Making SME´s part of the global market

.By Jorge Zavala, TechBA Silicon Valley CEO

 

Since its formation in 2004, the TechBA program has been working with Mexican small and medium enterprises in the high tech field, from software to medical devices industries. More than one hundred companies are now part of the TechBA portfolio; a lot of them had learned how to do business in the USA, Canada and Spain. In order to compare how these companies are doing in relation to other countries, I reviewed a lot of material published about this subject. I found the article published by Shameen Prashantham with the title Helping SME´s go global in the National Association of Software and Service http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.aspx?id=21306 .

 

Where, I confirmed that my learning’s in the business development process are the same for companies from India than companies from Mexico, when they decide to go global. Prashantham describes three issues that the companies need to phase out:

 

• On top of a strong technical knowledge, successful companies need to leverage their market knowledge. This is a must have combination that need to be developed in the companies to get into the market, understand the needs of their customers and the environment to do business in whatever location in the word they what to do business.
• Getting into a new place, it is needed to have access to the local network. We encourage the company to do a lot of networking, when they arrive to our facilities to expand their business. Learning who is who in the new location is critical to be successful. It is not enough to get a first customer, the companies need to get involved in the environment, be present constantly and get the recognition in the community as a valuable and trusted supplier.
• Once the company is set up in the new location, the nurture of the relationship is the final step to open the doors to the customers, alliances and distribution channels.

 

With these elements, a technology based company can grow very fast in the new location, enhance their business and develop a long term presence.

 

As an example of local knowledge the companies need to identify their own competence. For instance, in the case of the Software outsourcing in the USA, there is a very big market opportunity. New companies that are looking to provide their services need to learn about the US companies like EDS or Indian companies like Tata Consulting Services, Wipro or InfoSys. Each one is a very large company that has a strong presence in the USA.

 

Reviewing their website you can find the customer centric orientation, offering their capabilities to do better the software o IT management than if you do it by yourself. This is a simple exercise that I encourage to the companies that are looking to go global; learn from the leaders, understand the reasons of their own success and identify your own strategy to get in front of potential customers. Presenting your best technological capabilities and identify how the get in front of your prospects using the right networking approach for each case. Once you start getting the first wins, the road will be easier as long as you learn on your way. Try it, feel free to fail, learn and modify your working process and get the needed confidence to succeed.

 

Wikis as real communication tool to create knowledge

In the last month, I had been in the learning mode for new communications tools, from the traditional content management to create a website, blogging tools, forums, elearning tools and at the end, some wikis.
All this tools provides me, different alternatives to communicate with my audience, I use to have relationship every day like: entrepreneurs, consultants and alliances. I complex group that, I can create contents to feed our communication interchange and grow the ideas.
But last week, I the middle of learning about eLearning stuff; I cross by the www.moodle.org website, an open source tool to develop training websites. I was very interested about the subject, these tools impress me and I started to read how to use it. While, I was reading, in http://docs.moodle.org/, I look at the way that his site was built.
The site is built around the same eLearning tool and the documentation site is built around www.mediawiki.org open source software, the same that is used by the famous www.wikipedia.org encyclopedia.
I decide to dig and learn about this subject, for my surprise, these two software tools, are freely available and easy to install. I tool the weekend challenge in learning how to do it. I contract a new website hosting in www.siteground.com and I was up and running my set of sites in less than a morning.
The real experience came to me, when I was creating my guideline to develop business with the companies in the TechBA program. After a full day of work, I was able to have a framework to store my process, invite some colleagues to work in the project and have a lot of fun sharing our expertise. This site is now available at www.techba.com/wiki .
I am excited in this new way to create content and share knowledge. This is the kind of experiments that I can recommend to any body in the world. Listen to friend that has been looking for several years how to create a knowledge exchange, and today I found that the tools are available for anybody.
It is a matter to open my mind to new ideas, exercise my capability to create this knowledge exchange. Now, I invite you to participate in this endeavor to create together a place were we add ideas, interchange them, discuss them and leave to the audience to validate and enrich them. Let’s use the wiki concept as a tool and our ideas as a fuel.