(As published in Management Today)

When it comes to international expansion it pays to do your homework.

How many business stories have you read where a company expands internationally, only to find itself joining the list of foreign fails?

International expansion can be a success only when it’s done professionally, with the right levels of marketing, financial, human and time resources assigned.

Against the backdrop of vast geopolitical uncertainty in many parts of the world – not least the threat of a Trump 2.0 administration levying tariffs on your goods and services – it's never been more essential to take control of your cross-border growth. So here are some tips to help ensure you and your company are successful.

Define 'how' to grow

One tool to help you align your leaders and resources for international expansion is the Ansoff Matrix (see illustration below). Like all good consulting models it’s a 2x2 matrix, that helps drive decision-making about which products (existing and new) are appropriate for which countries (existing and new).

Launching new products or services into new countries – the highest risk of four strategies in the matrix – involves defining two unknowns. This ‘diversification strategy’ will ultimately fail without in-depth advance market research.

Another option – market development (launching existing products/services into new countries) – may be less high-risk but it still relies on excellent on-the-ground surveying of cultural and industry differences, as well as mining the marketing and sales data you have from existing countries to identify which localisations you’ll need to make.

Know your risk appetite

Every international expansion comes with a risk profile, so getting agreement internally on which risks are palatable is essential.  You might want to buy a company in the target country, forge an alliance, choose a pure online play, build your presence on-the-ground organically or hire agents to build the market opportunity for you.

Creating cost/benefit analyses and forecasting the payback periods (no less than five years for any international pursuit) will help you create a menu of options, that will drive your business plan and align your stakeholders around a strategic choice.

Identify your critical success factors

For any cross-border leap to deliver success profitably, you must put in place the right mix of elements to give it the oxygen it needs.  Far too often, companies opportunistically approach a new geography because customers pull them there.

At the very least, the following should be in place:

• Examination of the societal, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal and ethical (STEEPLE) trends in your chosen location.
• A deep understanding of, and fluency in, the business culture.
• Cash to sustain a five-year investment.
• Global and learning mindsets in your exec team and those supporting the international expansion.
• Market intelligence to identify what localisations will be required.
• Agreement on – and willingness to stick to – a realistic payback period.
• Key stakeholders’ buy-in, not least from investors, employees, regulators and suppliers.
• Ability to integrate the demands of head office and in-country operations.

Localise where you can

There are many good examples of companies that “go local” to balance the core product/service with the needs in a particular country in order to capture value.

Take Nestlé’s KitKat. In Japan, there have been over 300 seasonal and regional flavours manufactured since 2000, many of which only exist there. Whether it’s soy sauce, matcha (green tea), adzuki (red bean), beni imo (purple sweet potato) or the brown sugar syrup, the format is still the same: four-finger wafers with fillings and coatings of the same size, shape and weight as the original treat. Consumers can even choose the packaging, such as in a gift box with space to write a personalised message.

Conversely, in the US market, baby food maker Ella’s Kitchen has withdrawn its tuna meals as it seems American babies simply aren’t fans.

Create a project plan

There’s nothing like a good dashboard to track your expansion progress so you can communicate success across the business.  These elements should be organised by the timeframe within which your list of actions fall – pre-launch, launch, impact etc – and preferably conveyed as graphics rather than spreadsheets or prose.

Within each, you can add not only the specific initiatives (such as your market research exercises) but also the critical success factors to ensure these stay top of mind.

However you go about transforming your business from a domestic to an international player, being methodical, deliberate, communicative and resourceful pays dividends.  As many businesses who have expanded across borders can tell you, there’s no substitute for having a plan to avoid a foreign fail.