Leveraging International Business Intelligence For Success

By Ruthie Livingston


Businesses cannot afford to conduct international business blindly. They need to know what their rivals are doing and what the customers actually need. This way, they are able to maintain a competitive edge by serving their customers better than their competitors. It is a noble idea for businesses to hire international business intelligence service providers to assist in the areas detailed below.

The international entrepreneurship intelligence service providers exploit the data warehouse to mine for vital statistics and other facts to come up with a true picture of the industry standing and the organization performance. This information enables a company to project its future and come up with plans to counter competition or improve its product offering.

In nearly all multinational markets, the firm is not the only firm offering the market with certain types of solutions, there are of course many others offering similar goods and competing for the same customers. To succeed the enterprise must serve the customers better than its competition. This requires the company to be ahead of competition in innovation and adopting the latest technologies that assist it lower costs while producing better products. Using intelligence, it is able to know what is about to be introduced in the market and what new ideas the rivals are implementing.

Crisis management is very vital to prevent the firm from going down. A multinational company is threatened by several elements in the market due to the facts it deals with different political and socio-economic landscapes. It may make judgment errors and cause damage to its production or marketing systems, may be blackmailed by its rivals and suffer from political upheavals. The intelligence assists identifying vulnerable areas, authorities that the enterprise can lobby, and strategies for dealing with damaged goods or reputation.

In getting to new market, companies enter unfamiliar grounds. The customer needs and tastes may be different from what it is used to. To serve the market with the right products it needs to hire a market intelligence firm that conducts a survey to determine needs that the company can serve profitably, best market entry strategies and assistance in developing effective marketing strategies. These not only ensure that the enterprise gets a good share of the market; but also helps improve on its offering.

There are several risks that a company has to deal with in different international markets. Such risks include risk of brand or reputation damage, energy issues in its production plants, damage to a plant or other assets, lack of qualified personnel or even lack of raw materials. With the intelligence collected in the market, the company can come up with credible risk mitigation strategies and set up backups for critical enterprise areas.

A growing firm is likely to face legal battle at a point in its lifetime. Such battles could be with the clients, rival firms. An example is the case where a customer sues for defective goods, or a government official soliciting for bribes among many others. Such claims require proper private investigation so that the company does not end up paying for unwarranted claims. Intelligent investigations may come in handy is solving such issues.

If the multinational company were human, the top-level management would be the eyes, the employees the hands, investors the legs and enterprise intelligence the brain. Without proper business aptitude, a company is likely to make serious mistakes of judgment and be outdone by rivals or fail to serve its international customers optimally.




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