Consults Middle East: Welcome to Qatar
You have established your product or service with customers, achieved profitable operations, and your product line has been extended. As your business matures, you will most likely begin to encounter the growth limits of your home market. Before your current market flattens you consider expanding into new markets. The State of Qatar presents itself as an attractive prospect, and the allure of accessing new, affluent customers becomes hard to resist.
Such a move looks increasingly appealing as the natural next step for many businesses. But how should you go about pursuing opportunities in greener pastures about which you know very little? Breaking into foreign markets may be a dream for many businesses, yet many will never get the chance to do so. For most, such a step can be as time-consuming, difficult, expensive, and risky as the initial launch of their business.
“Rich in possibilities and ripe with opportunities, the State of Qatar sits at the geographical epicenter of global commerce and trade as an exciting, vibrant and dynamic hub,” says Stefanos Nicolaou, Founder and Chairman of Consultics. “Driven by ambitious development and diversification strategies, the State of Qatar is developing and modernizing at an astonishing pace as it taps into its expansive potential and young, ambitious and increasingly connected populations.”
‘In order to grow, you’ll need to step outside your comfort zone.’ We have all heard plenty of statements to that effect before, often expressed by personal development experts, career coaches, organisational behaviour specialists and their ilk. Indeed, it is never easy to venture beyond the self-imposed limitations set by our perceptions of safety and security. Expanding our horizons and pushing our boundaries require a deliberate act of boldness and a fair dose of courage. But it is widely accepted that it is precisely there – beyond those self-inflicted constraints – where prospects for growth and advancement are to be found.
This notion applies to businesses and organizations as much as it does for individuals. Consultics Middle East, a ‘cross-border diversification consultancy,’ witnesses this first-hand on a regular basis. As a company dedicated to helping businesses and entrepreneurs identify and capture business and growth opportunities across the State of Qatar, they often encounter mindsets that are at both ends of a spectrum – either fearfully averse or overly eager.
“Perhaps what is most enticing about the region’s lucrative markets is that businesses can experience phenomenal results, and often at a more accelerated pace than in the more established markets – provided they have what it takes,” adds Nicolaou.
There are those that are understandably apprehensive of pursuing expansion to new markets, but to a fault. Unsure as to how they should go about it and where they should start, they find themselves – and their valid ambitions – perpetually held back by their hesitancy and reluctance. Driven by confusion and uncertainty, they end up paralyzed by inaction as they watch their aspirations fade away.
At the other side of the spectrum lie the bolder types. Go-getters who fancy themselves as ambitious and aggressively enterprising, always ready and willing to make the leap and take the plunge. For them, the sky is the limit, and they will not let anything get in the way of achieving success. Unfortunately, that often includes giving the matter the careful consideration and preparation it warrants.
Consultics Middle East ’s aim is to help clients at either side of the two extremes achieve a more sensible, practical middle ground. This is the space where their aspirations for growth and progress aren’t hindered by fear and ambiguity, and where enthusiasm and a passion for expansion aren’t thwarted by the realities of unforeseen obstacles and challenges on the ground.
Let’s face it, entering a new, unfamiliar market and navigating the myriad of factors and requirements a business needs to account for can be a daunting task. Identifying which market you want to enter is just the beginning. Apart from the distance and cultural sensitivities, there can be taxation, legal framework, and setup matters, plus a host of other issues to consider. From local regulations to evolving consumer preferences and the competitive landscape to demographics, the list of unknown variables for a prospective market entrant runs long.
“Exploring new markets is one of the most effective ways to expand your business and flourish, but it is essential that you do the necessary legwork and are well prepared for what this journey entails,” notes Nicolaou. “For businesses of all sizes there is much to consider and a good deal of background research to conduct. The biggest and most common mistake we see new entrants commit is moving too quickly, assuming they can throw as many resources as they can at the market until something takes hold. But that approach is almost always a recipe for disaster.”
Consultics Middle East builds on a wealth of local knowledge and deep expertise honed through years of operating in this domain, acting as a trusted advisor and a knowledgeable guide for businesses and entrepreneurs looking to unlock the region’s exciting potential. They achieve this by relying on their exceptional ability to analyse and assess a business’s potential to expand, gain traction, and prosper in a specific market. Simply put, they know what to look for, where to find it, what questions to ask, and whom to ask. But it goes much deeper than that.
