Whether you’re running an established international business, or you’ve just started making ventures into overseas operations there can always be ways to help improve your setup. Ultimately, a business’ main aim will be to become bigger and better and what follows in this blog post are a few examples of approaches you may wish to take.
Running an international business is complicated. Different colleagues, culture, currencies – it’s important to be smart about how you operate, especially when it comes to sending and receiving international payments. Luckily, there are now alternatives to banks like TransferWise that are making it up to eight times cheaper for small businesses to work across currencies. They’re cheaper because unlike traditional providers like banks, they always convert your money at the mid-market exchange rate, rather than inflating the exchange rate as a hidden fee.
Streamline your travel
An obvious aspect that comes with international business is that you’ll need to travel around the world to the different respective locations. With this you should look to streamline the process and in the end make it more cost effective, you could go about this by:
- Using budget travel options
- Booking visits well in advance
- Having round trips rather travelling backwards and forwards
Try faster delivery services
In a similar vein to the above point, if your business relies on deliveries or sending consignments there are companies like TNT Direct for example that provide overnight services, even overseas. Such speed can ensure your businesses or clients get their important goods much faster.
Employ local experts
At each of your international locations, it makes sense to hire staff who are local to this area. Their bespoke knowledge could be an invaluable asset for your business and can not only help you overcome language barriers, but will provide you with an insight into the preferences of the local markets. After which you could refine your business plan for each international company.
Maintain regular contact
As fore mentioned you should book your visits well in advance but you can also maintain regular contact via video conferencing. As well as this you can also get your companies to send you reports at timeframes that suit you. This way you can stay on top of the different goings-on when you want and where you want.
Tailor your online presence
To build on a previous point of using local expertise, you should also look to tailor your online presence to suit the needs of different nations you work with. By this you should naturally alter your websites to be user-friendly in these countries but also setup teams to manage your social media accounts to bring the latest updates relevant to their clients.
So what are you waiting for? Take on board some of these suggestions and soon your company could not only be making the most of everything international business has to offer, it could also be highly successful globally.
