2018

9Muses.net

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
SUBMITTED BY: AKRAM DAKHLI & TAWFIK CHELLI

SUBMITTED TO | Dr. Hafedh Yahmadi

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Table of Contents
Executive summary .................................................................................................................... 2
Mission ................................................................................................................................... 2
Goals ...................................................................................................................................... 2
Core competency ................................................................................................................... 2
Marketing analysis ..................................................................................................................... 3
Segmentation ......................................................................................................................... 3
Targeting ................................................................................................................................ 3
Positioning .............................................................................................................................. 3
Promotion strategies............................................................................................................... 4
SEO, SEM and social media ............................................................................................... 4
B2B relations ...................................................................................................................... 4
Word of mouth .................................................................................................................... 4
Technical analysis ...................................................................................................................... 4
Phase 1 .................................................................................................................................. 4
Cloud Computing SWOT Analysis .......................................................................................... 5
Human resources....................................................................................................................... 6
Management Organization Chart ............................................................................................ 6
Staffing ................................................................................................................................... 7
Operations .............................................................................................................................. 7
Premises ............................................................................................................................. 7
Financial analysis ....................................................................................................................... 7
Start-up funding table .......................................................................................................... 7
Company Ownership .......................................................................................................... 8
Table : Start-up ................................................................................................................... 9
Table : Sales Forecast .......................................................................................................10
Economic analysis ....................................................................................................................10
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................10

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 9Muses.net
Executive summary
9Muses.net is an online tutoring platform created by co-founders Akram Dakhli and Tawfik
Chelli to develop and market online education in Tunisia and possibly in other countries during
the following years.

9Muses is a massive open online course (MOOC) provider. It hosts online university-level courses
and professional courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide student body, including some
courses at no charge.
This business plan outlines how the company will prepare the launch of this project in the year 2018.

Mission

The mission and vision of 9Muses are to establish itself in the educational services sector and
facilitate the education for the users with providing easy access to courses online, certified
degrees and private tutoring in Tunisia and across the globe after future expansion.

Goals
For the coming 5 years, 9Muses seeks to achieve the following goals:
-To obtain an image of the leader of online education in Tunisia.
-To make partnership with 10 Tunisian universities.
-To add a new course every 2-month period.
-To become the leader in the Tunisian market by the year 2023.

Core competency
In terms of core competency 9muses will be launched to provide an online access to courses
given by certain universities to their students and to facilitate the flow of information for both
parties, moreover it provides non-students with free and paid certified online courses in different
fields of studies. And finally, it allows users to sign for a private tutoring presented by our online
available teachers.

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 Marketing analysis

Segmentation
The only demographic segmentation for our market is the age, for the psychographic
segmentation it is based on the users interests and lifestyles. There is no geographic
segmentation since, our project is online and available for every internet user.

Targeting
Our target market consists of people who have access to the internet that are aged from 16
years old, and are interested in online education, with an eagerness to learn or/and are enrolled
in a university that has a partnership with us.
We also target universities that seek to facilitate the flow of information between their database
and students via online sources or just to offer online degrees. Our last target group is people
who have a sufficient knowledge about a certain topic that they want to teach.

Positioning
We want to position our company as the leader of the market and the best open source for
knowledge to look for, with the quality of education provided in terms of course content, the
ease of use and the absence of system bugs and on site ads.

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Promotion strategies

SEO, SEM and social media

The key strategy to promote our company is by optimizing search engine and through posts on
social media. We plan on getting users in this manner because our target groups are actively
looking for information and tips on the internet. We will also use the most looked-for keywords
on famous search engines such as google in order to get good placement in the search
engines.
We will also use pay-per-click in other websites related to education to ensure interested people
entering our platform.
In order to get enough awareness by citizens we will prepare for a timetable for our regulated
posts and pay for a sponsored content in order to increase our reach to get 50,000 followers by
the year 2023.

B2B relations
We will visit universities in Tunisia in order to raise awareness and build partnerships with
potential partners that want to use our platform.

Word of mouth
The content and design of our website should be compelling enough that visitors will be
naturally attracted and will eventually want to share it with their friends, colleagues, family, etc.
They have also a bottom where they can share it on social media.

Technical analysis

Phase 1
Subscription to the Saas provider
Registering domain name
Customizing the website
Adding courses

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Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-party provider
hosts application and makes them available to customers over the Internet. SaaS is one of three
main categories of cloud computing.

SWOT Analysis
Strength Weaknesses

● Business continuity and mobility. ● Legacy systems

● Shared computer resources ● User attitude and control
● Cost savings ● Global economy

Opportunities Threats

● Agility and flexibility ● In house IT Personnel

● Growth in cloud services ● Data Protection
● Consolidation in legal and regulatory ● Security
environment

Our online platform is a free-and open source, course management system (CMS). The Open
platform is used all over the world to host Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as well as
smaller classes and training modules.
It includes open source studio and LMS.

