Hire Smart
One of the big costs of doing business in multiple countries is relocating employees abroad: allowances for accommodation, relocation and travel can eat up a lot of your revenue before you’ve even been able to establish a stable market in the new country you’ve moved into.
One way to minimise these costs is to think in advance about the need to relocate people and ensure you have people on your roster with fewer and cheaper needs, that you develop them appropriately so that when the time comes to send people into your new market long term, you have a selection of appropriate candidates.
These employees who are more efficient to move abroad are likely to be those without immediate dependents and close ties to their home country, for example, younger men and women who have not yet started a family and so will not need to move a partner and child with them. They are also more likely to regard a long term assignment abroad as an opportunity, an adventure and a chance to develop their skills, so are less likely to bargain for a higher quality of life while out there.
It’s also worth considering the older end of your spectrum of employees. Those with grown up children no longer living at home could be ideal to give the experience they’ve gained over the course of a career to setting up your new market.
Communications
Reliable, clear communications are the backbone of any business, and it’s worth considering any area that’s rapidly increasing it’s communications capacity. As a result of Africa’s embracing mobile technology it’s opened up considerably as a market in the last ten years. With law firms moving into South Africa in unprecedented numbers, it’s a market well worth breaking into.
New services offering international topup of mobile credit offer a quick and cheap way to finance the communications side of your operations in these developing markets, and a low cost way to build good will with partners in these countries.
