MINI PROJECT REPORT

ON

“E-AMBULANCE”

Towards partial fulfillment of

Master of Business Administration (MBA)
(Affiliated to DR. A P J Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow)

Submitted By: Submitted To:

VIJAY TRIPATHI MR. D. K. SHUKLA
MBA 1st Semester (Assistant Professor)
BBD ITM, Lucknow BBD ITM, Lucknow

SESSION 2021-2022
DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT

Babu Banarasi Das

Institute of Technology & Management
Sector 1, Akhilesh Das nagar, Faizabad Road, Lucknow (U. P.), India
 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the field work entitled of “E-AMBULANCE” submitted to the

university is a record of an original work done by me under the guidance of MR. D. K.

SHUKLA (Assistant Professor) (BBD ITM, Lucknow) and this Mini report is

submitted in the partial fulfillment of Master in Business Administration.

Date: VIJAY TRIPATHI

Place: MBA 1st Semester
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to our H.O.D. DR. MEETU

PANDEY who gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful opportunity to

pen down a innovative business plan and also helped me in doing a lot of Research

and I came to know about so many new things I am really thankful to her.

I am highly indebted to my Faculty guide MR. D. K. SHUKLA SIR for their

throughout guidance and constant supervision as well as for providing necessary

information regarding the project & also for their support in completing the project.

I would like to express my gratitude towards my parents & my college mates for their

kind co-operation and encouragement which help me in completion of this project.

However, it would not have been possible without the kind support and help of many

individuals and organizations. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of them

who have willingly helped me out with their abilities.

VIJAY TRIPATHI

MBA 1st Semester

 PREFACE

I respect to the allotted project, I have inherited myself as an entrepreneur in this

organization but informally it is a sacred place for me as it’s my first practical

exposure to an organization to know and get aware to an organizational real practical

stressful environment. Although I am student of MBA It is a two year full time degree

courses. So far this training is scheduled for first semester syllabi of AKTU i.e. (Mini

Project) as a separate topic to be asked in detail in viva-voice conducted by external

Thus study will provided me a better opportunity to survive in cut throat competition

with a prosperous existence. I have tried my best to gain out of well framed

circumstances & with the help of experienced personnel who helped me out so for

become possible to them. As being a very confidential functioning many things are

there which can’t be known but on the basis of gathered information and certain hints,

the project has been formed. It may have something missing but I have tried to present

all things what I have received. Although this report has been got checked by different

personnel but after that if there is some shortcomings I expect it to be rectified. So the

whole study bifurcated in different parts. Certain observations & suggestions also

have been stated which if possible to be reviewed.

 TABLE OF CONTENT

Sr. No. Topic Page no.

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1
2. INTRODUCTION OF THE PRODUCT 3
3. PRODUCT DETAIL DESCRIPTION WITH DIAGRAM 4
4. OBJECTIVE OF THE INNOVATION 9
5. NEED OF INNOVATION 13
6. SOURCE OF IDEA 14
7. USES OF THE PRODUCT 16
8. PROTOTYPE 17
9. FUNCTIONAL AREAS 18
10. SWOT ANALYSIS OF THE PRODUCT 19
11. COSTING AND PRICING OF THE PRODUCT 20
12. MARKET ANALYSIS 21
13. PRODUCT FOR WHICH SEGMENT 22
14. TARGETED AUDIENCE 23
15. POSITIONING 24
16. TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY 25
17. FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY OR Available SOURCE OF 27
FUND
18. LIMITATION OF PRODUCT 31
19. COMPETITORS ANALYSIS 36
20. POSSİBILITIES OF FURTHER INNOVATION IN THIS 38
PRODUCT
21. CONCLUSION 40
22. BIBLIOGRAPHY 41
 INTRODUCTION

E-Ambulance is a quick-response solution that can detect and position an emergency

phone call for the responding ambulance within 30 seconds and send the emergency

ambulance to the point of need quickly. In an emergency situation, a doctor can use a

patient’s ID code to read time-critical information, such as blood type, allergies,

recent treatments, on-going medication, or pregnancy.

Recently, smart healthcare systems become a hot area of research for medical,

computer, and networking researchers. The aim is to advance the existing healthcare

services with the improvement of sensor networks, medical devices, wireless

communication, middleware software, and end software applications. Indoor and

outdoor health monitoring systems attracts many researchers, because they provide

early detection of diseases, emergency help, and reducing the medical costs. In health

status monitoring systems, periodic physiological statuses of people must be collected

using sensors and delivered to medical professionals through a communication

system. Alongside this periodic data, these systems must provide emergency reports

under critical situations. Gathering of different vital signs depends on the purpose of

the healthcare system and its concern. Many patients with critical conditions lose their

lives while they are inside an ambulance. This is because they need urgent aid to

survive. Medical professionals who may be able to save their lives are serving in

medical centers. Therefore, only first aid can be provided in an ambulance and

essential treatments will take place in medical centers. Towards this end, this paper

proposes an E-Ambulance system to provide remote health monitoring with automatic

responses while patients are still in the ambulance. In normal situations, the

ambulance is summoned to carry patients to medical center (such as a hospital). Many

issues may occur in regards to patients’ conditions and the need to deliver them to a

1
medical center. These issues are classified into two categories: (1) monitoring

patients’ status and providing urgent responses, and (2) Reaching nearest suitable

medical center as soon as possible. The latter category is not fully covered in this

paper due to space limitations. These two issues are considered as distributed real

time systems. Therefore, this problem needs a model design, which can handle all

aspects of time critical distributed systems. To achieve this, DDS standard1 to build

our proposed real time system is utilized.