Studio is the Open source tool that you use to build your courses. You use Studio to create the
course structure and then add course content, including problems, videos, and other resources
for learners.
You also use Studio to manage the course schedule and the course team, set grading policies,
publish each part of your course, and more.
You use Studio directly through a browser. You do not need any additional software.

The LMS is the tool that learners use to access course content, including videos, textbooks, and
problems, and to check their progress in the course. The Open source LMS can also offer a
discussion forum and a wiki that both learners and course team members can contribute to.

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For course team members, the platform used by universities, it includes an Instructor
Dashboard, with options to enroll learners, produce reports, and administer a course as it runs.
You have the ability to use it directly through a browser and there is no need for any additional
software.

Human resources

Management Organization Chart

Employee wage: 600 TND

CEO wage: 1,500 TND
COO, CTO wage: 1,200 TND
Marketing and Course support managers wages each: 900 TND

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Staffing

At first, we will recruit around 2 course support assistants with a manager to be responsible for
the courses implementation using our internal tools, later on we will add 8 to our current
assistants.
Ps: we give universities and professionals the ability to implement their course in our platform by
themselves although we provide a paid support service in which 9muses assistant take care of
the course implementation.

Operations

Premises

We will work in the co-working space Cogite Lac1, Tunis and pay TND 1,100 per month for
private office, 24/7 available access and up to 20 hours of meeting room.

Financial analysis
9Muses a business that is very financially simple. Our only expenses consist of subscription
fees to Saas provider for website hosting, and 4 salaries starting in 2018.
we do want to remain profitable and keep a positive cash flow and cash balance to keep the
business running strong and keep it healthy. As long as we keep our expenses low, even minor
amounts of sales should achieve that goal, as shown in the following financial plan.

Start-up funding table

Start-up Funding

Start-up Expenses to Fund TND 2,000

Start-up Assets to Fund TND 8,000
Total Funding Required TND 10,000

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 Assets
Non-cash Assets from Start-up TND 0
Cash Requirements from Start-up TND 8,000
Additional Cash Raised TND 0
Cash Balance on Starting Date TND 8,000
Total Assets TND 8,000

Liabilities and Capital

Liabilities
Current Borrowing TND 0
Long-term Liabilities TND 0
Accounts Payable (Outstanding Bills) TND 0
Other Current Liabilities (interest-free) TND 0
Total Liabilities TND 0

Capital

Planned Investment
Co-founders TND 1,000
Other TND 0
Additional Investment Requirement TND 9,000
Total Planned Investment TND 10,000

Loss at Start-up (Start-up Expenses) (TND 2,000)

Total Capital TND 8,000

Total Capital and Liabilities TND 8,000

Total Funding TND10,000

Company Ownership

9Muses is a Partnership -proprietorship, Co-founded, owned and operated by Akram Dakhli &
Tawfik Chelli.

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Table : Start-up

Start-up

Requirements

Start-up Expenses
Subscription fee TND 800
Domain Name TND 100
Co-working space fees TND1,100
Total Start-up Expenses TND 2,000

Start-up Assets
Cash Required TND 8,000
Other Current Assets TND 0
Long-term Assets TND 0
Total Assets TND 8,000

Total Requirements TND 10,000

Sales Forecast

Our sales forecast is very conservative because sales are usually worse than people initially
expect. Our initial sales levels are what we feel we can make on just a few sales of each type of
product in the first month. course hosting service provide to only 100 users to enroll in the
course. Since our commissions 30% of the course selling price, our support service is up to
2000 dinars per course and 1000 dinars for course hosting. we assume that we well make 20
course hosting in which half of them are paid courses. average cost for a paid course is 50
dinars then we make (50*10*100) *0.3= 15000 as commissions.

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Table : Sales Forecast

Sales Forecast
Year 1
Sales
Course hosting TND 20,000
Support service TND 10,000
Commissions TND 15,000

Total Sales TND 45000

Direct Cost of Sales Year 1

Subscription fees TND 9600
Other TND 13400

Subtotal Direct Cost of Sales TND 22,000

Economic analysis
Nowadays the digitization of information and education is successfully entering our markets in
Tunisia. And people are becoming to be more dependent on online education more than books.
Once our project reaches maturity and becomes profitable in other words, it arrives to the cash
cow stage we will expand it abroad to Morocco, Egypt, and to Europe.

Conclusion
We believe that our website not only will provide online courses for people who love to learn or
university students but, we are going to participate in the change our country for the best
through our interesting courses and especially free ones to help spread the knowledge across
Tunisia and make it a better place because education is the most powerful weapon which we
can use to change the world.

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References
Home page screen

Tutorial video to introduce the website

An example of a free course provided by Tunis Business School on the website followed by a
detailed description.

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