The Use-Case Canvas for Bloomon

Bloomon is an Amsterdam based flower delivery services startup. It sources flowers directly from the growers and offers subscription services to customers.

The Use-Case Canvas for 1 use-case of the company is shown below. The use-case in focus is where the company offers flower delivery services for occasions like birthdays, anniversaries etc.

The Use-Case Canvas for Bux

Bux is an Amsterdam based stock trading app. It offers quality content, a practice account for first timers and a platform with sophisticated tools for stock traders.

The Use-Case Canvas for 1 use-case of the company is shown below. The use-case in focus is where the company offers stock trading services to first timers.

The Use-Case Canvas for WhyDonate

WhyDonate is an Amsterdam based crowdfunding platform for social projects. It caters to non-profit organizations, fundraisers and social projects.

The Use-Case Canvas for 1 use-case of the company is shown below. The use-case in focus is where the company offers crowdfunding services to social projects.

The Use-Case Canvas for Symbid

Symbid is an Amsterdam based equity crowdfunding platform for companies.

The Use-Case Canvas for 1 use-case of the company is shown below. The use-case in focus is where the company offers equity crowdfunding services to startups.

The Use-Case Canvas for AdviceRobo

AdviceRobo is an Amsterdam based alternate credit scoring company offering credit scoring & lending portfolio risk management services for Banks & FIs. Credit scores are generated through identity check and psychometric tests.

The Use-Case Canvas for 1 use-case of the company is shown below. The use-case in focus is where the company offers credit scoring services for thin files to Banks & FIs.

The Use-Case Canvas for PaymentGenes

PaymentGenes is a Amsterdam based company offering consulting and recruitment services to Payment & Fintech companies.

The Use-Case Canvas for 1 use-case of the company is shown below. The use-case in focus is where the company offers consulting services to payment startups.

THE USE-CASE CANVAS

Building a product which customers may want is the key to good business idea. Hence working out Use Cases for your product is very essential. Once, you figure out the Use-Cases, analyzing them is also a must.

The Use-Case Canvas enables you to do that. It clearly defines the use-case, the market targeted, all external stakeholders and all other details which can help assess whether the use-case is strategically valuable and sustainable.

Note: The Canvas should be used for 1 use-case. Multiple use-cases should be analysed with multiple canvases.

THE OLVP - One Line Value Proposition

An OLVP is a description of the offering of a startup in 1 sentence. If the OLVP is blur or cannot be written in 1 sentence, this tends to signal that there may be some ambiguity in what the startup has to offer to its customers.

An example of an OLVP is:



TransferWise: A money transfer service for immigrants to send money at cheaper rates.

Robo Advisory – An opportunity which is here to stay

If you spoke about investing your money in stocks, bonds etc., you always had to read up to take calls or had to look for financial advisers to help you with the same. The first option was risky and time consuming as you had only limited knowledge and the second one was expensive.

In came the age of Robo-Advisors, i.e. online algorithms which understand your investment requirements and structure your portfolio accordingly. Robo-adviros were able to add value to the retail investing ecosystem in many ways.

Value created for Users

-     Cheaper & Less Prone to Errors: because of low human involvement in the process. Fees generally lie in between the 0.3-0.5% range, as compared to fees of financial advisors which tend to be over 1% depending on the portfolio size

-     User Control & Transparency: users are in control of their investments and can easily track their portfolio

-     User Experience: most platforms offer users a very ‘human-like’ interactive platform

Value created for the Platform

-     Scalable: scaling is easier with an automated platform. No (or very little) additional resources would be required when adding users

-     Incremental Improvements: an algorithm can be tried, tested and improved upon incrementally. Human advice has more subjectivity and is more difficult to do so

Now that we see that there is value created for users, we can work out some use cases for robo-advisory. Use cases can be based on end use or a potential user.

Use Cases based on End Use:

Event driven: users may want to save up for some future event such as a child’s wedding, a child’s education etc.

Future purchase driven: users may want to save money to buy something in the future like a house, assets like jewellery, assets to start a business and so on.

Personal goals driven: users may want to start saving and investing their money to grow personal wealth or save for retirement or saving for an emergency etc.

Use Cases based on Potential Customers:

Young people in a job: looking to grow personal savings, buying assets like house and jewellery

Parents: wanting to invest for their children’s education, marriage

Aging people: looking to plan their retirement

The 3 ‘U’s in Defining a Use Case

A Use Case is defined as a potential usage of a product or service for a particular customer. It is or generally should be the first step in assessing who your customers can be.

To define a Use Case, the following 3 ‘U’s need to be defined:

Usage: This is the first U and states the solution offered by the product or service. For example, a use case for a crowd-funding platform can be ‘helping companies with thin credit files raise money’.

User: This is the second U and refers to the potential user of the product/service. In the example above, a ‘startup’ can be the user.

Utility: This is the final U and measures the utility of the solution offered to the user. A case which does not offer adequate utility to a user constitutes a weak use case and should be disregarded. In the above example, the utility of crowd-funding platforms is high for startups as the latter find it very difficult to raise money from traditional investors and in different geographies.

Working Out Use Cases

To assess how users can interact with the startup, I started working out some potential use cases. While working out use cases, one must keep the features of your product in mind. The main features of Halllp were - Students only & 72 hours expiry.

Some Uses Cases:

Repairs – of computers, cycles, electronics, furniture etc.

Rentals – of cycles, cars, electronics etc.

Purchases – of first and second hand goods, electronics, furniture etc.

Home Chores – like cleaning, laundry, car washing etc.

Delivery/Pick Up – of documents and other stuff

Tuition/Project Work/Research/Home Work Help

Classes – like dance, singing, language etc.

Date – for a movie, proms, party etc.

Babysitting/Pet Care

Jobs – like internships, live projects, full time jobs etc.

Volunteers – for charity, exhibitions, events etc.

Use Cases of your Product

No matter how good you feel your product is, customers should be clearly told why they should use it. When building your product and business plan, it becomes very imperative for an entrepreneur to clearly list down the various 'use cases' he/she feels might exist. Listing down use cases will help entrepreneurs identify how the product may get used by certain customers, and will assist the entrepreneur in building features of the product accordingly.

For example, in Beveragewala, we had a strong use case of people buying products which were not available in their location. Girnar is a popular chai which is available in Maharashtra and thereabouts. We, through our portal, ensured availability of all its SKUs and saw great demand for it. We also heavily promoted the fact that we had other such local brands from Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiris etc.

Defining a use case helps you identify your exact customer and the usage, which in turn helps you structure your offering and tap into the target market.