Explore Market Opportunity for Auxilium, a time-tracking, invoicing and reporting software

Abstract

This thesis is a resulting work of a seven-month internship period at Epic Agency in Liege, Belgium under the Project Thesis framework of HEC Management School – University of Liège. This thesis is a compulsory part of the master’s degree in Management Sciences. During the internship, the thesis topic was assigned by Sir Benoit Rondeux, Epic’s managing partner and then necessary qualitative data was gathered via in-depth interviews to complete this thesis. This thesis’s topic is to explore the market opportunities of Auxilium, a time-tracking, invoicing and reporting software, which was created by Epic agency for its internal usage since 2014. Perceiving Auxilium’s efficient performance, managers at Epic have wondered themselves a question “What are the market opportunities of Auxilium?”. This student was then assigned to the student as the thesis topic, which was then deduced into three main research questions: (1) Which market opportunities exist for Auxilium? (2) What are the most attractive market opportunities for Auxilium? (3) What market opportunities should Auxilium focus on? The Market Opportunity Navigator tool designed by Marc Gruber and Sharon Tai is used as a framework to meticulously answer these three questions. The first question’s answer is a set of two most interesting market opportunity set for Auxilium, which are “A PSA solution for freelancer/1-person company offering professional service” opportunity and “A PSA solution for micro- & small-sized PSOs”. The second question’s answer is an Attractiveness Map portraying the attractiveness level of Auxilium’s market opportunity in two dimensions – Value Creation Potential and Value Capturing Challenge. While the first opportunity is located in the Quick Win quarter, inferring low turn at low risk, the second opportunity is located between Quick Win and Questionable quarter with higher return at higher risk. The third question’s answer is an optimal focus strategy that helps Auxilium wisely navigate in the landscape of market opportunity with the most efficient allocation and leverage of Auxilium’s resource and capacities. The student believes that these results are structured and practical enough for Epic’s managers to use as an objective reference for their decision-making process on whether they should start a business venture with Auxilium.