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- Business Liaison
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Many organizations do not recognize or realize just how important business
liaison services are until they need them for some important purpose.
Interfacing with foreign companies and/or government agencies can be an
essential first step in the process that yields business success. If your
company has little or no international business experience, it then becomes
crucial for you to have an ally who has had practical experience in dealing with
these foreign entities. Those who have foregone this type of assistance have
done so with great risk and in many instances it ultimately lead them to dismal
failure.
- FDI Assistance
- FDI=foreign direct investment.
quoted directly from "Understanding Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)"
by Jeffrey P. Graham and R. Barry Spaulding as contributors to bizzed
international gateway for CITIBANK
Foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an extraordinary and growing
role in global business. It can provide a firm with new markets and
marketing channels, cheaper production facilities, and access to new
technology, products, skills and financing. For a host country or
the foreign firm which receives the investment, it can provide a source of
new technologies, capital, processes, products, organizational
technologies and management skills, and as such can provide a strong
impetus to economic development. Foreign direct investment, in its classic
definition, is defined as a company from one country making a physical
investment into building a factory in another country. The direct
investment in buildings, machinery and equipment is in contrast with
making a portfolio investment, which is considered an indirect investment.
In recent years, given rapid growth and change in global investment
patterns, the definition has been broadened to include the acquisition of
a lasting management interest in a company or enterprise outside the
investing firm's home country. As such, it may take many forms, such
as a direct acquisition of a foreign firm, merger with a foreign company,
construction of a facility, or investment in a joint venture or strategic
alliance with a local firm with attendant input of technology, licensing
of intellectual property.
For companies already involved with high tech products or who see
themselves as being integrally involved in high technology in the very
near future, foreign direct investment is a critical success factor.
Those executives who disagree with this notion can be usually found
appearing daily in bankruptcy court proceedings or dawdling in
unemployment lines.
- Project Consulting
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Many small companies begin by selling their goods and services to
multinational corporations. As such, when such global behemoths become
involved in a project, their vendors can sometimes share the benefits
accrued by having already established a business relationship. Sometimes,
however, these projects are quite often managed by major consulting houses
and/or other persons/entities rather than the personnel at the
multinational client company. So, while there are benefits such as
increased revenues, there are disadvantages such as poor payment terms and
a lack of other traditional guarantees.
In much the same way that a business liaison can become very useful,
having retained a business consultant to deal with the other consultants
can offer your company many benefits that translate to the bottom line.
Eliminating redundancies, clarifying lines of command and communication,
protecting proprietary business information and seeing to the well being of
your employees are all things that can be achieved by hiring your own
project consultant. If the big guys do it, why shouldn't you?
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