2
 BACKGROUND STUDY

At present, 82% of the world’s blind population are at the age of 50 and above.

Approximately 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in developing nations due to

the lack of healthcare and medical treatments.3 These figures are important when

considering the population that the Smart Cane will be addressing.

Technology can help in reducing many barriers that people with disabilities face.

These kinds of technologies are referred to as assistive technology (AT). There are

many types of disabilities, including physical disabilities, hearing-impaired, and

visually-impaired. AT has been utilized in assisting them. However, developing an

AT is expensive, making their selling price high.

Smart Cane is one invention which was originally the creation of a common blind

cane but it is equipped with a sensor system. This invention resembles Guide Cane

where this invention has a number of ultrasonic sensors and servo motors. This

invention is designed with the aim at helping the blind in navigating. Ultrasonic

sensors need to detect and avoid obstacles or objects located in front of the user. This

invention also has a control button on the handle, and the button has four different

directions. This invention has the same weaknesses as the Guide Cane where there

will be a problem to save space or to place the smart cane. Besides that, cost is also a

weakness in this project as it uses ultrasonic sensors and a number of servo motors. If

the cost is too high, users are not able to afford for it because the average income of

the visually-impaired people is relatively small.

3
 WORKING

Fig. 1. System Architecture.

Fig. 1 shows our proposed E-Ambulance system architecture. The main objective

of this system is to provide health monitoring and auto responses in terms of alert

and suggestions to paramedic staff inside ambulances. This way the probability

of saving people lives is increased, and also to provide better utilization of

healthcare facilities where most of actions inside E-ambulances are triggered to

save patients from life-threatening conditions. Our model consists of several

units where DDS middleware will take place in most of units to hide

heterogeneity of these units and control QoSs needed for the proposed system.

Each unit is described in this section.

4
Sensors Network unit consists of a number of wearable biosensors, which can be

attached to a patient’s body inside an E-Ambulance. For example, a pulse

oximeter sensor may be bound to a patient’s finger to compute the oxygen

saturation and pulse rate. Body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and other

contextual information can be measured by these biosensors nodes and provide

real time delivering flow of vital biofeedback. These nodes may have a processing

unit to process data to deliver only the necessary biofeedback data. These sensors

communicate with a control device through any wireless technology such as Wi-

Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee to transmit data over a short distance. This gathered

health status information is then delivered to an automated decision maker unit

inside an E-Ambulance or to a remote decision maker located in medical center

through a gateway. All of the abstraction and communication issues are handled

by DDS middleware.

Many issues arise to increase chances of success such as reasoning, learning, and

the ability of a system to manipulate inputs efficiently. The integration of wireless

sensor networks and artificial intelligence has built a cross- disciplinary of

ambient intelligence to solve challenges4. In our model, WSNs delivers health

status information to a Decision Maker unit. This unit is responsible for providing

warnings or suggestions to paramedic staff inside the patient compartment by

interpreting the data coming from the biosensors.

In our proposed system, Sensor Network units generate biofeedback and transmit

it to a remote medical center through wireless communication. This critical patient

health status information is presented to medical professionals on Remote

Decision Maker unit through a graphical user interface. These professionals can

monitor and analyze continuously all health parameters like temperature, blood

5
pressure, heart rate, breath rate and other parameters of patients remotely, while

the patient is being transported to a medical center. Professionals may detect when

a patient falls into a critical situation that needs decisive intervention. There are

two types of decisive responses. The first one involves sending suggestions and

comments to paramedic staff that guides rescue treatment inside an ambulance.

Patient status data, which is delivered by E-Ambulance and responses handled by

medical professionals might be recorded in databases located in medical centers

associated with timestamps. Moreover, end healthcare monitoring applications

may collect and interpret data delivered directly from remote sources and then

triggers appropriate responses. The processing part of this end application can

analyze data using different algorithms and machine learning techniques to detect

any emergency condition of the patient. Additionally, medical professionals can

suggest the nearest and appropriate medical center for the E-Ambulance driver,

because it is a significant issue to transport patients to suitable medical center that

can provide efficient treatment not just to the nearest one.

To improve real time responsiveness and consistency of patient care in the

medical field, actuators are suggested.

Until the time of writing this paper, actuators are untrustworthy in modern

healthcare systems. Accordingly, only few medical centers around the world use

such type of actuators. Alarms are a simple element in the system which when

enabled, alerts paramedic staff inside an ambulance. A Decision Maker unit inside

an ambulance and a Remote Decision Maker unit send signals to actuators and

alarms to provide urgent life-saving actions. Consequently, this unit of the

system is mainly concentrated on alarms but it can be upgraded with the

development of medical actuators technology in the coming years.

