Although everyone gathers intelligence to some extent by reading articles, consulting studies, attending conferences or trade shows, and talking with clients, partners or suppliers, few use a systematic approach that will allow them to quickly collect, sort, disseminate and  process the information.

Here are a few tips and suggestions I found interesting in the Mercadex presentation:

- Before doing anything, ask yourself what type of information you need on a regular basis.

- Determine who will benefit from and use the information and think about how you’re going to make that information available.

- Identify information sources internally and in your network.

- Build an external network of diverse sources.

- Conduct your research based on your product and market priorities.

- Put in place appropriate tools and mechanisms to gather and process information.

- Opt for a simple, functional and manageable system. If the system is too complicated or ambitious, no one will want to use or maintain it.

I believe that the key to an effective intelligence system is to give everyone within the system a role to play, encourage information sharing and make sure that everyone benefits so that they will have an interest in keeping it going.

Contact us to learn more about international business intelligence tools and best practices. You’ll also find some useful tools to track the competition and find market information in an earlier blog written by my colleague Caroline Bouchard.

Bruno Séguin

EDC has just the tool, an appendix inserted in its semi-annual Global Export Forecast (p. 54 to 91) summarizing the payment experience and payment risk for some 100 countries. EDC assesses three types of risk for each country – short-term commercial, medium-long-term commercial, and sovereign (political) – and indicates its payment experience in 2011.  The latter is measured by the number and size of EDC claims experienced in a particular country over a period of a year, relative to EDC’s business volume growth. This information is followed by a series of maps illustrating the short-term payment risk for each country, rated from “low” to “prohibited.”

It goes without saying that even if the prospective customer is in a country where EDC considers the short-term payment risk to be low, this does not guarantee that he is honest or financially solid. It is therefore very much in your interest to do your due diligence. Conversely, a perfectly honest and financially solid customer may be unable to make his payments if he operates in an uncertain economic and political environment. It is this second type of risk that the EDC appendix allows you to gauge and possibly control.

On another note, the LAVAL TECHNOPOLE International Business Centre is pleased to welcome Peter Hall, EDC’s vice-president and chief economist, who, for a second time, will visit Laval to present his export forecasts. The conference will take place at 11:45 a.m. on May 30. Click here to learn more and register.

Bruno Séguin

Briefly, Futurallia and Centrallia are two international business to business match-making forums, where upwards of 600 SME leaders from different countries and sectors gather for pre-arranged meetings over a period of two days. Quebec sends business delegations to these events each year, with great success.

These forums are excellent opportunities to:
- Find business partners (strategic alliances)
- Find out whether there is a market for your product or service abroad
- Expand your business network
- Meet trade experts who can help you export

For more information on the Allia concept and the two trade missions, feel free to contact me at bruno.seguin@lavaltechnopole.com. In addition to answering your questions, I can give you access to the recording of the Webinar.

Bruno Seguin

- Search engines

- General tools

- Strategic tools

- Competitive intelligence

- Market information

- Financial aspects

- Regulatory, legal and normative aspects

- Business-related cultural aspects

- Logistical aspects

Search Engines

With the Canadian Trade Commissioner’s search engine, you can search over 40 trade sites.

A free database listing thousands of Canadian businesses.

The Web site of the Ministère du Développement économique, Innovation et Exportation.

A federal government Web site containing export-related information.

General Tools

A very detailed directory of international trade shows:

A visualization tool that allows you to generate animated graphics with different international statistics in X and Y axes. The data is mostly about development and is taken from the U.N.

A fun tool that allows  you to explore cities and emerging urban clusters that will drive dramatic growth and demographic change over the next generation.

Site showing the world’s time zones

For travel information

A site that shows the best time to book flights to get the lowest price. Also offers travel deals

Strategic tools

A detailed outline of what to include in an export plan

Mercadex’s Podium-Gallows^TM tool to help you prioritize your international product-market combinations

The Peterson Institute for International Economics Web site will help you stay abreast of political, economic, sociological, technological, environmental and legal developments abroad.

 Competitive intelligence

For information about the competition or to find Chinese suppliers

Another site to find Asian suppliers

A Web site where you can determine and compare price trends for certain commodities or products

A free online competitive intelligence tool. Receive an alert every time your competition’s Web site change.

Market information

Canada’s foreign affairs office

Québec delegation offices abroad

Export Development Canada. Find a wide variety of export tools, articles and country profiles. Also an excellent resource to find funding for your export projects.

