People from outside Europe tend to see Europe as a single culture and as a single economic entity. This is far away from the truth. Europe is extremly heterogenous and has a vast range of cultures and local ways of doing business.

We recommend to start within a given region with shared language and shared culture and to expand business from this bridgehead.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland [Central Region] together make up for more than 30% of the economic power of Europe and constitute the most homogeneous region inside Europe. That is why we strongly recommend to start in Central Region, establish reliable business there and then expand into Benelux, North-Western, Eastern and Southern Europe step by step.

Decision processes in most of the countries in Europe tend to be more long-term oriented.

Solutions are thoroughly tested and evaluated against the project needs before being purchased. Most projects are part of mid to long term investment and organizational planning processes. In most regions of Europe time schedules and feature reliability are extremely critical [80:20 reliability is not acceptable].

Customers as well as solution providers often work within relationships grown over a very long period of time. To take a new solution to a customer is a risk for a solution provider - thus making them very careful in testing and evaluating solutions before investing in these solutions.

The presence of a local subsidiary, local sales and local support are important factors for decision processes. They help building trust in the mid term viability of a vendor as well as trust into a vendors dedication to the European market place.

Europeans prefer information in their own local language. In dealing with public sector customers, it is mandatory to provide sales material, information and documents in local language.

Peer references from the industry within the region are highly valued. References have to be from the country or at least the same regional culture [Southern Europe, Central Europe] to be taken as proof of reliability.

• High reseller loyality
• High end user loyality
• Strong reference selling