6
An ambulance driver normally needs particular guides while transporting patients

from the place of origin to a medical center. Tracking and routing techniques can

be used to ease an ambulance driver’s job. Global Positioning Systems (GPS)

provide location information with timestamps of E-Ambulance movements during

its journey. These location updates can be sent to medical centers and remote

traffic management units for tracking issues. Geographical devices may help

the driver by showing maps and routes to pass over traffic jam issues and transport

patients to a medical center as fast as possible to increase chances of saving the

patient’s life. An ambulance equipped with A Traffic Control unit can handle all

of these issues.

Gateway is responsible for routing biosensor data and others messages exchanged

inside an ambulance environment to remote medical portal for further

processing, analyzing, logging and visualizing of patients’ condition

information to medical professionals. Gateway unit is capable of transferring E-

Ambulance data to a remote destination using different technologies such as

cellular network (3G, 4G or 5G) or WIMAX. Additionally, gateway units should

establish a secure data transmission to provide security and privacy of patient

health information in terms of confidentiality and integrity. The data must be

transmitted to a remote monitoring destination such as another smart ambulance

or a medical center. Therefore, the success of providing healthcare services

depends on robust data delivery.

The database in our proposed system is used for logging message exchanges of

internal E-Ambulance network parts and remote network parts as well as

recording vital sign values of patients. Health information of patients will be

stored in a central database in an Electronic Medical Record (EMR). Later, this

7
information as patient’s health history may be recalled for further analyzing and

processing for diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, a local database located

inside ambulance might be used to build a log for all internal transactions. Display

or monitor devices are used for several functions such as to show biosensors

reading values to paramedic staff. A further instance of this is to present

comments and commands of medical professionals who monitor patient health

state from remote place. Moreover, alerts and warming messages are shown on

this device screen.

8
 E-AMBULANCE IMPLEMENTATION

Health monitoring inside an ambulance is a mission critical real time system. Any

failure in delivering certain information about patient health status may cause

catastrophic consequences such as patient death. Thus, it requires rapid response

time for all actions to be handled. Our real time solution is built over DDS

standard, which relies on publish/subscribe paradigm.

Data Distribution Service

Data Distribution Service (DDS1) is a standard base Application Programming

Interface (API) that offers publish- subscribe model of communication to hide the

underlying complicated network layers by providing a software layer over a

networking stack. Communication aspects and network management are handled

by DDS to achieve reliable and transparent data flow. However, no application

interference will take place. RTI DSS middleware is a middleware implemented

based on DDS specification over Real-Time Publish- Subscribe (RTPS)

Protocol13. RTI DDS is reliable and flexible implementation of a data-centric

publish/subscribe communication network. It provides high-level system design

that is independent of operating system and programming language.

In an E-Ambulance system, sensor node publishes vital signs over wireless

network such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee. Depending on the type of service

provided (simple or composed) other nodes will respond to this publication. If it

is a simple service then Alarms and Actuators will subscribe this data directly. In

composed services, the Decision Maker unit provides a decision and sends it to

Alarms and Actuators as another topic. Fig. 2 shows this DDS model of

communication between elements of this part of our system. Gateway node

subscribes to all topics inside the ambulance and delivers it to the remote

9
destination for further processing, logging services or visualizing patient’s status

to medical professionals.

Fig. 2. DDS model of communication between Sensors, Decision Maker unit,

Actuators and Alarms elements of E-Ambulance system.

Sensor nodes are devices with limited resources of memory, processing unit,

operating system and power. For these sorts of devices, lightweight and efficient

DDS middleware is required to provide interoperability between these devices

network and cooperative networks. RTI brings a convenient solution called

Connext DDS Micro Edition14 which targets different embedded system

platforms with minimal resources. Connext DDS Micro fulfills challenging real

time requirements and complexity abstraction of integrated networking techniques

since it is built based on DDS standard as well as it satisfies demanding resource

restrictions. Most of real time QoS policies including reliability, time filtering,

deadlines, resource utilization and system state are supported to supervise real

time requirements. Even though, this solution still require certain level of

resources which might exceed the narrow resources of some devices in wireless

sensor network. Thus, more lightweight DDS middleware solutions were

proposed such as sDDS15 and TinyDDS16.

10
DDS Quality of Service Policies

A number of aspects of the distribution of topics among nodes are managed by

QoS parameters. For our system, we focus on some of these Quality of Service

policies such as Reliability, History, Resource Limits, Time Based Filter,

Deadline, Presentation, Durability and Content Based Filter. In health monitoring

systems, it is acceptable to override a little loss in delivering data for long term

monitoring systems. However, E-Ambulance system cannot ignore dropping of

critical health status data of patient inside an ambulance. DDS Reliability QoS

policy care about this aspect by providing two values: RELIABLE and BEST

EFFORT. RELIABLE value means that DDS will attempt to deliver all samples

of a certain topic and the non-successfully delivered samples will be retried.

