Expansion through partnership

About seven years ago, I was hired as a business development manager for a small IT firm in Houston, TX. The firm CEO had very ambitious plans to expand the firm operations to cover the global market. At that time, between the years of 1999-2001, the IT industry in the US was experiencing rapid growth and few small firms would think about the global market.

My job was to look around and the search the globe for business partners, I wasn’t giving any strategy on how we would go about our global expansion, the only two tools I had were, the internet and my language skills.

After searching the internet and reading many articles about globalization and business partnerships, I came up with my own strategy for a profitable partnership, “expansion through partnership.”

My strategy was really simple, we were an IT firm, and our competitive advantages were based on:

1- Experienced management team based in the US.
2- Development centers based in the US and India.
3- A team who is ready to re-locate.

I looked for a global business partner who had:

1- Excellent knowledge of the local IT market, what type of IT solutions needed by the local market?
2- Experienced marketing and public relations teams

The idea was to have the local partner find the need for a particular solution, have the Management team in the US handle the project from requirement gathering to final implementation, have the development team in India write the code, and finally implement the solution in the local partner’s market.

This strategy was based on three competitive advantages:

1- Make extensive use of managerial skills readily available in the US
2- Take advantage of low development costs in India
3- Use the local partner to penetrate the foreign market

This strategy also led to creating jobs in all countries involved