Web Guide Partner was founded in 2004 and has chosen to establish themselves in several countries. A typical Webguidepartner project includes improvement of both traffic and conversion to a website.
Establishing Abroad has been in contact with Andreas Berglund who is technical project manager at Web Guide Partner to find out more about their foreign establishments and communication within the company. Currently they are located in Canada, Estonia and Sweden, with affiliates in the U.S. and India. Andreas talks about the reasons behind their choice of countries.
- The main reason for the different offices geographic location is the possibility to recruit the staff we are looking for. Furthermore, we have always been permeated by our entrepreneurial background, and the entrepreneurial spirit is easier maintained in a small office and that is why we have chosen to grow in different places in the world.
Web Guide Partner has approximately 200 employees in different places in the world, including affiliated companies. According to Andreas their success are due to some different factors.
- Success leads to more success. When people have noticed how much we helped our customers grow in their fields more and more people have contacted us. A contributing factor has been that our customers are mainly working with so-called comparison sites which may be described as a cyclical insensitivity industry, which has made our services helpful in both good and bad times. In addition, all employees know that we do not confine ourselves to less than to be a world leader.
A foreign establishment can be long and time consuming, but can also easily be successful. Andreas tells us about the problems and what has been relatively easy in the communications between offices in different countries.
- The biggest challenge has been to get to a functioning communication between the offices partly because the large time difference between Vancouver and Europe (9 hours to Stockholm and 10 hours to Tallinn), and partly due to difficulties in building relationships between people who do not regularly meet face to face. We have preferentially solved this by employees visiting the various offices at regular intervals. It also has the great advantage of experiencing a different culture in the office, which in turn improves communication and increases understanding.
Marketing is an important factor to consider and also to know which way to proceed in order to achieve the best results when you are not on the domestic market. What form of marketing you should use can also distinguish depending on country.
- In terms of recruitment's marketing, we use local channels offered in each country such as job ad sites, recruitment agencies, resume databases and other contacts.
Andreas give advices to other companies to reduce frustration and duplication of work by as early as possible give communications issues very much attention. Currently, Web Guide Partner does not have any plans to expand to any new countries.
Gun Helland