Portal of Canada’s Trade Commissioner (information classified by country)

Visit the Coface Web site for information on risk by industry, country, etc.

Lists the Web sites of the foreign embassies in Ottawa.

Interex contains interesting fact sheets on different countries.

Economic services available in France.

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI)

For country profiles and macroeconomic information

The Economist Intelligence Unit

Doing Business (Ranking)

Country Background Notes

Country Commercial Guide

Industry Sector Analysis and International Market Insight (Some of the market studies are free)

Free non-partisan site that compiles statistics on U.S. public opinion; includes various consumer confidence indices

BrazilTradeNet offers free access to information about companies in Brazil and lists all the trade shows in that country.

Everything a Quebec company needs to know before venturing into the E.U. market. A great decision-making tool

Financial aspects

Directory of financial assistance programs

A guide with Excel worksheets to help you calculate the cost of production, transport, delivery and transaction financing for your export goods.

Exchange rates

Regulatory, legal and normative aspects

World Intellectual Property Organization

International Property Rights Index

A tool to obtain a certificate of origin online. This service, for companies that export outside the U.S., cuts down on the time and cost of obtaining certificates of origin.

Extensive information on taxation in nearly 60 jurisdictions.

Business-related cultural aspects

Executive Planet

Kwintessential

Mercadex contains all types of indices, for example, the corruption index for various countries, the Intellectual Property Protection Index and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Index.

Visit www.transparency.org to see the level of corruption in different countries.

Logistics aspects

To find out your HS code

Once you know your HS code, visit the WCO site to find out the tariffs of over 105 countries

Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act

Customs tariffs

The introduction of our new coaching and training program Internationalize your SME: a down-to-earth approach in February is our first concrete demonstration of this new strategic vision. This program allows participating businesses to develop a winning internationalization strategy and to receive sustained coaching to help them grow their sales abroad. Seven Laval firms have signed up and are enthusiastically forging ahead, a testament to the strong interest sparked by this type of project among Laval SMEs.

Our program  uses the Mercadex Internationalization Method, a funnel-type process that begins with an international qualification (I.Q.), followed by an evaluation of products/fields and defining the firm’s international business model. Both activities use market analysis and other tools to enable informed decision-making. Then begins the strategic and tactical planning phase, contributing to effective execution and maximizing results for the firm.

An overview of the process can be found on the Mercadex site. Mercadex is an international business consulting firm and our partner in this project. You can also consult and try out the decision-making tools used in the process, for example, the Podium-Gallows tool, which allows you to prioritize your target market segments based on their potential and cost of entry (total entry cost and barriers).

Contact us to learn more about this project and process.

Bruno Séguin

Although GDP per capita can help you estimate the average income in a country, it doesn’t reflect the usually uneven distribution of wealth or other factors that affect consumers’ standard of living and their ability to afford high-end goods.

Here are some interesting indices to help you compare the wealth and prosperity in different countries:

• GDP per capita allows you to estimate the average personal income in a country.
• The Gini index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country. So for example, if a country has an average GDP and a high Gini index, you can safely assume that it has a fairly large number of well off consumers.
• The 2011 Legatum Prosperity Index ranks 110 countries according to their overall abilities to foster the drivers of prosperity (economy, entrepreneurship & opportunity, governance, education, health, safety & security, personal freedom and social capital).
• The U.N.’s Human Development Index combines indicators of income with educational attainment and life expectancy.
• A report prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of the British wealth management firm Barclays Wealth that ranks countries based on their average household savings rate, the number of millionaires and other similar data. This report presents the situation in 2007 and makes predictions for 2017.

Bruno Séguin

To learn about other free sites that can help you with your international projects, please don’t hesitate to call us.

Caroline Bouchard

1. Objective 1: Take into account the fact that sustainability is becoming an increasingly important aspect in consumers’ buying decisions.
   1. Are you prepared to discontinue a product line that is not environmentally friendly?
   2. Do you have a backup plan in case of an ecological disaster or drastic climate change?
   3. Do you have a plan in place to address restrictions on truck emissions or access to urban areas?

1. Objective 2: Share resources, even with the competition. In other words, work together to compete more effectively
   1. Are you willing to share a truck or a warehouse with a competitor?
   2. Are you prepared to share non-competitive information on the movement of your products through the supply chain with your business partners, including the competition?

1. Objective 3: Engage with increasingly technology-enabled consumers
   1. Do you know how to survive a negative campaign in social media?
   2. Are you able to distinguish between real consumers and “shoppers?”
   3. Do you know who else provides consumers with information about your brands or stores?

