How to be a truly borderless business

At a time when businesses are navigating through the disruption of Covid-19, expanding into new markets has never been more important. But, clearly, becoming a borderless business is not without its challenges.  

Whilst the goal is predominantly to increase sales, all businesses need to remember the importance of mitigating fraud and maximising customer experience. Consumers demand a fast, frictionless experience, in a trustworthy environment. For example, a whopping 88% worldwide abandon their shopping basket if this is not up to standard. In addition, businesses also need to understand each market’s consumer preferences for payment methods, delivery fulfilment, and sharing their accurate location details, to ensure you meet their expectations first time.  

With this in mind, here are some key tips to cultivate borderless business: 

1. Do your research. Make sure you understand the shopping preferences of your customers in new markets. Find out typical market conditions; for example, you might be surprised to note that the fraud risk in France is higher than any other European country – something not to be surprised about if entering the French market! In Europe, savvy retailers will also need to understand what the changing PSD2 regulations mean for consumer authentication experiences and not allow it to create more friction than necessary.  
    
2. Take it slow. Focus on expanding in your home region first; there are likely to be more similarities in how consumers shop, and the preferred methods of payment and fulfilment. Before expanding to new regions, make sure you’re maximising opportunities closer to home, which is less likely to need lots of additional resource. 
    
3. Partner and outsource. The quickest way to set up your business in new markets is to work with technology providers to “integrate once, and go global.” For example, to quickly facilitate new payment methods – like QR codes which are common in Singapore – you can partner with a payment service provider, providing scalability without excessive additional cost and time.

Ultimately, for businesses to succeed they need to think in terms of opportunities, not barriers. Having an agile mind-set can help businesses of any size to go global. SMEs can adopt the big company mind-set, following in the footsteps of e-commerce retailers like Gymshark, whose global expansion to 131 countries started with their founder’s entrepreneurial mind-set and partnerships with technology providers.

It’s clear that the e-commerce acceleration will not slow down anytime soon, particularly as some consumers continue to be wary of returning to the high street. The opportunity to go global and find growth opportunities has never been better for businesses looking to make their mark. 

You can listen to the full episode here – and make sure to subscribe to our podcast series ‘Connected Commerce: Business Beyond Borders’ for more!