To ensure reliability, Durability QoS and History QoS policies must be specified

because some data should outlive after writing time. Content Based Filter QoS is

important in terms of simple services provided by the alarms and actuators.

Simple services occur in some cases where actions can take place directly by

alarms and actuators without involving Automated Decision maker Unit. Using

Content Based Filter QoS policy, unwanted health status information can be

filtered at its normal range. For example, if wearable temperature sensor measures

40 degrees Celsius as the body temperature of a patient then an alarm will be

induced to work.

For biosensor data topic, we used Reliability, History, Resource Limits, Time

Based Filter QoS policies based on topic requirements. In this topic, RELIABLE

value of Reliability QoS policy will be used. Maximum blocking time determine

the maximum duration of blocking data writer when there is a limitation in the

cache. History policy determines the amount of samples associated with the data

11
reader or data writer must be kept in the cache. Two different direction of History

policy can be set. First, all samples must be stored in cache to guarantee strict

reliability (value= KEEP ALL). Second, only certain number of samples will be

stored (value= KEEP LAST) where this value is the default value. Due to

limitation of minimal resources devices such as sensors, KEEP LAST is the only

supported kind of history policy in DDS Micro. Resource Limits policy govern

amount of memory resources can be consumed by topic, data reader or data

writer. This policy has different integer values such as maximum number of

samples. Time Based Filter QoS policy is particular data reader policy. In fact, it

specifies minimum separation time which is the time for data reader to get ready

for receiving next sample unless it will drop any sample received during this

interval. The default value is zero which indicates that the data reader is interested

in all data. This policy helps slow data readers’ convoy other readers in reliable

systems.

In our experiments, to have a reasonable system performance we tested three

different QoS profiles by tuning parameters values of used QoS policies. Table 1

describes default and tested QoS profiles with their main policies parameter

values.

12
 EXPERIMENTAL WORK

Due to the difficulty of providing actual biosensors for our experiments, instead we

built sensor emulator to mimic biosensor communication behavior learned from

different research17,18,19,20,21. Biosensor emulator generates messages traffic

similar to the likely traffic of real biosensors. Thus, we tested our proposed system in

laboratory scenarios not in real world scenarios. In the experiment lab, our hardware

setup comprised of four machines, where three machines running biosensor node

emulators while the other one running the receiving node (subscriber). All computers

were linked wirelessly through IEEE 802.11(Wi-Fi) communication. Localization of

different machines used in experiments inside our labs is based on Federal

Specification22 of ambulances.

A part of an E-Ambulance, which consists of biosensors and receiver, is tested and

evaluated by measuring DDS middleware performance in terms of latency and

throughput. After network establishments of this part, we run fourset of experiments

to compute one way transmission time of data from publishers (biosensors) to

subscribers (receiver) by injecting a code to biosensor emulator and the receiver. At

the same time, wire-shark tool is used to measure the throughput which is an average

rate of successful message delivery over a communication channel. At each

experiment set, the QoS profile of DDS environment is assigned to one of QoS

profiles described on Table 1. Hence, each profile is tested over 4, 8, and 16 publisher

associated with different payload size. In addition, each biosensor sends 1000 samples

with a rate equal to sample per 250 ms.

13
 RESULTS

The aim of our experiment is to test DDS middleware performance under different

QoS policies profiles and scalability of number of biosensors versus data payload

size in terms of throughput and communication latencies within the local E-

Ambulance network. These performance metrics will give some indication about

the most efficient QoS profile for biosensors data topic among other profiles.

After running all experiments described in the previous section, results of latency

and throughput are received. We noticed that latency of using profile 2 is very

high, because it has a small blocking time associated with limited resources of

cache and memory as shown in Fig. 3. On the other hand, profile 1 and 3 show

promising performance in terms of latency, as shown in Fig. 3 (a) and (b). As

well, profile 1 has slightly lower transmission delay especially when 16 biosensors

exists in the system, as shown in Fig. 3 (c).

Fig. 4 shows the results of the other performance metric namely throughput. It

shows that the average throughput of all QoS profiles proportionally increase as

the number of publishers in the system increase and payload size of biosensors

data increase. Throughput of using profile 1 is poor, because as a result of

receiver policy where receiving node pause accepting new samples of data for

certain period (10 ms). Furthermore, the default profile received the lowest

throughput for all cases because the history QoS policy kind used is KEEP LAST

in the receiver side. For this reason, we configure KEEP ALL history policy at the

receiver side to ensure strict reliability with limited resources senders. The

aforementioned results show that DDS is scalable for such scenarios with

promising performance. The probability of getting high data transmission delay

rises when the number of publishers and payload size increases according to

14
heavy data traffic inside network. These latency results of all QoS profiles don’t

exceed the medical requirements of typical delay bounds for physiological vital

sign monitoring. The work presented in17,23 claim that the delay in the upper

bound can be 250 ms or higher while the bound is 500 ms in other research

attempts20,21. Hence, QoS profile 3 has the best results among other profiles for

both latency and throughput metrics due to balanced and consistent policies

parameters. Whereas, the minimum separation duration of 10 ms degrade the

performance of profile 1 even when unlimited length of resources assigned to their

publishers.

