After experiencing a certain degree of success, you may feel like it’s time to expand your business overseas. Going global in this way is an extremely exciting time. You might have already been trying to cater to the global market and delivering that way for years, but opening branches abroad allows you to dedicate more time to customizing yourself for that market.
It means you might open new products and services that make sense in a given country but not where your current headquarters is located. It can also help you sometimes be governed under different, more favorable laws, such as how different tax codes work in different countries.
There are many things to take into account when moving abroad to a new country, hoping to establish a branch of your business. Keep these following things in mind, and you should find the journey to be a little more practical.
Become Comfortable With Said Country
It’s important to know what you’re getting into. It’s likely that when establishing your business in a new region, you will need to spend the majority of your time at the new location. Without the wit and the will to research and engage with the culture around you, you’ll never feel like your business truly belongs there. Even huge international corporations such as McDonald’s commit deep research in the culture they are heading to before opening branches there. They understand that the culture means everything when it comes to establishing a positive brand presence.
However, it’s also important to ensure you feel comfortable in a given location. Without the ability to feel like this, it’s likely that your efforts will feel flat and more like a chore done out of duty rather than a new and exciting prospect for your business to be involved with. Becoming comfortable with this country will take effort and time, and many previous visits to establish this need. When you know what to expect, you can either commit to the final decision or withdraw, and look for new markets. After making the final decision, you can then commit to finding PropertyGuru apartments to reside in, and begin to determine the location of your offices overseas.
Leave A Competent Board Of Directors Behind
Leaving a competent board of directors behind you will ensure that your business stays afloat and active while you lead your operation overseas. This means that if you haven’t appointed heads of departments to work together yet, this might be your first priority. You need people you would trust with your life to be managing your business. An employee with a proven track record or someone who has been there since the start can usually make good choices if they are of a certain hierarchical understanding in the business. Remember though that this might take more advanced training for them to become viable.
If you are unsure of the competence of your home team, then you can consider creating a new position. Hiring an ex-CEO of another firm looking for good work with a little less stress might be perfect for this position. Just be sure to spare no expense, training and integration time when placing this person at the head of your firm, as an outstretched branch will always require the stability of the tree to function well, and the same goes for your overseas office.
Market Research
You must conduct a near dizzying amount of market research before even considering injecting your brand name in the understanding of a given country. This means running focus groups, test products, finding the competition, understanding the copyright and patent law, ensuring that there is a market for your product and that the price is reasonably afforded in the culture you hope to present it to.
Market research also means digging into history. If there has been a product just like yours that failed in the last five years, it might be worth considering an alternate place to appeal to, or to dig into the failings of that business and try to learn from them. Market research also means ensuring you know the personal setup of how your business might work.
This means staying interested in the support networks, the supplier opportunities, import/export tariffs, and distribution systems. It means practically costing all of this. It means emphasizing a preliminary budget, a backup budget, and a ‘oh no this isn’t going well’ budget to ensure that you have various tiers of funding for when you need it. Conducting market research in this way is similar to planning a military operation. All, every and any variable must be taken into account and prioritized in terms of that to be resolved first, that to be watched out for, and that to be continually sustained and maintained. When you have all this data collected, you can produce a preliminary business report that might even help you gain government subsidy or a bank loan from the country of your entrance. After all, governments often look kindly on businesses hoping to come and contribute to a chosen economy. This is especially true if you:
Hire Locally
Skilled workers might be more populace in certain areas, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be found everywhere. Giving a local populace the chance to train for your job role will not only help you contribute well to an economy, but it can help you with some real specialist advice and understanding of how to appeal to the culture. For example, which would be superior? A marketing executive trained in the states given a year and a half to learn everything they can about a culture before trying to appeal to it, or hiring an executive born and raised in that culture? Sometimes the most authentic results come from the most authentic workers you can find in a given location, and trying to account for their taste. Again, governments may even allow you favorable costing terms (wherever those might show) for hiring locally and improving a certain area with your investment.
With these small and handy tips, the beginning process of moving into new territory will likely become better.
