As businesses grow, sometimes expanding across borders is inevitable. While this type of growth is something to be proud of, it’s not without its challenges, either. When your business crosses borders, it moves into a new language and currency territory, which can be tricky to manage when you were only working with one language or currency in the past.
Adopting new currencies, areas, or languages without the right tools can be a logistical nightmare when it comes to shipping products as well as tracking inventory and customer service. Luckily, with advances in technology, there are new solutions on the market that can help you break through these barriers.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the challenges of global business management when it comes to things like selling, currency, and inventory. We’ll also take a look at how companies like Cymbio are helping brands access the technology they need to succeed in new international retail ventures.
Challenges of Multicurrency Selling and Cross-border Inventory Management
Expanding to new marketplaces can be difficult since you need to have an in-depth understanding of each market in order to succeed. Throw different currencies in the mix, and suddenly streamlining operations comes with a whole new set of challenges. Before you jump head-first into adopting new retail or e-commerce locations, it’s important to be aware of the roadblocks you may face.
Language and Cultural Differences
Selling in international markets requires adopting new languages and an understanding of different cultures. Surveys have shown that 76% of online shoppers prefer to shop on websites with information in their native language. To succeed on a global level, you’ll need to:
- Translate your website to different local languages
- Tailor campaigns to the culture of different international audiences
- Understand different cultural sensitivities and practices
- Onboard staff from new markets to help smooth the transition
Currency Conversion and Regulations
There are many different factors that can make global order management complex and affect your pricing, sales, and profits. Some of the variables to consider for each new international location you plan on launching include:
- Import fees
- Taxations
- Inflation
- Economic stability
- Government and political intervention
- Foreign exchange rate
- International regulations
It’s important to research each and every one of these variables when conducting global transactions to ensure you’re compliant with each region’s laws.
Making Reliable Connections
It can be time-consuming and difficult to enter a new market without a group of reliable connections. Global e-commerce operations require a slew of different vendors, suppliers, financial institutions, and other organizations in order to succeed. Not having a number of solid partners to rely on can cause logistical problems which can affect customer satisfaction and lead to lost business.
Logistics and Supply Chain Management
Tracking and recording each step of orders across various countries is a complex process. With each country having its own set of fees, regulations, and currencies, this can lead to many different procedures to keep track of. Without proper logistics established in each location, your supply chain visibility is at risk and this could lead to further issues with inventory management or delivery.
Maintaining Customer Service Standards on a Global Level
When your business operates internationally, you need to contend with different languages, time zones, currencies, laws, shipping requirements, and customer expectations. This can be a lot to juggle for some companies, but succeeding with your customer service is essential for any business aspiring to grow globally. Businesses need to find a way to ensure customer service levels are maintained across all regions.
6 Tips and Best Practices for Global Order Management
There’s no guarantee that expanding globally will be a successful endeavor, especially for businesses that aren’t prepared to deal with the challenges they’re likely to face. That said, there are a number of things you can do to help boost your global order management and handle multicurrency sales.
1. Market Research
Detailed research of each market is paramount to your success. Use analytics, run ad campaigns to test the waters, and study the competition to understand who your target audience is and what they want. The more data you have, the easier it will be for you to reach the right audience in a new location.
2. Find Local Experts
As part of your market research, identify some local experts in your industry who can help you reach audiences in new markets. Having team members who already have experience in a specific market can get your business set up more quickly and allow you to narrow down your target audience with more precision.
3. Personalize Promotions
Make sure your campaigns are unique to each location. This might mean adopting different ads to fit local holidays or seasons or tailoring them to different cultures. Doing this will help you connect with your audience and demonstrate that you have an understanding of their needs.
4. Update your Work Tools
It’s likely that your existing work tools aren’t going to cut it when you expand internationally. You need a system that’s able to manage international orders for various channels, different currencies, and support multiple languages. With order management platforms such as Cymbio, you can ensure all of your international orders are streamlined in one system so that you don’t miss out on anything.
5. Implement Automation
In addition to updating your work tools, you should put automations in place to put specific manual tasks on auto-pilot. This might include order or inventory management, reporting, or even shipping processes. Certain platforms, like Cymbio, help you automate these manual tasks so you free up more time and resources to focus on expanding successfully.
6. Expand Slowly
At first, the temptation to expand to multiple locations will be strong, but by limiting yourself to one or two locations at a time, you can trial-run each market expansion. This will help you learn from each experience, tweak it in the future, and focus on tailoring your operations and services to the unique needs of each individual market.
Manage your orders globally with Cymbio
Going global isn’t easy, but with A to Z e-commerce order management platforms like Cymbio, it can be simpler than you expect. Cymbio, a multichannel growth platform, helps brands connect with retailers and marketplaces around the world. With support for multiple languages and currencies, you can get started quicker and easier with your global expansion initiatives. Here are other key ways Cymbio can facilitate global sales:
- Gather analytics and reports on how your international sales are performing so that you can gain data-driven insights on areas for improvement
- Benefit from automations to help you streamline workflows and order fulfillment, resulting in a more cohesive customer experience
- Track and sync inventory across multiple sales channels so that it’s always accurate and up-to-date, allowing the logistics end of your business to run smoothly
- Scale at your own pace with a platform that helps you grow and affords you the space to do so
By removing the roadblocks involved in adjusting your platform to new languages, currencies, and markets, you can pave the way to focus on connecting with audiences in these new locations. Cymbio helps you bridge those gaps by allowing you to streamline operations and simplify your e-commerce processes all in one universal platform.