Companies that initiated digital transformations before the global pandemic leveraged the power of ecommerce solutions to reap sky-high growth, ensuring their future is not left to chance. While you likely know a global rollout entering new markets is necessary to future proof your organization, what are the essential factors to consider when creating a digital roadmap for a global expansion strategy?
Global Expansion Readiness Checklist
Working out the details of where to expand is something every retailer, CPG, B2C, or B2B manufacturing company wanting to accelerate global expansion must address. While Brazil and APAC markets may be enticing, it may be easier to start in mature markets like the US, UK, France, and Germany. Entering new markets poses different opportunities and challenges each company should consider.
Our global expansion readiness checklist will help you know what to consider when creating your digital roadmap for a global rollout.
1) Are your potential new markets narrowed down? Once decision-making criteria are established, you can prepare a shortlist of potential markets that meet your needs. These criteria likely will be the most complex part of your planning. They may involve looking at GDP, size and growth of potential markets, consumer preferences, the intensity of competition, cultural and language barriers, and understanding regulation compliance and foreign tax environments.
Consider:
- What is the nature of the competitive landscape in potential markets?
- Who would be the target market for your product or service?
- Will expanding into a new territory be a foothold and gateway to other markets offering future expansion over time?
2) Have you performed a requirements analysis to determine your global expansion strategy? Internationalization is about ensuring your ecommerce solutions can handle the same or similar tasks for customers in different regions. You’ll need to assess where you want to sell, how to sell, and how to get your product in the country. Every country comes with different laws, customs, and nuances that your website and underlying technologies must address.
Consider:
- Where and why are you seeking to expand? To access international customers or develop relationships with international suppliers?
- How long can you afford to wait in new markets before competitors make a move?
- Do you have an explicit criterion for investment decisions?
3) Do you have a multi-cloud ecommerce platform to support your needs? Your business needs the right commerce strategy to make an intelligent move into entering new markets. Your multi-cloud ecommerce platform needs to support your language needs and allow you to create rich text in different forms and colors with additional images that will appeal to all markets. Your platform will also need API support for integration with any third-party software you may need and a responsive design for a mobile-friendly site.
Consider:
- Are you able to customize your product catalog for each market?
- Can you optimize integration between online and offline operations?
- Is your website ready with a responsive design to be mobile-friendly?
- Can you unify online and in-store inventory?
- Are you able to obtain a real-time view of inventory and customers from all selling points?
4) Do you have the proper logistics and payment service providers ready to serve your new market? One factor to your success is establishing an appropriate financial and taxation infrastructure to ensure you get timely reports and comply with local tax and business policies. To focus on building significant new channel growth, you will likely need a payment and compliance expert to handle the all-consuming details.
Consider:
- Do you have a checkout solution for global payments, fraud, tax, and compliance management?
- Do you have a risk management plan considering GDPR, PSD2, ever-changing tax laws, sophisticated fraud rings?
- Have you completed due diligence on transfer pricing?
- Do you have a strategy to boost authorization rates and reduce cart abandonment?
What You Need Most
As a respected business looking to deploy a global expansion strategy, you need a scalable end-to-end ecommerce solution allowing you to grow your business globally at an accelerated rate. To futureproof your business, you need a best-in-class global ecommerce solution to enable your brand(s) to have a connected commerce strategy with a 360-degree view of customers.
OSF Digital and Digital River can implement a complete and fully integrated customized solution designed for scale and accelerated global expansion. OSF Digital, a top trusted digital transformation systems integrator and leading global commerce solutions company, can help you carry out a successful global expansion strategy to establish an efficient digital presence as you begin entering new markets. Digital River, a complete global payment, fraud, tax, and compliance solution, can help sell globally, more quickly, and with less cost. Together, OSF Digital and Digital River can help you seamlessly join your front-end user experience with a complete back-end ecommerce solution.
