As well a writing THE STRATEGY JOURNEY®, Founder and CEO of Stratability, Julie Choo took part in the Enterprise Nation Go Global Singapore Trade Mission at the end of September, extending her trip to explore expanding Stratability’s business into the ASEAN region.
It’s natural as smaller businesses grow to look at expansion through exporting into other countries. We cover how to do this international expansion properly in THE STRATEGY JOURNEY®.
So, to ensure we practice what we preach, or rather teach, to others, that is exactly the journey that Stratability is embarking on at the moment, together with a bit of blue sky strategy thrown in.
Over the 3 days of the Trade Mission, Julie, and other delegates from digital businesses in the UK who are looking to expand into the Singapore and ASEAN markets, spent time with companies including Unilever, HSBC, KPMG, IRIS Worldwide, Singtel Innov8, Delphi Digital and more.
What came out loud and clear according to Julie was that ‘Singapore is very business friendly’ with the infrastructure and government support for entrepreneurship and SMEs to setup and do business not just in Singapore but also across the ASEAN region, using Singapore as a base. Julie has spoken on the blog before about the unique climate for business that Singapore has brought together and all these elements were clearly displayed throughout the trip, but the further support and opportunities to expand into ASEAN were even more impressive.
While Singapore has just under 6 million residents, the ASEAN block of 10 countries as whole has over 600 million people, so many more business opportunities to pursue. It is here where Julie sees many blue sky opportunities for Stratability as we take our product and service offerings to these markets where local entrepreneurs and SMEs are more hungry for support from Stratability’s e-learning platform services and training – including our Business Shaping for Entrepreneurs course. While not a direct lead from the Trade Mission, Stratability has been invited to do a full DEMO with a big business network as well as a university/polytechnic in Singapore in January already (this was the reason and advantage gained from extending the trip – according to Julie).
The Trade Mission was a great success for Stratability. As well as meeting other UK businesses who are keen to expand their business into the region in partnership with us, we connected with leading experts in Singapore and were able to talk to them about Stratability and THE STRATEGY JOURNEY®, all of which was well received.
To read the round up of the Trade Mission in full, including key learnings and more about Singapore’s Smart City ambitions check out the Stratability Press & Events page here.
UPDATE: Since the Trade Mission, Stratability is now set up to operate in Singapore – led by local Capability Director Lauren Houghton and local Business Development and Coaching Lead, Sam Chia. Check out their profiles here.