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Crossing the Atlantic made easier
Three-and-a-half thousand miles of water never seems to put off those who want to go on holiday, whichever side of the Atlantic they live. But when it comes to doing business, there are some that see those miles as an insuperable barrier – as if they still have to strike across an uncharted ocean like fifteenth-century mariners.
At the opposite end of the business spectrum, there are others who view the UK and North America as so close in their ways they can be regarded as interchangeable markets. Unless such people are very lucky, they end up learning in the most dispiriting way – from their mistakes – that their view is somewhat simplistic.
For the majority of business men and women between those two extremes, however, trading abroad is viewed simply as a natural developmental stage for a growing business, with setting foot on a new continent being a step likely to need some guidance. Even so, if they feel that the top-dollar prices of the major consultancies are beyond their budgets (and what SME wouldn’t?), where are they to find that help?
Government support projects exist; but they can be slow-moving, and by their very nature often geared to a generalised case. Organisations such as chambers of commerce offer very variable levels of expertise and while specialist commercial service providers are out there, how do you get to them, let alone assess them? If you go for a likely starting point, such as the phrase ‘export advice’ in an Internet search, you generate 59,734 matches.
It was to meet particularly that last requirement of easier access that the British Service Providers Association (BSPA) was brought into being in 1998. The Association is made up of a group of like-minded businesses, themselves SMEs, that first came together by having been involved in the Department of Trade and Industry’s ‘Gateway’ project.
THE UK AS A GATEWAY
‘Gateway’ was an initiative that was focused on companies in North America seeking to extend their business from west to east across those three-and-a-half thousand miles. The core of the idea was to encourage them to use the UK as their first port of call on the European side of the Atlantic. Among the more obvious reasons for starting in Britain were the way our culture and business practice are more like those of the US and Canada than any other European country. What’s more, any misunderstandings can be sorted out in (virtually) the same language.
Just as important, though, was the fact that the UK has the largest service-industry base in Europe. The main thrust of ‘Gateway’ was in fact the availability for incoming companies of all the services they would need to set up their European business. This applied whether they intended just to open an office, use agents or distributors, establish a new subsidiary or work in some form of joint venture.
The major benefit that was added with the advent of the BSPA was the facility of accessing whatever services were required through a single point, be it the Association itself or one of its members.
Well aware that one of the cardinal rules of international trade is that you have to be seen in the markets you seek to serve, BSPA members immediately began a pattern of what has become regular travel to North America. Most of the individual members had already been active there for some time. So they had their own contacts, stretching from Massachusetts to California. But as an Association we concentrated initially on two reasonably compact geographical areas. The Canadian one is centred on Toronto; the US one takes in the southeastern states of Georgia and the two Carolinas.
In part this was so as not to spread ourselves too thinly at first. But it was also because of the enthusiastic assistance provided by the local British Consulates, in Toronto and Atlanta respectively. This good working relationship continues, not least with the consular representatives of InvestUK. It is underpinned by the fact that the BSPA itself, while entirely private-sector, is a non-profit-making trade association.
Members sometimes travel as an independent BSPA team, sometimes join a mission, and sometimes attend trade fairs and their associated events. Often they make trips in ones and twos to re-visit actual and potential clients. We meet individuals and groups, give presentations, make speeches at professional gatherings, and run educational seminars. We believe strongly that – for all the virtues of websites – the services we provide are most likely to be bought from people who have met us. (Indeed, met us more than once.)
South Carolina provides a typical example of the variety of contacts the BSPA has developed as a result of this range of activities. We keep in touch with organisations, such as regional international trade associations in Greenville and Columbia, and with individual business people, investment advisers and trade-oriented lawyers. We work with the South Carolina Export Consortium, which straddles the private and public sectors, and with the state’s active Department of Commerce. Philip Lader, the South Carolinian former US ambassador to the UK, is an honorary member of the BSPA and the relationship with the South Carolina World Trade Centre in Charleston is so close that I have become a member.
This last connection links the BSPA into all the 300 or so World Trade Centres spread across five continents. But its key advantage is the way it has widened our network of North American contacts, especially in Atlantic-facing states such as Florida and New York.
We continue to develop relationships elsewhere in the US, too.
The BSPA operates in a similar way in Canada, although with important variations such as the excellent rapport established with the office of the Mayor of Toronto. One of the larger differences between Canada and the US is also the more direct involvement by the Canadian Government in fostering exports. One of the results of this for the BSPA has been providing input, and becoming the UK partners, in a government initiative taking the form of an informational website for Canadian exporters.
FIRST FRUITS
The results have been a cross-section of North American companies that have made use of a single service provided by one of the BSPA’s members. Research the markets for consumer products, for example, before any major commitment is made. Have marketing materials adapted and literature re-worked for European tastes. Clarify and implement the best legal option for setting up a trading identity and for manufacturers in the many fields affected, obtain the vital clearances necessary under the European CE safety-mark regime.
That original ‘Gateway’ concept had mainly such market-entry exporting in mind. But in fact companies who invest in the UK – indeed, ones who have already established a presence – still need some specific services. It is not unusual for those to be provided jointly by more than one BSPA member. To cite one current instance, the accounting needs of a UK subsidiary are dealt with by one member, and its HR needs by another. Accounts and HR departments thus remain – very much more cost-effectively – in the US head office.
One BSPA member, specialising in relocating both business assets and people, even brings together a whole group of other members as a team. A major client move planned and then implemented by this company will involve it in project-managing several different areas of expertise over months, and sometimes years.
The Association can then draw on other resources. While it may be numerically small, each of its members – especially, but not only, the larger ones – has a further extended network of its own proven suppliers and even more specialist service providers. This huge palette of skills is similarly accessible to clients through a single point of contact.
THE FUTURE
The BSPA started life in order to help companies looking to move from North America to Europe, and it will continue to do that. But in the process we have built up an extensive bank of contacts in Canada and the United States. It has become increasingly clear that they lend themselves just as much to helping those who want to go from east to west.
The same fundamental principle applies. On the other side of the Atlantic, it is not difficult to do business. It just becomes difficult if people ignore the fact that some things (not all of them obvious) are different. In international trade, at least, the idea of learning only by experience has little to recommend it. Especially when there are specialists available whose sole purpose is to make life easier.
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