15
 ECONOMIC STUDY

To determine the marginal cost of running an ambulance continuously for a year,

we found the average number of crew per ambulance, and the proportions that

were paramedics and technicians. Ambulances are leased, and the annual leasing

cost includes maintenance and equipment. Fuel costs are only those of idling time,

as demand is assumed not to change when there is an additional ambulance. Small

additional costs of uniforms, administrative consumables and additional insurance

were used to round up the total figure to the nearest 10, 00,000Rs per year.

16
 OBJECTIVE OF THE INNOVATION

There are a vast number of researches in sensor networks, medical devices,

wireless communication, middleware software and software applications that

help advance improvements in the healthcare systems. Health monitoring

systems deliver health status reports to actors such as people under monitoring,

practitioners and coaches for several purposes. In this paper, we propose E-

Ambulance framework, which is a smart ambulance system model that

provides health monitoring of patients for remote medical professionals. As

well as provide an automatic responses of suggestions and warnings to

paramedic staff inside an ambulance. Sensor networks record and deliver

health status information to other elements of system. Due to the availability of

information from sensors networks, an auto response can take place by alarms

supervised by Decision Maker unit. Remote decisions can be made in a

medical center after receiving inputs generated inside an ambulance. Building a

distributed real time system can handle all aspects of time critical systems and

hide heterogeneity between elements and different types of data. Data

Distribution Service (DDS) standard is used to build the proposed model. To

demonstrate the effectiveness of the system in terms of latency and throughput,

experiments are performed over DDS middleware. Additionally, to have

efficient configuration different QoS policies configurations of DDS are tuned.

17
 NEED OF INNOVATION
An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle in accident cases which transports

patients to treatment facilities in hospitals. In some instances, hospitals are far away

from accident places for medical care, In ambulances there is no automated

communication system for severe accidents and the major problem in India and the

ambulance is struck in traffic junctions, there is no other lane provided an ambulance

.To clear the traffic at junctions for an ambulance, we are introducing a project

intelligence signal system. Here we are providing an automated signal system for the

ambulance. Now a day’s Wireless technology has been developed and used widely in

different medical fields. This technology provides patients present health condition.

By sensing the patients pulse rate and temperature and sends the information to the

nearest hospital through SMS. The whole system is carried through Micro Controller,

RF & GSM module.

18
 SOURCE OF IDEA

Human mind:- Human mind is the main source of innovations. In

business, innovation often results when ideas are applied by the company in order to

further satisfy the needs and expectations of the customer

• Unexpected Occurrences:- Consider, first, the easiest and simplest source of

innovation opportunity: the unexpected....

• Incongruities....

• Process Needs....

• Industry and Market Changes....

• Demographic Changes....

• Changes in Perception....

• New Knowledge.

• Innovation is based upon bright ideas. The human mind thinks of new things

that can better fulfill an existing need. In this process he thinks of filling his needs in

new ways and by devising new products and mechanisms. Demographics: Our

lifestyles can also be a source of innovation

19
 COMPETITORS ANALYSIS

1. Determine who your competitors are.

2. Determine what products your competitors offer.

3. Research your competitor’s sales tactics and results.

4. Take a look at your competitors' pricing, as well as any perks they offer.

5. Ensure you're meeting competitive shipping costs

There is no competition in the market

because it is a very new service which has
its own value and has no other alternatives

20
SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses,

opportunities, threats —

21
 TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY

A technical feasibility study assesses the details of how you intend to deliver a

product or service to customers. Think materials, labor, transportation, where your

business will be located, and the technology that will be necessary to bring all this

together. It's the logistical or tactical plan of how your business will produce, store,

deliver, and track its products or services.

A technical feasibility study is an excellent tool for both troubleshooting and long-

term planning. It can serve as a flowchart of how your products and services evolve

and move through your business to physically reach your market.

It's the logistical or tactical plan of how your business will produce, store, deliver, and

track its products or services.

22
 MARKET ANALYSIS

A market analysis is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of a market. It looks

into the size of the market both in volume and in value, the various customer

segments and buying patterns, the competition, and the economic environment in

terms of barriers to entry and regulation.

How to do a market analysis?

The objectives of the market analysis section of a business plan are to show to

investors that:

• you know your market

• the market is large enough to build a sustainable business In order to do that I

recommend the following plan:

Demographics and Segmentation Target Market

Market Need Competition Barriers to Entry Regulation

Segmentation helps marketers to be more efficient in terms of time, money and other

resources. Market segmentation allows companies to learn about their customers.

They gain a better understanding of customer's needs and wants and therefore can

tailor campaigns to customer segments most likely to purchase products.

One technique used to identify a target market is market segmentation. The five basic

forms of segmentation are demographic (population

statistics), geographic (location), psychographic (personality or lifestyle), benefit

(product features), and volume (amount purchased).

23
 POSITIONING OF THE BUSINESS IN MARKET

Positioning is a marketing concept that outlines what a business should do to market

its product or service to its customers. In positioning, the marketing department
creates an image for the product based on its intended audience.

