5 easy steps to becoming a worldwide GIANT

For many new businesses, global domination isn’t just a dream, it’s the main game.  These days business start-ups are just as likely to find their first customers in Paris, France, as in Paris, Texas. The HSBC 2016 paper “The rise of micro-multinationals” describes these new star players in the global economy as “GIANTS”

Global mindset they think across borders and have the confidence to innovate.

Intermediate typically they’re a mid-sized company

Agile expanding internationally early in their business lifecycle

Niche offering new ideas or just one element of a good or service

Tech Savvy using new technology to foster their network and brand

Capturing a global marketplace for a specific product or service is the trademark of the micro-multinational.

Get global

The massive trend towards “Everything as a Service” naturally lends itself to scalability and new business start-ups who are more able to offer innovative products and services in multiple geographies.

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing

The HSBC paper identifies mid-sized organisations as typical of a Micro-multinational however, at Natterbox we are observing this phenomenon operating with both SMB (small to medium enterprise) and ESMB (emerging small to medium enterprise).  For example, Xref an ASX listed cloud service that improves the efficiency and security of candidate reference checking launched their global operations in Sydney, London and Canada within a 6-month period.

Keep calm and stay agile

By virtue of their size micro-multinationals are better able to pivot and take advantage of new market opportunities both geographically and horizontally than larger companies.  For example, Ansarada a global provider of virtual data rooms for M&A participants with operations in Sydney, London and North America were able to open a whole new market globally by adapting their cloud platform to enable customers to manage their tendering process.

Niche is the new normal

Capturing a global marketplace for a specific product or service is the trademark of the micro-multinational.  The AirBNB/Uber model of connecting consumers with services via the Web is being extended to every service imaginable like home removals for example; Move24 or domestic and commercial cleaning services with BookATiger and travel services like DUFL who will organise the cleaning packing and shipping of luggage for frequent business travellers or Contellio who provide super-fast and efficient video production as a service via their cloud platform.  We will continue to see more and more ProSaaS “Professional Services as a Service” offerings like Xref extend to legal and HR services globally.

Now that’s savvy!

If there was one common enabler for these examples it’s the underlying technology stack.  Many of these organisations have adopted Salesforce.com, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud as their CRM and Help Desk.  Salesforce is also an excellent platform for automating marketing, contract management, customer success and a global platform is extremely well designed for frictionless scalability.

However, when it comes to voice communications the regional nature of telecoms has until recently been an impediment to rapid global execution.  Each country has their own set of highly regulated telco providers with entrenched rules and varying time lines for service availability.  Fortunately, Natterbox new Advanced Voice Services, 100% embedded and managed in Salesforce, means that the same platform that manages all your customer data, help desk and marketing etc, available wherever you are, is now your cloud phone system and telecoms provider without having to leave the Salesforce user interface.  Salesforce administrators can build a global phone system, and contact centre, give users a WebRTC or Cloud Phone, buy new numbers for their new global offices and use the customer data in Salesforce to personalise their customers experience and increase speed of engagement leading to greater levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty – now that’s “savvy”.

For more information about micro-multinationals, download our latest eBook.