To succeed in export markets, your product or service must be exportable. It is important that you define what products or services you are seeking to export – and the more specific you can be the better. In particular, define the particular market niche where you have a competitive advantage.

Many ICT companies fail to identify their unique value proposition. Without a strong value proposition, you will be unable to attract customers.

If you are developing hardware, software or content-based ICT products, you need to consider the adaptability of your product to foreign environments. Your success rate with customers will increase if you can demonstrate increased flexibility in your program or application.

It is also important to obtain quality reference sites in Australia. Even a pilot site will be beneficial if they are prepared to talk about the benefits or success of your product. If you are seeking to export a finished product, make sure you conduct proper testing and obtain any independent certification that is available. You also need to learn how to protect your intellectual property rights.

How to prepare your product for export

Doing business on the world stage means you are competing against the strongest companies on the planet. It also means you need to be ready to cope with the diversity of the global economy – including linguistic, social and cultural differences.

You need to make sure your products and services are ready for global action. English may be the international language of business and trade, but it is not much use if you are trying to market a technology product to the billions of people who only speak their native language, be it Bahasa, Chinese, Czech or Swedish.

Making your product marketable overseas

Ensuring your product is marketable around the world normally requires two things: internationalisation and/or localisation. Internationalisation means developing products that can easily be tailored to different cultures and different markets. On the other hand, localisation is about adapting products to local market conditions, including specific translation, currency changes and adjustment for the different cultural requirements of target users.

You will need to consider the following issues:

• Product name: Is your product name suitable to the local language or culture? There are many urban legends about inappropriate product names, but one example suffices: car makers wondered for years why the Nova car did not sell as well in Latin America as other markets, before they discovered 'no va' means 'doesn't go' in Spanish.
  
  
• Translation: Having your product available in the local language is a fundamental requirement in many countries. Translation can be complex, time-consuming and extremely expensive, so you need to be certain about demand before committing to a particular language. Certain languages, notably Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish, offer economies of scale, as they are used in numerous countries.
  
  
• Technical requirements: Remember that many languages not based on the Latin alphabet (such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Korean) may require you to adjust your code to accommodate double-byte characters (two bytes are needed to define a character, instead of one byte for Latin characters). Ideally, this requirement should be considered early in your development process, allowing you to adopt the Unicode system wherever possible. Unicode provides a unique number for every character, irrespective of computer platform, software program or language.
  
  
• Measurements: If your product involves measurements, you need to be able to accommodate local variations, such as the metric and imperial systems or Fahrenheit and Celsius. Remember that even within a single system, local differences exist: British pints and gallons are different to US pints and gallons.
  
  
• Currency: If your product involves currency calculations, you may need to adjust your platform to support the local currency of the target market. You could require multi-currency support if the product has multinational applications.
  
  
• Local tax system and laws: To be marketable, your product or service will need to be fully compliant with all local legal, financial, accounting and tax rules.
  
  
• Certification: To succeed with a vertical market product such as accounting software, engineering systems or e-learning applications, you may require certification from a local professional or government body or at least compliance with a national standard.
  
  
• Support: Don't forget that your manuals and help files need to be translated, which can be a huge task in its own right. You also need to consider how you can provide telephone support in different languages. Generally tier 1 support can be offered through your local sales partner while tier two support is offered from Australia. However, if you have access to sufficient native speakers in Australia, you may be able to offer direct support from Australia. This direct support can be highly appealing to customers during your initial market entry.

Other issues to consider

You may need to consider a number of additional, more subtle issues:

• Product suitability: Is your product or service attuned to the realities of the target market? For example, high-bandwidth Internet applications or services might be suitable for countries with high broadband adoption rates, such as Korea and Sweden. Yet they may require adjustment for countries where access is predominantly dial-up or telephone infrastructure is less reliable. Heavy applications with too many graphics or an overly elaborate user interface can perform poorly in countries with lower quality computer and Internet infrastructure.
  
  
• Specialist translation: If your product is specialised, technical or targeted at complex vertical markets such as automotive, engineering, health, media, printing or telecommunications, you may need to find specialist translators who understand your product and market. This can add extra time and cost.
  
  
• Search techniques: If your product is Internet-based or online sales are an important distribution channel, you need to consider how people can find you in languages other than English. Ensure your translator has experience in developing search keywords and other meta-tag data. And don’t forget to submit your site to search engines that cater for target languages.
  
  
• User testing: If you have time and budget, it can help to conduct brief user tests and usability assessments in the target market to expose any unforeseen snags. Be aware that particular colours may have particular meanings in some countries.
  
  
• Upgrades: You should also consider your strategy for accommodating future updates and upgrades. Translations should be managed to minimise repeat translation work as versions change and new features are added.
  
  
• Marketing materials: Another requirement is for key sales and marketing materials to be translated into the target language and cultural framework. These include brochures, product data sheets, websites and advertising.