In November we started to engage locations about our FDI marketplace and we started to contact new locations in Northern and Eastern European sub-regions . There are two potentially opposing findings from this work that I would like to share with you.
We often hear from locations that they are planning major online promotion and investor acquisition initiatives for 2010. The second finding indicates that there is a problem with the first; online innovation and related change of skills and capabilities are tough to implement. We based our second finding on our own experience engaging with the market. I want to share with you some of our experiences while starting our online services for locations on the Foreign Direct Investment marketplace:

1. Up to 50% of the agencies do not respond (timely) to information request emails addressed to email addresses published on their own promotion website
2. A substantial number of agencies cannot be easily reached by phone (getting through to the right person)
3. Almost all telephone conversations start with “I have very little time…”
4. I personally did not expect this one: “I do not think that my clients use the Internet to find locations”
5. Everybody wants to develop and promote Clusters but only a few meet the basic organizational and promotion requirements to be considered by Companies as real clusters
6. New-economy locations on average are more proactive, responsive and take decisions faster
7. It is difficult for promotion agencies or organization to master key principles and concepts of the Internet and to be able to create an online impact
8. Operational dependencies on Internet Providers make it hard to deliver users an engaging experience based on dynamic content (contract, governance, process not suitable)

Do you recognize the pattern of the key findings from the Worldbank Global Investment Promotion Benchmark studies?

I believe that it will a challenge for Intermediary Promotion Agencies and Location Promotion Agencies to join the online global competition because the challenges are often people and culture related. Global reach, impact and online services require a balance between culture, people, skills and capabilities. And yes money to. You cannot become a leading online agency if you do not commit a substantial spend of your marketing budget online. Research shows that many actually do not allocate over 10%? The culture and people aspects require focused change and training programs! Are you going to commit your organization to that change?

We created a set of Global Arena Guiding Services to help you transform your organization to a leading online location agency. We also cooperate with dedicated culture-change experts and our own digital full service media agency to be able to offer you a complete solution.