Doing Business Internationally

I'm supposed to be a smart guy. I've taken international business courses and even have a MBA. It is so true as to what they say about "book learning" vs. "the real world" - in that nothing is a substitution for real world experience. I was thinking about this today as I'm making notes for either an article or a book. The danged ole MBA didn't cover many of the topics that I face all the time in doing business and supporting the Synchro32 customers around the world. Truly Synchro32 is a world wide company - North America, South America, the UK, Europa, Eurasia, and Oceania. Until they open a foundry or metal caster in the artic or antarctic, I don't think we will have any customers in those locations. Imagine what kind of problems you'd have pouring molten metal in -100 weather. That would bring a whole new meaning to chills and talk about porosity and can you imagine the types of gates and risers you'd have to have!

Anyway, since Synchro32 opened up the North American office almost a year ago, I have had a number of challenges and learning experiences in supporting the world wide base of Synchro32. Some of the most common and easiest things become difficulties.

Lets start with simple international phone dialing. Every country in the world has their own system of phone numbers and how you dial them, what digits you have to drop, etc. When I first started out, I had never made an international phone call - so it was a true learning experience. Thankfully the internet was a good guide to this as I relied heavily on www.countrycallingcodes.com

Time. They say time is fleeting and that time is precious and time has a value (as in the old financial equation of TVM-Time Value of Money). Of course, the world is divided into 24 time zones that are all based on GMT/UCT as being plus or minus from Greenwich England at the Royal Observatory. Unfortunately, "man" has introduced the artificial concept of adjusting the time based on the time of the year with what we call DST or daylight savings time. Some countries observe it, some do not. In the United States, some states and even parts of states don't observe it. Time is very important to Synchro32 so that we can call and support our customer base at the correct time and aslo to followup on sales leads. It is imperative to know what time it is where you are calling. I have a number of tools that I use and even have desktop software that graphically shows me what time it is. Also, the USA decided to change things up this year and adust when DST ended and began - which "ruined" a special clock I had that has imbedded into it's silicone diods software that automatically changed the time for me. I use the www.worldtimesever all the time to find out what time it is across the globe. Think of all the money that could be saved and be put to better use if the world was on time. If you look at this link, http://tinyurl.com/yvo3e7, you will begin to understand the vast amount of limited resources that are spent in just handling time. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, etc. spend millions and millions of dollars just changing the time.

Speaking of time, there are the holidays. Every country has their own unique secular and religious holidays. When planning customer visits or remote work, this has to be taken into consideration. Additionally, some locales even have different holidays from the country.

An additional consideration, on the time theme, is days of the week. The western world tends to work Monday - Friday, but the Middle East has the "weekend" on Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday are "normal" working days. With Synchro32 rapidly expanding into the Middle East, customers need support on the Western weekends. They forgot to tell me this in MBA school!

Paper - pickup a standard sheet of paper. Well, if you are in America that is known as letter sized paper and is 8.5 x 11 inches. However, the majority of the rest of the world uses A4 sized paper. Even obtaining A4 paper in the USA is difficult to do and forget obtaining a certain type, weight, and color. When it comes to printing, A4 is NOT letter sized paper and the margins are different and if you try to print an A4 document on letter sized paper, you will not be impressed with the results. One would think that something as simple as paper would be standardized throughout the world. Think of the amount of capital that could be saved with this one simple standardization.

Notice in my entry regarding paper, I used the unit of measure of inches. Despite all the best attempts of public schools in my yongster years to instill the virtues of the metric system, the USA is for the most part still stuck on miles, inches, feet, gallons, pints, etc. The world would be a much better place if the USA would dump these systems of measurement and went with the world standard of the Metric system. When I was in grade school a few years ago, we were all told that we had to learn the Metric system as it would be the universal standard in the United States. Thirty-five years later, I'm still waiting on it. The cost of the failure to adobt the Metric system must be incredible - think of the errors that are made in converting between units on engineering drawings, pattern/plate sizes, etc. Talk about a problem with shift in a casting. Explain that one to your customer when the dimensions were converted incorrectly!

Of course, there are the cultural norms, termonology, etc. and I won't even venture there.