Why do clients engage market entry risk advisors?

Some of AnotherDay’s most successful clients understand that the domestic market can only support them for so long. They look to overseas markets to drive their growth, either organically or through acquisition, and see diversification of geography as a pillar of corporate stability. This has become particularly true in emerging markets, a classification which currently applies to almost 80% of countries: in recent years powerhouses such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and many others have made up the lion’s share of global growth.

The main obstacle to successful market entry, and the proximate cause of most failures, is unfamiliarity. Operating in new markets, particularly developing or emerging ones, in the same way that companies work at home is simply not an option. In many cases, these new operating models can themselves create risks that need to be managed.

How does AnotherDay support clients carrying out market entry?

Our consulting teams tend to utilise a set process to work alongside our clients’ M&A, legal, finance and operational teams when they’re conducting market entry activities:

• Market entry process design: In this initial phase, we develop a Market Entry Framework and Standard for assessment of project risk in the context of the country, which will provide a risk scoring to be included in invest decision matrices or other decision making tools that the client uses.
• Country risk analysis: Once the overall methodology has been designed for the country-level, we provide capability for in-depth risk identification and analysis for the new jurisdiction to provide valuable insights to be considered in assessing an opportunity. For this, we utilise both remote and ‘on the ground’ approaches.
• Project due diligence: After the country risk methodology has been used by the client and our consulting team to identify an opportunity, and the project risk analysis has been conducted, specific due diligence can then take place on the project using technologies, databases, human source enquiries, and other forms of intelligence collection and analysis.
• Go/no-go: All of the data, information and insight provided during the previous phases then needs to be considered in the entire context of the opportunity: to keep this consistent for the client, we work to develop a go/no-go criteria methodology and tool to make any decision easier to justify to senior leadership and the Board.
• Other operational support: There are a whole range of considerations during the market entry process outside of the decision-making criteria: we’ve worked with clients to ensure project travel is secure, sites have appropriate protection, local communities are engaged, and the project is appropriately insured for potential political, violence, and other risks.

Our team live and breathe emerging and frontier markets: the project- or opportunity-specific risk analysis phase is when this passion really comes into its own. We’re able to draw on a wide range of technologies and datasets, but historically, the experience of our consultants in a region really adds the greatest colour to the assessment of the specific risk categories based on the methodology we develop for the client. We work to remove the unfamiliarity associated with the market entry process at every stage.