This is created through the use of promotion, price, place and product.

There are five main strategies upon which businesses can base their positioning.
• Positioning based on product characteristics....
• Positioning based on price....
• Positioning based on quality or luxury....
• Positioning based on product use or application....
Positioning based on competition. Types of positioning in marketing

• Pricing. Pricing is an essential factor that impacts the decisions of most

customers...
• Quality. Quality can help rebuff most pricing wars....
• Differentiation....
• Convenience....
• Customer service....
• User group....
• Create a strong competitive position....
• Improve sales.

24
 COSTING AND PRICING OF THE SERVICE

Many service-based businesses struggle to come up with a fair and profitable pricing

strategy. Unlike product pricing, you can’t exactly quantify all the costs that go into

providing a service.

The expenses that go into providing a service are more subjective than the expenses

that go into making a product. How much you charge customers doesn’t always

directly correlate with the amount you pay to perform services.

In service industries, finding a target profit margin is not as simple. You don’t have an

original price to reference. Instead, your pricing formula for services should account

for the intangible aspects of running your business, such as time and value.

In short, pricing services is tricky business.

As a service-based business, it’s difficult to price services because we need a model

that is scalable yet flexible enough to solve our customers’ problems. Offering a

scalable, one-size-fits-all price can turn potential customers off because their needs

are typically not like those of your countless other customers. At the same time,

offering 100% custom pricing can limit growth because of the time required to quote

every facet of your services.‖

Your 6-step guide

Because there is not a set-in-stone method for pricing services, you have some

flexibility. Use the following six steps to learn how to price a service:

25
1. Calculate your costs

2. Look at the market

3. Know your customers

4. Consider time invested

5. Come up with a fair profit margin

6. Charge an hourly or per-project rate

26
 PRICING STRATEGIES FOR BUSINESSES

There are many different pricing strategies to choose from. Here are 11:

1. Market penetration strategy: Set prices low to grow market share. Then

increase your rates over time as your customer base grows. Admittedly, this isn’t a

common pricing strategy for service businesses, but it can help you grow your

customer base quickly. The big problem with this approach is that some customers

may associate the lower price with an inferior level of service. You will also have to

work a lot harder to coveryour costs

2. Price skimming: The opposite of a market penetration strategy. Here you set a

high price and lower it over time. Again, this isn’t your typical pricing strategy for a

service business. But it may work if you have something special to offer. The pros are

that you’ll maximize your profits upfront and grow a more sustainable business. The

big drawback, however, is that if you can’t justify the price, you’ll struggle to get your

business off the ground.

3. Premium pricing: Charge higher prices because you have something that

makes you unique. For example, do you offer a warranty or service guarantee that

your competitors do not? Do you use exclusive tools or technology that make your

business easier to work with and deliver results that standout?

4. Economy pricing: Set low prices because overheads are low. Your costs may

be low for several reasons. Perhaps you use software to org anize and manage your

business instead of hiring an assistant. Or maybe you have a special arrangement with

one of your suppliers which allows you to get inexpensive supplies.

5. Cost-plus pricing: Calculate the cost to deliver your services and add a margin

for a profit. For example, if you know your time and materials cost $200, and you

want to make a 20% profit margin, simply charge $240. This is a straightforward

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pricing strategy, but it can cost you money because you may end up setting a lower

price than what customers are actually willing today.

6. Psychological pricing: Prices based on the psychological impact they have.

For example, it’s believed that odd prices like $19.97 are more attractive than round

numbers like$20.00.

7. Competitive pricing: Charge according to what the competition charges. While

competitors can give you a good idea of where to start, remember that your business

is unique. Just because someone is charging a specific price doesn’t mean you should

match or undercut them.

8. Bundled pricing: Also known as packaged pricing, this strategy involves

bundling various services together and charging one price. Bundled services are

usually cheaper than if customers were to purchase each service individually. If done

correctly, this technique is a great way to upsell more services and boost your

profits—as Dave Moerman of Revive Washing notes:

―Our house washing package is our most requested and most profitable service. This

is a full soft wash of siding, windows, and gutters).

Homeowners like this package because it takes care of all services with one detailed

visit…For our crew to be profitable, we have to do a certain amount of revenue per

day. Small jobs are okay to slot in, but we like to have a good-size house wash for

each crew for each day. From a profitability perspective, it’s much better.‖

9. Tiered pricing: Offer clients the option of choosing between different levels of

service or packages. In window cleaning, for example, you can offer a basic package

for $99 (outside cleaning only), a standard package for $149 (inside and outside), or a

deluxe package for $199 (inside, outside, tracks and sills). Each package offers

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incrementally more value, and the difference in price gives the consumer a chance to

consider what they are willing tospend.

10. Value-based pricing: Charge a flat fee based on the value (benefits) your

service provides. Value, for example, could mean saving the customer time or giving

them peace of mind. Before quoting a client, make sure you’re clear on the benefits

your service provides and, in turn, what they’re actually paying for.