1. 4. Strategy 4: Serve the health and well-being of consumers.
   1. Do your products create rather than eliminate health problems?
   2. Are you prepared to meet the growing requirements of a greying population?
   3. Do you know where your workforce will come from once your current employees retire?

To learn more and see examples of actions taken by successful organizations such as Wal-Mart, Kraft, Danone and L’Oréal, read the full report: 2020 Future Value Chain- Building Strategies for the New Decade.

Samir Naoum

The fact is that current incentives to cut energy consumption and the move toward greener energy sources will not be enough to slow the growth of global demand for energy. On the supply side, the increase in output is not expected to be enough to meet demand because of the technological challenges and massive investments required to exploit new energy sources. Since supply will barely meet demand, expect to see oil prices climb sharply down the road, which will have a major impact on the world economy.

The price hikes will likely affect economic growth by sapping consumption and international trade and encouraging consumers and industry to implement measures or change their energy consumption habits. As such, McKinsey forecasts that supply and demand will again become balanced but not before 2020 because of the time it will take to make these adjustments and the lag between their implementation and their real impact on oil demand.

Most affected will be companies that don’t prepare for this possibility. Those that do may very well find that the oil shock creates a business opportunity.

Developing and marketing new technologies

A spike in oil prices would open the door to new technologies, which would become profitable, involving, for example, electric vehicles, oil and gas extraction, and green energy, often in partnership with large order givers. The oil shock would speed up adoption of these new technologies, drive down their price due to economies of scale and increase their economic viability, which should further encourage businesses, consumers and public organizations to adopt them.

Making global supply chains more efficient

In the same vein, certain technologies or supply chain management methods that don’t make economic sense to implement at current oil prices could become very attractive for businesses if an oil shock were to occur. One of the sidebars in the McKinsey article presents different examples of activities that would reduce the energy intensity of global supply chains that would become economically viable when oil is priced at $100 a barrel. The following are some of the main categories with the potential impact on oil consumption shown in parentheses:
-    Increase the value density of goods by reducing packing volume (-3%);
-    Reduce average transportation distance (-4%);
-    Change the mix of transportation modes by shifting from air freight or trucking to shipping or rail (-4%);
-    Improve transportation technologies by increasing the scale and efficiency of propulsion systems (-20%);
-    Improve use of transportation modes by optimizing speed, load factor, maintenance and route planning (-12%);
-    Improve use of collective assets by reducing congestion, upgrading infrastructure or engaging in smart traffic management (-2%).

So, while an oil shock would have a very negative impact in the near term, in the long run, the resulting adjustments would have a positive effect because those businesses that managed to reduce their dependence on oil would continue to benefit once balance is restored to supply and demand.

However, what remains to be seen is whether our exporters would still be competitive in this new economic context. As mentioned earlier, making better use of our transportation modes would have a much greater effect on energy consumption than reducing distances. This suggests that an oil shock would not completely halt international trade and that companies would continue buying and selling their goods around the world. At least that’s the hope for export-reliant economies like Canada and Quebec.

Bruno Séguin

I was especially struck by her recommendation to people looking to open their minds to gain a better sense of what the future holds. Here’s what she says: “Find a friend whose life is completely different from yours, someone who was born abroad and has different values. Step into different worlds that have nothing to do with your company.”

This statement reminds me of a comment made not long ago by Genacol CEO Guy Michaud  at a conference. Michaud was trying to drive home the point that Quebec business owners absolutely have to go see what’s happening elsewhere in the world, especially in China, so they can truly understand what globalization means, just how incredibly fast some markets are changing, and above all, to come to terms with the fact that our society and companies have to go global to survive. This message was directed at entrepreneurs but also at all the professionals who work with them.

I really get what they’re saying. Every time I travel abroad, especially to an emerging country, I realize how little we know about what’s going on outside our back yard. These countries are growing and innovating, developing new products, services and distribution channels. We need to learn from them if we want to move ahead.

Like Gorbis and Michaud, I strongly urge you to take an interest in what’s being done elsewhere to inspire you, to innovate and to venture into new markets. Because human nature is to gravitate to like-minded people, we need to make a conscious effort  to do otherwise. We have to open our minds and take an interest in other business cultures.

When was the last time you travelled to a country that was outside your comfort zone? I, for one, will soon be flying to Guinea. This will be my second trip to that country. How’s that for stepping out of your comfort zone?

Véronique Proulx