Success Story - Feasibility Review

OC Tanner Feasibility Review

Background

A market leader in the supply of strategic employee recognition solutions into the US, UK, Australian and Singapore markets was keen to explore opportunities for expansion into Europe.

The client has two primary products - software solutions that help organisations to recognise employees identify low engagement and eLearning tools.

This followed on from an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the German market, the client engaged Mazars to perform a Research and Feasibility Review of European regions to determine the preferred regions for introducing software solutions.

Approach

We began by identifying five main regions and selected a sample of countries based on the population. the scope of the work involved a detailed review into the following market conditions.

• State of economies: Trends in GDP growth, ease of doing business etc
• Employment trends: Unemployment rates, ageing populations etc
• business culture: Attitude to work, change tolerance, management styles etc
• Demographics: English proficiency, total population, general statistics etc

The five regions selected for the review were:

• Nordics
• Benelux
• Central Europe
• Eastern Europe
• Mediterranean

Outcomes

The outcome of the review consisted of a formal report, which detailed a review of the possible 22 countries within the five regions.  We ranked the countries in order of preference and produced a matrix to visually represent which countries would likely see higher demand for the company's products.  The report was divided into two parts with a review of market suitability for both software solutions.

We identified the top selection of countries that our research indicated would be receptive of the products, basing our recommendations on the findings of our review of the business conditions.  the regions/ countries in this report were assigned a RAG rating to indicate the most favourable regions and countries (Green), regions and countries with potential but less favourable conditions (Amber) and regions and countries that should be avoided (Red).

At the end of the report we performed a competitor analysis of key competitors identified by the client, focusing on their location, target audience and offers.