For example, parents who use house cleaning services are not really paying for the

service itself, but the time it frees up so they can spend with their children. Charging

for your services based on value lets you charge a premium and protects you from the

all-too-common price haggling that occurs with some customers.

11. Hourly-based pricing: Estimate how long a job will take and multiply it by

your hourly rate. Although this pricing strategy may be suitable when starting a

business, do use it with caution as it has its downfalls:

You aren’t rewarded for becoming better and faster at what you do

Clients may feel you’re purposefully taking your time on a job so you can earn more

The focus is on the cost of the service rather than the value, which opens you up to

price haggling

Factors to Help You Choose the Right Service Pricing Strategy

Your overheads. If you have lower overheads, you can charge more competitive

prices. Conversely, if your costs are high, then competing on price isn’t viable.

You’re better off charging a premium based on a unique differentiator.

 Your goals. If you’re a new business looking to get customers fast, you may opt for

a market penetration strategy to achieve rapid adoption.

 How established you are. If you’ve been operating for a few years and want to

grow faster and sustainably, offering packages is a good option. Providing

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 packages helps you sell more by turning the intangible (your service) into

something tangible (a product), which makes it easier for customers to buy.

 The Bottom Line on Pricing Strategies for Service Businesses

 Pricing services is generally harder than pricing products as each job is different,

and you have to grapple with your own experience, insecurities, and specifics of

each job. On top of that, pricing is complex with many different pricing strategies

to choose from.

 Of course, just because something seems difficult, doesn’t mean it is or that you

shouldn’t try. After all, the more jobs you bid for, the more you’ll learn about what

works and what doesn’t. It’ll only be a matter of time before you find a pricing

strategy that’s right for your business.

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FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY OR AVAILABLE SOURCES

OF FUNDS

Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good business strategy. This is

especially true when it comes to financing your new business. Not only will

diversifying your sources of financing allow your start-up to better weather potential

downturns, but it will also improve your chances of getting the appropriate financing

to meet your specific needs.

Keep in mind that bankers don't see themselves as your sole source of funds. And

showing that you've sought or used various financing alternatives demonstrates to

lenders that you're a proactive entrepreneur.

Whether you opt for a bank loan, an angel investor, a government grant or a business

incubator, each of these sources of financing has specific advantages and

disadvantages as well as criteria they will use to evaluate your business.

Here's an overview of seven typical sources of financing for start-ups:

1. Personal investment

When starting a business, your first investor should be yourself—either with your

own cash or with collateral on your assets. This proves to investors and bankers

that you have a long-term commitment to your project and that you are ready to

take risks.

2. Love money

This is money loaned by a spouse, parents, family or friends. Investors and bankers

considers this as "patient capital", which is money that will be repaid later as your

business profits increase.

 When borrowing love money, you should be aware that:

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 Family and friends rarely have much capital

 They may want to have equity in your business

 A business relationship with family or friends should never be taken lightly

3. Venture capital

 The first thing to keep in mind is that venture capital is not necessarily for all

entrepreneurs. Right from the start, you should be aware that venture capitalists are

looking for technology-driven businesses and companies with high-growth

potential in sectors such as information technology, communications and

biotechnology.

 Venture capitalists take an equity position in the company to help it carry out a

promising but higher risk project. This involves giving up some ownership or

equity in your business to an external party. Venture capitalists also expect a

healthy return on their investment, often generated when the business starts selling

shares to the public. Be sure to look for investors who bring relevant experience

and knowledge to your business.

 BDC has a venture capital team that supports leading-edge companies strategically

positioned in a promising market. Like most other venture capital companies, it

gets involved in start-ups with high-growth potential, preferring to focus on major

interventions when a company needs a large amount of financing to get established

in its market.

4. Angels

Angels are generally wealthy individuals or retired company executives who invest

directly in small firms owned by others. They are often leaders in their own field who

not only contribute their experience and network of contacts but also their technical

and/or management knowledge. Angels tend to finance the early stages of the

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 business with investments in the order of $25,000 to $100,000. Institutional venture

capitalists prefer larger investments, in the order of $1,000,000.

In exchange for risking their money, they reserve the right to supervise the company's

management practices. In concrete terms, this often involves a seat on the board of

directors and an assurance of transparency.

5. Business incubators

 Business incubators (or "accelerators") generally focus on the high-tech sector by

providing support for new businesses in various stages of development. However,

there are also local economic development incubators, which are focused on areas

such as job creation, revitalization and hosting and sharing services.

 Commonly, incubators will invite future businesses and other fledgling companies

to share their premises, as well as their administrative, logistical and technical

resources. For example, an incubator might share the use of its laboratories so that

a new business can develop and test its products more cheaply before beginning

production.

 Generally, the incubation phase can last up to two years. Once the product is ready,

the business usually leaves the incubator's premises to enter its industrial

production phase and is on its own.

 Businesses that receive this kind of support often operate within state-of-the-art

sectors such as biotechnology, information technology, multimedia, or industrial

technology.

6. Government grants and subsidies

 Government agencies provide financing such as grants and subsidies that may be

available to your business. The Canada Business Network website provides a

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 comprehensive listing of various government programs at the federal and

provincial level.

