| What's wrong with this picture?
(see SICR
graphic)
Thousands of economic development agencies spend millions of
dollars each year on efforts to reach potential investors in their areas
through advertising, PR work, events, and other means.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars are also spent every year
by company executives who are trying to research their location alternatives
as they plan major investment projects.
Both groups duplicate a lot of effort with similar
organizations, and both suffer when the result is suboptimal location
decisions, project delays, missed opportunities, or other investment
problems.
Executives struggle to obtain and analyze useful
information about even a few viable location alternatives.
Representatives of potentially attractive locations
struggle to reach even a few such executives at the right time to compete
effectively for their investment projects. |
Almost everybody has these problems
Top executives responsible for capital investment decisions,
as well as the area representatives and professional service providers who
hope to attract their business, share two enduring and frustrating problems
which SICR has been designed to address.
- There is no efficient marketplace or process for
them to reach each other at the right time as investment decisions are
made.
- Despite the availability of a wealth of
information and contacts through websites, events, magazines, promotional
materials and other sources, it is very hard for investors to discern what
or who to believe, or to compare their alternatives in a consistent and
objective way.
SICR is intended to help solve the first problem by making
it quick and easy for executives to find valuable help. SICR is also
designed to integrate with the GUIDE services, which address the second.
GUIDE doesn't just repackage old data in a new way.
Instead, it organizes local market knowledge for effective delivery and
analysis according to the typical location selection decision process. |
| Why is it so difficult to find optimal
solutions? Investors need to make faster and smarter
investment decisions worldwide, but few companies even have a process to
apply location selection knowledge in a consistent way to meet their growth
needs.
Billions of dollars are invested by companies in projects
each year, but good opportunities may be missed as each project team
effectively "reinvents the wheel" with limited time and resources as they
balance project planning work with any other responsibilities.
There is also little consistency in the process by which competing
locations or professional service providers support investors.
Inconsistent information full of promotional "spin" or "hype" leaves
investors skeptical about what to believe, and can waste their time.
Caveat emptor! The wrong choice can be very costly.
Rather than try to verify all the facts on their own, or
with the help of paid advisors, a typical response is to simply reject any
unfamiliar options because it will take too much time and too many resources
to figure out whether they are even viable alternatives worthy of closer
evaluation, much less the optimal solutions for their needs.
The easy way out is to arbitrarily narrow the "short list"
of places to evaluate to familiar places which are not likely to be
criticized as choices, and not worry about whether better alternatives
exist.
|
How does SICR change this situation?
The basic premise behind GDI Solutions and SICR is that the
knowledge necessary to solve these problems already exists, but there is no
efficient marketplace to bring together the investors, investment services,
and investment alternatives (including independent and reliable, comparable
facts and analysis).
The challenge is therefore to create a better process to
connect investors rapidly to available solutions to their needs.
Rather than attempt to maintain such knowledge and contacts on an in-house
basis, which few organizations could justify, a "shared service" approach
such as SICR offers participants fast and easy access to relevant local
market knowledge and contacts in many places. One reason why this is so
important is that corporate needs sometimes change abruptly, rather than
predictably. An M&A opportunity suddenly changes the scope of the
business, and where it has operations, requiring consideration of how to
consolidate. A market development creates a need to establish
operations quickly in a place which wasn't foreseen as a potential location,
and little in-house contacts and market knowledge may exist to support the
expansion. The list goes on. Given the pace of business today, the
SICR relationship work provides the flexibility to respond rapidly and
effectively to both predictable and unpredictable needs, while GUIDE
steadily builds up the base of available local market knowledge and contacts
to support all the executives. What one company needs today may help
some other company with similar needs tomorrow. |
| When will a better process
be ready? It will take time to build this business, but many of the
pieces are already in place to start transforming this market.
The free GUIDE Network Survey can expand the existing base of knowledge
rapidly within just a few months, if enough areas choose to participate.
The GUIDE Area Profiles can be developed as rapidly as areas choose to
participate. The published Profile just takes a few days of work, but
the key is the work behind the Profile to develop a more thorough
understanding of what differentiates an area from the perspective of
potential investors. Since more relationship leaders can be hired as
the service grows, including people who already have strong knowledge of
areas in their region, it should be possible to build up a very strong base
of knowledge of hundreds of leading investment locations. This website
already identifies many of these.
The GUIDE Reports are more complex, and will take longer to prepare, but
can be prepared by independent professional service providers with many of
the necessary capabilities already in place. Within a year or
two, it should be possible to have many such reports available, if areas
choose to invest in such work.
The SICR work, however, is really the key. This is what connects
investors to the vast knowledge and contacts which can already be applied to
their needs today. Ten or twenty highly qualified relationship leaders
should be able to serve hundreds of leading companies, but that won't happen
without the necessary investment by the areas and service providers who
would benefit from such work. If the commitment were there already by
enough areas, we could support most leading companies in the US and Europe
which have any interest in such services within one or two years. |
Conclusion As the initial investment
in the development of this website has demonstrated, there is a lot which we
can already do today. It has taken a very substantial personal
investment, and a year of work, to launch this business.
Within one or two years, with strong support from leading area
representatives and professional service providers, we hope to transform
this marketplace into a far more efficient process.
If support develops slowly, with minimal commitments among the potential
participants, then obviously the capabilities will not grow rapidly.
At the time of launch, however, this service already "raises the bar"
significantly. With the addition of each relationship leader, the
capabilities will rapidly grow in value.
Consider the potential impact. Ten or twenty relationship leaders
could transform this market through detailed local market knowledge and
extensive networks of contacts in their areas of responsibility. No
single service provider or area is going to invest in such a team, but if
many services choose to participate, the shared investment can be a fraction
of the cost of a single person.
It is impossible to predict how quickly this business will have the
desired impact on the global direct investment market, but it need not grow
to a vast operation to have a big impact. A handful of top people,
working together with leading professionals and area representatives around
the world, can transform this market within just a year or two.
It only happens, however, if enough potential participants decide to
invest the time and resources to become active participants. Those who
see value for their own interests in this business are therefore encouraged
to participate actively, and sooner, rather than later. |
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