spanning over 20 years. He is an
investor, with business interest in several sectors
(Hotel, and hospitality, Security, Logistics and
transport, Education, Oil and Gas, Information
Technology. He is naturally inclined to help others, and
this selfless disposition has created a culture focused
on customer service and satisfaction.
Nnamdi Ugwu Ikeagu - Chief Operations
& Compliance Officer
Over 20 years of Operations experience in a bank with
an international reputation.
THE PROBLEMS
Problem Finding Quality Agency
WordPress powers over 50% of websites on the internet, used majorly by small and medium size
businesses. These businesses are always in search of quality WordPress agency that would take care of
their websites tech problems and develop custom features and solutions for them.
Granted, there are numerous agencies and freelance websites doing this but they:
● Often times lack quality WordPress developers in their team/rank that knows the platform inside and
out.
● Have major problem providing quality support. It’s only natural that you’ll have a few questions once
your new site is live and you’d expect to be able to contact your web designer for a little support.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Some agencies feel that once your website is live, you are
now on your own. They may even try and charge you hourly for any additional support time, every
email or phone call.
Your Data is Not Yours
With a hosted/SAAS digital commerce and helpdesk software, they own your data and
only lease them to you or grant you access to them. They can kick you out at anytime.
While they promise you can export your data at anytime, this isn’t always true and
sometimes the exported data are in a unportable format.
The reasons a lot of businesses use WordPress instead of hosted content
management systems and website builders is because it is open-sourced and can be
self-hosted, thus giving you full control over their data. Having direct access and
control over their business and company data is important to them particularly to EU
companies looking to easily comply with GDPR law (a legal framework that sets
guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information from individuals
who live in the European Union).
Expensive Digital Commerce & Helpdesk Solutions
Beside building custom solutions for clients, we plan to build our own plugins for
sale. Top on our list are a commerce plugin for selling digital products (eg
ebooks, software, courses etc) and helpdesk plugin for offering quality customer
support.
Many small to medium size businesses find most ecommerce platforms and
helpdesk solutions too expensive. Take Shopify for example, a typical store
needs 5 - 10 addons. An addon charges an average fee of $5. When added to
the platform fee, the cost of running the store adds up quickly. The same applies
to many SAAS enterprise helpdesk solutions.
Different Accounts & Dashboards to Login To
Many digital commerce and helpdesk solutions are SaaS without deep
WordPress integration. Businesses are always in search of platforms that
integrates with their website, preferably a WordPress plugin. They are tired of
logging in to various platforms and software dashboards in order to run their
business.
Solution/Value Proposition
Our vision for SoftSolve is for it to be both a service and product company.
The service part of the business would provide robust end-to-end customized solutions
for WordPress through services like WP plugin development, website design, and
training courses for beginners.
Besides building custom web solutions for clients, we plan to build WordPress plugins
and sell them at a monthly and/or yearly subscription. High on our list is a
digital-commerce and helpdesk plugin.
eCommerce Plugin
Over the years, we have seen and heard people complaining of how bloated
Woocommerce – the most popular WordPress ecommerce plugin) – is for their use case.
Shopify is a no for them because it isn't customization and flexible like WooCommerce.
Instead of providing a generic checkout page, there will be an order form concept where
after creating a product and giving it a price of say $10, you create unlimited order forms
with different prices for the same product. Say you want to run a promotion, you don't
have to create a new product with the new price or edit the existing product and change
the price. This is where an order form shines. You simply create a new order form, select
the product or group of products and set a new price.
Also, it will have features to sell membership, subscriptions, courses and access to
paid-only podcasts and more
Helpdesk Plugin
Instead of answering customers questions via Gmail or other email platforms, a helpdesk
allows you to answer all questions from customers in a unified view. Also, the customer
order history and information will be shown to you so you know exactly who they are.
You could even perform common tasks such as refunding their order (in case it is a
refund request) and cancel their subscription without having to log in to your e-commerce
platform, searching for their order in order to act on their request.
With [Link], we can provide a live chat widget. Also, we will make it easy for them
to create an idea/roadmap board (where customers can show to their users' features
they are working on and features that are planned. their users can also add submit
feature requests) and a Knowledge base platform (similar to [Link]).
Market Size
WordPress powers over 50% of websites on the internet. As of 2021, there are
about 1.3 billion total websites on the web. More than 455 million sites use
WordPress. And, with over 2 million downloads every year, WordPress usage
continues to rise steadily.
Our prospective clients and customers for both our service and products would
primarily be small and medium size businesses and they comprise the majority of
businesses using WordPress
Business Model
Our services will be charged based on the scope of clients project.
For our product offerings, it will be a freemium model. There will be a free version
containing just the basic features that upsells the premium one which would be
sold at a monthly/yearly subscription fee. The price might be altered if we decide
to run a sale or promo.
Market Validation
● WordPress market share => [Link]
● 10 Reasons Why WordPress Is Perfect for Small Businesses =>
[Link]
● Multi-million dollar companies servicing WordPress businesses =>
[Link]
● Reasons to use WordPress for eCommerce =>
[Link]
[Link]
● Folks looking for (simpler) alternatives to WooCommerce =>
[Link]
● Demand/searches for self-hosted customer support software =>
[Link]
● Demand/searches for self-hosted ecommerce software:
[Link]
d/
Underlying Magic
Businesses that purchase our WordPress plugins most likely would need
custom features and modifications made to our products to meet their
specific business needs. These requests would be taken care of by our
service department.
Our team comprises of talented, hardworking and experienced members
such with expertise on WordPress & programming, project management,
security, banking and financial sector.
Competition
Below are some of our direct competitors because they build custom solutions for clients and/or offer their own plugins
for sale.
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
Awesome Motive owns Easy Digital Downloads, a digital commerce plugin for WordPress, and WP Manage Ninja
owns a support desk plugin called Fluent Support.
To be honest, they all are established WordPress businesses with a huge marketing budget and large employees. But
we believe we stand a chance as the market is big enough to accommodate us all. We’ve also read customer reviews
of some of these businesses and a recurring theme is their poor customer support. We believe we will excel on
customer support which in turn attracts their disgruntled customers to us.
Marketing Plan
Our marketing include:
● Writing articles on web design, WordPress and online businesses on our blog.
● Sponsoring posts on blogs about WordPress, web design and business
development blogs.
● Partnering and sponsoring podcasts.
● Online ads (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter).
● Conferences attendance.
Traction / Milestones
The service part of the business where we build custom solutions for clients
can start bringing in revenue ($10 to $20k monthly) in a few months after
launch while the product part where we offer our WordPress plugins for sale
would also take a few months after launch (estimating $5k to $10k monthly).
We reckon the product development would take 6 to 9 months for each of the
products.
Financials
