In 2017, 57% of national companies increased their turnover outside Portugal and 63% expect to continue growing this year.
This is the conclusion of the InSight Observatory: a survey conducted by the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in partnership with E-Monitor, in which Ship4You participated, and which arose from the need to analyze the growth and internationalization capacity of Portuguese companies. This growth which, according to the survey, comes from the investment they have begun to make in internationalization processes, conquering new markets and, consequently, a greater volume of business.
It appears that managers have made an effort to create conditions to support this increase, for example, through a greater focus on the qualification of human resources allocated to international activity (45% of respondents), the expansion of teams (39%), the optimization of production processes in order to maintain the competitiveness of products and services (43%) and the increase in installed production capacity (34%).
Questioned, within the scope of this survey, about their international business, Cristina Coelho, CEO of Ship4you, defends that “without being in constant development we cannot progress. Working with a cohesive and well trained team is also essential. That’s why our Human Resources are always part of our strategy for the future, especially when it comes to training and foreign languages.”
“Without being in constant development we cannot progress. Working always with a cohesive and well-trained team is also essential” – Cristina Coelho, CEO of Ship4you
Since 95% of the company’s turnover comes from activities carried out abroad, Cristina Coelho has no doubt that without the international component the company could not survive.
Like Ship4You, many other Portuguese companies seek strategies to promote their business abroad and one of the most used for commercial promotion, customer acquisition and market prospection is the participation in international fairs through chambers of commerce or specialty fairs.
“For us the market is the whole world, and the only constant in this equation is its mutability,” says Fernando Costa, Business Development Manager at Weedswest, a company that operates in the areas of construction, road paving, metalworking, and oil and gas.
One of the main missions of the Chamber of Commerce is to support the internationalization of Portuguese companies in terms of exports, but also to attract foreign investment in Portugal.
In an increasingly digital world, where barriers are blurred and people come closer together, business and markets can also overcome obstacles. 54% of the surveyed managers consider “very important” the “ease of identifying and communicating with new customers through the Internet and digital platforms” and 53% said it is also essential the “ease of consulting information about markets on the Internet. For 83% of managers the digital world ensures efficiency and speed, where the minimum requirements of commercial contexts are increasingly aggressive.
Through the InSight Observatory we also realize that “67% of respondents choose the invoicing currency to cancel exchange rate risks; 59% guarantee the anticipated receipt/payment at the moment of the order to safeguard collection risks”, that is, we are facing an amplification of commercial activity where financial risks are relatively reduced.
These conclusions were taken from an article in Imagens de Marca that you can read in full here.
