Expanding to a new country or running a business across multiple locations is never a piece of cake. A number of challenges and conditions need to be considered before the expansion, such as compliance with local and international laws – not to mention the cultural specifics of each country. And that’s where a proactive partner comes to your rescue.

Once the idea of expanding your company abroad has crossed your mind, the first thing you should do is research the market – but also take into consideration a couple of very basic, yet crucial things. We suggest you to start with something that will help you build a better picture of how business works in another territory, such as getting to know your business environment, working out cultural and organizational differences, understanding the possibilities of the market, and beyond.We gathered a few tips from our experts and global leaders that can help your business to prepare for expanding abroad whether it is a well-established business or a start-up.

Know your business environment

Making an informed decision about international expansion can be an overwhelming task because of the amount of information that any business needs to consider. On the other hand, just like in any other situation in our daily lives, the ability to properly assess the pros and cons through sufficient data can really save our business and help us succeed. Our Business Development Lead, Barbora Debnárová recommends that beyond the standard ways of gathering information, such as using statistical data from well-known national and international institutions (UNSD, Eurostat, etc.), or recommendations from allied businesses, let qualified experts become your trusted partners, knowing your company from the beginning in a new country, and thus willing to help develop effective streamlined support for your business processes with 100% compliance with local regulations.

Work with cultural and organizational differences

Nowadays, more than ever, we all face the need to understand people from different cultures or organizations. This is necessary not only to preserve healthy human relations as such, but also to use our differences to benefit mutual personal and business prosperity.

In the last century, the Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede classified measurements of cultural and organizational differences into various categories: Power Distance, Individualism, Uncertainty avoidance, Masculinity, Long Term Orientation, and Indulgence vs. Restraint. It is meant to help understanding the differences in the cultures of different countries and to identify ways of doing business with them. Barbora further suggests that such theoretical foundations can serve us well to harness all possible cultural and organizational traits, to maximize the potential of our human capital. Businesses that actively promote respect, tolerance of differences and bridging gaps between them through common visions, values and goals will easily overcome the future challenges of globalization. If you do not know where to start with this, we are ready to deep-dive into your company’s social environment right away.

Have yourself a sustainable business

Our era is marked by a phenomenon called growth. This would not be of much concern if the concept of growth were not mainly associated with material goods, such as: larger amounts of profit, ever-increasing incomes, growing domestic product, more transactions, new markets etc. Recently, this has been reflected in many areas, not only the environment, but also human well-being, quality of life in communities, demanding lifestyles, education, and beyond. Our Business Development Lead, Barbora, believes that our planet and society are calling for businesses to fully switch to a respectful, environmentally friendly, sustainable lifestyle that will bring the benefits and values your company deserves.

Do not copy-paste solutions

We asked our Partner and Head of Advisory, Petr Neškrábal, to share his advice with us that would help you not to make a mistake if you are thinking of expanding your business to other countries: “Do not copy-paste solutions from one country to another without doing a proper research on their implications. There are always local specifics , even within the EU. We have seen many companies being surprised by invalid contracts due to the breach of local requirements or unexpected taxation due to the specific taxes, just because they applied a copy-paste approach in the tax and legal area. This could even lead to the failure of the whole foreign investment”.

Scale up your fintech

Automation of the delivery and use of financial services has become an important agenda in the corporate sector. Fintech is one of the main things to have in mind when building a business in other countries. And who can scale up your fintech better than a company that has thousands of clients in different countries and use fintech solutions in their day-to-day operation?

We entrusted our Partner and Head of Fintech, Peter Pašek, with the following recommendation: “In the initial stages, it is challenging for any business to verify whether their fintech solution has the so-called product market fit. Accace as a partner can be a suitable customer to test the offered solutions, as well as becoming a partner who can open the door to attract customers that may be interested in the solution. In our day-to-day operation we are in contact with CEOs, CFOs and HR managers of small, medium and large companies. We know their problems, as well as their plans. Most of our clients do business in multiple countries, which accelerates the ability to scale the solution internationally”.

The recommendations above are only the part of what your business can implement. Our team of highly experienced professionals is ready to help you to find the best choices for your company or entity, based on your needs, and take your business to the next level.