Tara Kelly is a self-described “serial innovator” with a passion for using technology to help people—and with a little assistance from a program to help Canadian exporters, she hopes her software will change lives around the world.

Kelly is president and CEO of SPLICE Software, an Alberta-based company that also has offices in Chicago and Toronto. SPLICE is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based software suite with the ability to deliver personalized messages via multiple channels, including phone, short message service (SMS) messaging, and speech-to-speech technologies like Alexa and Google Home.

Growing with the help of CanExport

SPLICE Software has seen an impressive amount of success since its inception in 2006, and Kelly credits the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service (TCS)—part of Global Affairs Canada (GAC)—with being tremendously supportive and helpful in identifying opportunities to help her achieve success outside of Canada. Kelly networks through the TCS’s Business Women in Trade (BWIT) group. She says GAC’s CanExport program is a particularly valuable tool for Canadian companies looking to do business abroad. Her company received funding from the CanExport program in 2017.

CanExport is a five-year, $50-million program providing direct financial assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking to develop new export opportunities and markets, especially high-growth emerging markets. The CanExport program reimburses up to 50 percent of eligible expenses to participating companies, contributing up to $99,999 in matched funding.

“If you know you’re getting 50 percent back, that helps a lot,” Kelly says, adding she found out about the CanExport program from a Canadian trade commissioner in Los Angeles, CA. “It’s nice that they are supportive of the commercialization, not just the development of the technology.”

Finding opportunities to expand internationally

In order to become a global leader in the industry, SPLICE must compete with other businesses from known technology hubs around the world, including California and Eastern Asia. GAC—through its CanExport program and its network of trade commissioners around the world—has been extremely helpful in her efforts to find more opportunities to expand SPLICE in the international market, Kelly says.

One of the first things the government does a really great job of, is just creating a network of colleagues and peers that are doing business abroad. The matchmaking services that they offer are pretty sophisticated.The CanExport program is really awesome if you’re looking at expanding into a new country that you haven’t done business with in a significant way.

Kelly previously worked in health services, creating reminders for doctors and health practitioners, where she found that such highly personal relationships should require highly personalized reminder services.

“Any organization that’s committed to a strong brand relationship with their customer really should be using a more personalized approach,” she says. SPLICE Software specializes in insurance, finance, and retail, focusing on large enterprise with the goal to humanize the digital experience.

One of SPLICE Software’s advantages, Kelly says, “is the data security of our platform and the ability to offer customers access to the right information at the right time without putting their private information at risk.”

Harnessing the power of AI technology

AI technology is rapidly becoming a regular part of everyday life. It is becoming more normal to be able to speak to your car, your refrigerator, your dishwasher, and other household appliances and have them speak back to you. SPLICE is on the forefront of this new technological movement, she says.

“We’re unbelievably excited about what the future holds,” Kelly says. While some people may worry about potentially negative impacts of AI technology, she is confident that computers will only be as smart as humans train them to be.

“I think that artificial intelligence is going to require human assistance for a significant period of time,” Kelly says, adding she believes AI technology is very valuable in healthcare and in many other fields, “as long as there’s a human factor present.” Society need not fear AI technology, but rather should embrace it, she says.

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If an organization is a service provider, it has different market entry considerations and challenges than organizations selling goods overseas.

Services, unlike goods, are intangible. They can’t be transported, stored, seen, or touched. This makes it difficult for customers to assess whether a potential service would be helpful to them.

Services are also much more tied to location than goods are. Goods are usually used or consumed in a location separate from where it was produced. Services, on the other hand, are often received by the customer at the production location.

Providing a service relies on human interaction much more than the selling of goods, which makes it susceptible to issues such as cultural differences and language barriers.

These characteristics affect the market entry methods service organizations can use. The following six simple practices, featured in the FITTskills 7th Edition International Market Entry Strategies textbook, can be used to effectively introduce your service into a new market.

1) Selling Consultancy Services

This is a popular market entry method for service organizations and is akin to direct exporting. It involves a service organization providing a service to a customer in a foreign market. Depending on the type of service business involved, employees can temporarily work in the foreign country or remain in their own country and deliver the services through standard communication channels. The Internet has enabled massive growth in international consultancy service provision.

Consultancy is commonly used by organizations such as business and tax advisors, website designers, architects, engineers, and accountants. Organizations selling consultancy services obtain similar benefits to those of direct exporting, which include being able to withdraw from a market relatively cheaply and easily. Additionally, they can obtain in-depth information about trade in a target market, which would enable them to make future decisions about whether in invest facilities in the market.

However, there are some disadvantages, especially for smaller or new service providers that have not previously worked in a foreign market. These disadvantages include a significant investment in market research and marketing plans, payments for services delivered overseas being problematic to obtain, and customers tend to choose domestic service providers.

Service providers must check the regulations for business operation in the target country. If the target market has different regulations, legal systems, cultures or ways of conducting business, and the organization is inexperienced in international service provision, the selling consultancy services method will likely be a difficult way to enter that market.

2) Licensing Services

A service organization can sell a licence to other service providers in a target market.

This market entry method operates in the same way as the licensing of products. It is a common method for such organizations as Internet service providers, IT application service providers, and IT infrastructure service providers.

3) Franchising Services

As with licensing, service franchising operates in the same manner as product franchising and has the same benefits and disadvantages. It is a popular means for providers of such services as tax preparation, interior design, courier, and computer maintenance to expand internationally.

4) Joint Ventures for Service Providers

Joint ventures are a key form of market entry for service organizations.  Especially for countries in which foreign service provision is prohibited or in which government legislation dictates that a certain percentage of service organizations must be locally owned.

5) Hiring a Sales Representative

Just as organizations with products to sell can engage an agent to find customers and negotiate deals, service providers can hire representatives to work in a target market.

These representatives can identify local opportunities and market the service provider in the foreign market.

However, when a deal is identified, representatives of the service organization must conduct the final sales negotiations.

Service representatives are useful when an organization is uncertain about how to market its service in a foreign country, or when there are barriers caused by cultural or language differences. However, because their role is more limited than that of agents or distributors for organizations selling products overseas, they are not very frequently used as a means of entering a new market.

6) Mutual Recognition Agreements

Mutual recognition agreements or arrangements (MRAs) involve a mutual recognition of professional qualifications or designations, such as in professional services including accounting and consultancy.

MRAs can also exist at the level of industry sectors, such as telecommunications, or at the level of governments and regional entities.

Arrangements may be bilateral, such as the one between Canada and Australia on medicines’ manufacture and inspection, or multilateral in nature, with several countries or jurisdictions agreeing simultaneously to mutual recognition.

MRAs are applicable in a wide range of areas and sectors, but are especially important in the services sector, where professional qualifications and designations create a compelling value proposition in international markets.

Bringing a new service to a foreign market can be a difficult process. Improper market entry can mean your business will lose out on a new, potential-filled market. However, these simple practices can help get your services into international markets with ease.

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