product, brandI am a software developer and I.T. professional with additional expertise in blogging and e-reporting
I am wishing to start up a company that will create and manage another company’s (client) I.T. systems, online marketing and anything else digital.
The primus of the company is that we will consult any other company on any solution they wish, we will charge for the consultation if a solution is devised and implemented, depending on their contract type we will then manage the solution (e.g. if a company wants a login system, we will create it, create a database of login information, and manage that database for that company if they so wish). We will also provide blogging and social networking services for that company, we will become their outsourced I.T. department and online solution/management team.
I trust that in a world where dependency on IT and online capabilities is growing, demand will be plenty
But how can I better predict and record the amount of demand for my service? Like surveys possibly? But how can I make sure they are answered honestly? Any other way of predicting demand/possible consumer interest?
Demand forecasting is a big subject - too big for one answer. However, one useful route in for structured activities is to use some six signma tools.
First, map processes SIPOC style: Suppliers provide Input to Processes that generate Outputs for Customers. At each step, you need to identify something (perhaps more than one something) you can count, such as feature requests, booked hours etc.
Each of these can be put into control charts, and (with care - your data volumes will be small), used to gain a better understanding of normal variation. This wikipedia page is pretty useful to understand control charts, how to read them, and the problems they're meant to solve.
However, this will help you gain insight into running processes, and make better-grounded forecasts, not solve your immediate need.
You could guess, but that's hard. You could ask them to guess, but even if they know how things work now, that may be a poor basis for how they will behave when you are in place.
So my suggestion is that you make this a "same side of the table" discussion with your customer. You'll work together to make reasonable estimates of workloads, come up with sensible SLAs, put measurement systems in place as above and be transparent about sharing the data. In 3-6 months, you will be in a better place to forecast, and to help the customer choose priorities.
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