Experience tells them that there are no simple shortcuts or cookie-cutter formulae to setting businesses up for success in these dynamic growth markets. This is why their approach is predicated on a tailor-made, proprietary project delivery model that caters to each individual business and addresses its distinct goals and aspirations. What they offer is a truly bespoke route to market that is labour intensive and entails a long-term engagement that may last up to a year. However, that period includes Consultics taking their clients all the way to the point where they sign a business contract or memorandum of understanding with a customer of their own.
Consultics relies on its keen understanding of the State of Qatar ’s market dynamics and its specialist knowledge in the areas of research, marketing, and business process improvement expertise to figure out the underlying strengths of businesses. Perhaps more importantly, it also uses this know-how to identify any areas that may require development so as to ensure a business’ success in the region. Naturally, most of the work happens prior to coming to the State of Qatar.
The process begins with gaining a thorough understanding of the businesses’ objectives and the reasons they are looking to enter the region. This is achieved through a combination of deep dive sessions, workshops, and interviews with decision-makers within an organization. Careful scrutiny is then applied against criteria developed by Consultics to evaluate everything from a business’s revenue and operating model, to its capabilities, brand appeal and unique value proposition. Unlike professional services providers who support businesses by merely telling them what they need to do to achieve results, Consultics’ involvement runs much deeper and involves a rigorous effort to develop the business and financial case for entry to a new market, in addition to identifying relevant, capturable market opportunities and leads.
“What we offer is a meticulous, disciplined process that enables businesses to take a critical look at whether they have what it takes to thrive in a new market,” says Nicolaou. “We hand hold clients throughout the entire journey and work closely with them to define everything, including their success metrics and their vision for the future. Placing the intended outcomes at the forefront allows us to develop a full picture of what is required to reach that goal, giving us both a healthy measure of confidence in the optimal route that would lead to achieving desired results.”
Cross-border diversification to the State of Qatar is not something Consultics is new to. The company has been helping businesses establish a foothold in the region for more than eight years, during which it has worked with over one thousand network partners, companies, entities, and customer leads.
“I worked with Consultics to help bring two seemingly unlikely partners into doing business together, a high-growth telecom company in the State of Qatar and a specialist cloud-computing and cybersecurity firm based in Switzerland,” says Georgios Georgiou, Global Head of Fixed Income Product Specialists, at Allianz Global Investments. “The resulting collaboration was mutually rewarding as both parties in the transaction sought to maximize their relative strengths with a common goal in sight, to deliver a best-in-class product to end customers. Consultics excels at optimizing such cross-regional partnerships and bringing them to market.”
With the onset of the global pandemic and the subsequent massive shifts in business and customer requirements, Consultics took upon itself to accelerate its digital transformation. A key component of that transformation was the September 2020 launch of a technology driven platform and ecosystem that enables even more businesses and entrepreneurs to tap into the company’s broad expertise and explore the opportunities that exist in the region. By the end of October, the platform will also be open for State of Qatar businesses and enterprises to register, facilitating access to a wide pool of some of the most diverse and capable suppliers, service providers, investors, and products from around the world to help execute projects, improve efficiencies, and drive innovation across the region.
The integrated platform allows Consultics to scale its offering and brings together more than one thousand vetted leads from across the region with over five thousand registered companies from all over the globe. It uses an advanced automated algorithm to match businesses with potential opportunities. Businesses that register and complete the brief stand the chance to receive a 30-minute virtual call, cost-free, with the Consultics team to assess the whether the product or service is indeed a suitable match for the region’s markets.
The platform serves all industries and sectors and is accessible to businesses of any size and country of origin who aspire to establish a presence and do business, either locally or remotely, in the State of Qatar. Businesses and entrepreneurs who register are also given access to Intelligence2day®, an award-winning platform for market and competitive intelligence, that converts unstructured data into actionable insights to offer a better understanding of the most up-to-date, impactful topics and business trends in the region.
This latest offering is a valuable resource meant to help businesses across the world tap into the immense opportunities that exist in the State of Qatar. Expanding to a new market can be an arduous and grueling undertaking. With the right support, insights, tools, and a capable guide, businesses are now empowered to unlock their potential and chart a prosperous future in some of the world’s most exciting markets.
