Evaluating the Risk of Entering New Markets

The Insight phase of the project focused on the development of justified and standardized definitions, understandings, and quantification of country risk across 10+ businesses supporting operations in 75+ countries.

• Conducted internal review of concerns, objectives, and understanding of country risk through a review of internal strategic risk documents as well as interviews and focus groups with executive stakeholders.
• Developed and implemented data collection, cleaning, and aggregation tools for secondary data.

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Innovation in the project included:

• The development of the tool specifically aimed to include risks typically omitted from financial models including risks related to changes in the political environment, socio-cultural dynamics, and internal capabilities.
• Developed a method to weight, aggregate, and synthesize the secondary data in accordance with firm priorities.
• Developed an internal online survey to gather systematic perceptions of firm/unit strengths, weaknesses, resources, and capabilities. The survey was deployed across several countries in three languages.

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The Integration phase of the project focused on supporting the internal team to manage the process and the executive team to rolling out the process across the enterprise.

• Developed research deliverables for the client to support knowledge development and sharing for business unit heads, country leads, and senior executives.
• Presented at company events to educate stakeholders and build support for the new processes.
• Trained the internal team to take over management of the process once the first round of beta testing was completed.

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Design of tool enables:

• Improved pricing of global M&A activity, improved P&L projections, and more accurate cost of capital calculations through an increasingly robust analysis of both the internal and external environment.
• More accurate country risk forecasting of impacts on financial and operational metrics.
• Improved data-driven tactical and strategic decision making at the business unit and corporate levels of the organization.

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