Supporting Colombian Companies Entering International Markets

16 June 2017

The students were members of teams that had presented winning consulting reports for Medellin based businesses. The 12 teams on their programme had all worked with a total of 12 businesses in Medellin. The prize for doing the best job was to meet in person the firms with whom they had worked by Skype and email – LikeU, a Business Process Outsourcing enterprise, and Cidenet, a software company.

The reports all provided key advice on understanding the cultural, legal, technical and marketing aspects of expanding into the companies’ preferred international markets. As one director of another Medellin start-up business declared:

...the work that the Edinburgh students did for us was superb, and really helped us. What was especially good was being able to talk through the possibilities with the students on Skype. This really helped to clarify our thinking as to how we can expand abroad.

How Did It Go?

The highlight of the trip was the meeting MSc students had with representatives of a number of the companies that benefited from the consulting projects, including Sofka Technologies (a software company), Alnic Laboratories (a provider of healthcare products) and the already mentioned LikeU and Cidenet. They discussed the businesses’ internationalization progress and how they implemented the report findings to assist their efforts.

The company representatives praised the cooperation with the University of Edinburgh students and stressed the major contribution the student advice had to their international expansion efforts. On the other hand, students expressed their gratitude of having the opportunity to gain real-life experience with an emerging market company and led a discussion on how to improve future consulting works delivered by students to Colombian companies.

The program also included a visit to RutaN – the business and innovation center that hosts the 12 companies that were involved with the Business School students. Sinki (Kit I Sin) heads the international business support for Medellin firms and led the project within Colombia. Addressing the students during the tour, she described the ambitious mission of the hub to become the main the main driving force of the economy and welfare of the Medellin by 2021.

In Medellin, the students took the opportunity to visit ColCafe – one of the biggest coffee factories in town and learned more about this main commodity of Colombia and its importance to the economy.

The students agree that the trip, their first ever in a South American country, helped them improve their understanding of Colombian business environment and recognize the economic potential of Latin America and Colombia in particularly. They will now raise awareness among their peers of the competitiveness and business potential of Colombia and Latin America. They are confident that this experience made them more likely to consider doing business in Colombia and South America in their future careers. The students also took extra days to travel around Colombia and recognized its sheer beauty and its immense touristic potential.

Imme Rindt (Netherlands), Janitsa Escalera (Puerto Rico), Sebastian Bovien (Denmark), Radu Marian (Moldova), Jiazi Han (China), Mingyang Fu (China), Yen Juei-ying (Taiwan) are studying for the MSc International Business and Emerging Markets.