You’ve taken some deep collective breaths as an organization, and now you’re partway through pivoting and starting to gear up for a post-vaccine world. Along the way, international markets have moved much more firmly into the limelight. As you plan for this year, make building a globally integrated organization one of your goals. You’ve worked hard to gain customers in various markets worldwide, so now is not the time to cede market share to savvy competitors that are more adept at executing locally nuanced strategies.

Here are four steps you can take to support business functions enterprise-wide to globalize their business processes more quickly. We have chosen marketing as an example.

Recognize Why It’s Essential to Globalize the Business Process in Question

Your firm may produce exceptional localized products or services for a particular market, but if marketing falls short of expectations with that audience, it may not matter. Your goal should be to maintain at least comparable levels of customer experience worldwide. Once you start translating content, for example, your buyers will expect their entire experience to be in that language (“Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2B” and “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C”). Lack of upfront planning in this area may delay market entry, slow growth, or tarnish your firm’s image.

Review External and Internal Landscapes

External and internal landscapes affect when and how marketing teams globalize their business processes to optimally support customers worldwide. Examples of external factors include the maturity of local digital experiences and in-country marketing and advertising programs that you must compete against. Internal factors encompass areas such as the global readiness of your organization and its programs, along with the adaptability of marketing automation infrastructure.
 

Prioritize Areas for Globalization Compliance

External issues for a function such as marketing will encompass areas such as how to elicit and integrate local market feedback into content and program design, as well as local business regulations or informal practices that may affect how to deliver marketing programs. Internally, marketing may need to identify processes that require optimization to expand its global footprint as a marketing organization. Managers may need to upgrade plans for how to enable audiences in local markets to experience at least the same quality of customer journey as that enjoyed by customers in the home market.

Collaborate with the People Who Can Benefit Most from Globalization Expertise

The localization team may be tasked to support the marketing function to more fully optimize one or more of these areas: strategy, governance, processes, organizational structure, or technology infrastructure. Identify those groups within marketing that are struggling to deliver on their piece of the global customer experience. Work with your executive sponsor to determine how your team, an external resource, or another more advanced team within your organization can guide them over the hump.

If you’re interested in how to support any of the following business functions as each seeks to advance its globalization maturity, reach out to sales@csa-research for more information or, if you’re a member, look for email announcements from CSA Research: customer support, engineering and R&D, finance, human resources, IT, legal and compliance, marketing, procurement, sales and business development, and training.