 Criteria

 Getting grants can be tough. There may be strong competition and the criteria for

awards are often stringent. Generally, most grants require you to match the funds

you are being given and this amount varies greatly, depending on the granter. For

example, a research grant may require you to find only 40% of the total cost.

 Generally, you will need to provide:

 • A detailed project description

 • An explanation of the benefits of your project

 • A detailed work plan with full costs

 • Details of relevant experience and background on key managers

 • Completed application forms when appropriate

 Most reviewers will assess your proposal based on the following criteria:

 • Significance

 • Approach

 • Innovation

 • Assessment of expertise

 • Need for the grant

 Some of the problem areas where candidates fail to get grants include:

 • The research/work is not relevant

 • Ineligible geographic location

 • Applicants fail to communicate the relevance of their ideas

 • The proposal does not provide a strong rationale

 • The research plan is unfocused

34
 • There is an unrealistic amount of work

 • Funds are not matched

7. Bank loans

 Bank loans are the most commonly used source of funding for small and medium-

sized businesses. Consider the fact that all banks offer different advantages,

whether it's personalized service or customized repayment. It's a good idea to shop

around and find the bank that meets your specific needs.

 In general, you should know bankers are looking for companies with a sound track

record and that have excellent credit. A good idea is not enough; it has to be

backed up with a solid business plan. Start-up loans will also typically require a

personal guarantee from the entrepreneurs.

35
 LIMITATIONS
The following are some of the factors which put a limit on the growth of a business:

1. Shortage of Labour or Capital:

If increased supplies of trained labour are not available, the growth of a business will

be automatically checked.

In the same way, if fresh capital cannot be raised, expansion stops. But these are not

insurmountable obstacles.

2. Nature of the market: If demand is limited or fluctuating, it will be imprudent

to increase the size of the business. The nature of demand is the most

importantlimitingfactor.Italmostsettlesthematter.Ifindividualtasteshavetobe satisfied,

large-scale production is ruled out.

3. Managerial Capacity: Another serious limitation comes from the capacity of

the manager. A point is reached in the expansion of a business beyond which it is not

possible for the manager to control it efficiently. There is a limit to what a man can

successfully manage. Beyond that point, supervision will become lax, materials will be

wasted and machinery mishandled. Cost will over take profits, and, in the end, the

profits may vanish. The limit is reached when the marginal revenue is equal to the

marginal cost.

4. Nature of the Industry: In some industries, large-scale production is out of the

question. They require close personal supervision, e.g., jewellery-making and tailoring.

Or, there are industries where there is not much scope for the use of machinery and

division of labour, e.g., agriculture, fruit and vegetable gardening, etc. Bulky articles

like bricks can only be made on a small scale, for it will not pay to carry them over

long distances

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5. Operation of the Law of Diminishing Returns: It happens sometimes that the

expansion of an industry leads to increasing costs and the returns are less than

proportionate. It will not be wise in such cases to expand the business.

37
 CONCLUSION

This paper proposed an E-Ambulance system which is a smart ambulance model that

provides auto response actions in addition to monitoring to increase the probability of

saving patients from life-threatening conditions. Biosensors, Actuators, Intelligent unit,

GPS and other components and technologies are used to achieve this mission. DDS

model is used to provide connection between these heterogeneous elements of system.

Furthermore, DDS middleware is effective to handle all aspects of real time mission

critical systems as E-Ambulance system where any failure in delivering patients status

information may result in poor patient outcomes. In our experimental work, we

measured performance of using DDS in our system. Thus, we evaluated latency and

throughput performance metrics of wireless communication between certain numbers

of nodes over different QoS profiles. In general, DDS showed strong performance

behavior and satisfy medical requirements of delivering monitoring data under certain

bounds.

Moreover, we compared performance among four QoS profiles (default profile

included) to get the most efficient QoS profile for medical environment. In the future,

we plan to deal with more parameters of QoS policies and RTPS protocol that can be

tuned to enhance the experience of DDS in medical systems over different wireless

technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth and ZigBee.

38
The company's management is confident that The Company can achieve its

aggressive sales forecasts, generating total sales of approximately $XXX,XXX,

$XXX,XXX and $X,XXX,XXX in upcoming years, after the launch respectively. In

addition, The Companies' management has carefully considered its market, potential

customer base, and its ability to grow its sales average to capture market share in the

E tailoring industry.

The Company has the potential to become a highly regarded resource in local,

regional, national, and international markets. Due to the company's aggressive

marketing strategy, establishment of the company as a "unique" entity in its industry,

careful development of its products coupled with strategic partnerships with some of

the industry's leaders, and the company's profitable revenue model, The Company has

the potential to provide lucrative returns to potential investors.

For The Company to achieve status as an industry leader, it must secure initial capital.

This capital will be used for start-up costs, to establish a reputable storefront, and to

further develop the business, business infrastructure, internal systems, product

development, and extensive marketing and geographic positioning.

Providing that the company is able to acquire its funding requirements,

The Company will be able to achieve operational success for many years to come.

39
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