How to Ensure Your Global Service Supply Chain is Positioned to Drive Business Growth

Much has been made of the merits of making mistakes in business, but “failing fast” is never preferable to succeeding fast. Celebrating failure is a luxury only afforded to the Google Xs and SpaceXs of the world. For most companies fighting for survival in today’s hypercompetitive tech sector, mistakes and misdirection can amount to costly retreats and drain limited resources over time.

Succeed quickly and grow your business.

The best path to business growth is nothing new. It’s the proven combination of continuously innovating, reducing costs, and increasing revenue. When you’re expanding into international markets, having an experienced global service supply chain partner is a tremendous advantage in achieving these ends. The right partner expands your opportunities while conserving your resources—including time and attention which you can focus on where they’ll bring the highest return.

Do–it–yourself approaches can be futile.

Setting up and maintaining a global service supply chain yourself is capital intensive and slow going. Securing warehouse space, staffing, and setting up operations in foreign locations where everything is unfamiliar is a big investment. Plus, when everything is new, there are inherent risks to your company’s reputation and business relationships that come with the territory.

Make minimizing costs someone else’s problem.

Innovation that solves core problems through technology is your core strength. It’s what got you where you are. Service logistics is most likely not in your bailiwick. If you go down the path of doing your own service logistics, you’re going to make mistakes. We know because we have over 30 years’ worth of making mistakes that we learned from. Those mistakes have led to expertise, just like in your business. We eat cost for breakfast.

Trade-related matters, domestic and abroad, is one big area where you want to avoid mistakes at all costs. Flash’s IOR and EOR plus order management services significantly reduce risk when it comes to spare parts movement. These services help you keep spare parts flowing without transgressing foreign governments’ rules and regulations and being subjected to delays and fines—or inadvertently breaking the law.

Minimize taxes and cost of ownership.

Flash will help you set up a service supply chain that ensures you pay the correct amounts for duties and taxes. This is one of those often-overlooked nuggets that can be a tremendous advantage. Remember, the service supply chain is exclusively about moving replacement parts that fulfill either warranty contracts or maintenance agreements—nothing is for sale. The tax ramifications are much more lenient. Plus, as the OEM (original equipment manufacturer), you maintain ownership of the parts inventory until final delivery to your end customers. This also means fewer taxes apply. Large multinational companies leverage this strategy to great effect, and Flash enables much smaller companies to achieve the same advantages.

We’ll also help you optimize your inventory management to reduce your costs without increasing your risk of running out of spare parts. Flash’s global supply chain management technology gives you near real-time visibility into system-wide inventory levels so you can keep your cost of ownership down throughout your entire supply chain.

Discover new rainmaking opportunities.

Maintenance contracts can be a high margin revenue stream and provide incredible service to your end customers … when done well. Flash provides a high-quality, cost-effective way for you to offer 2– and 4-hour spare part SLAs as part of your maintenance contracts globally. If you’re thinking this could help you sell faster into new countries, you’re right.

Partnering with Flash provides capabilities and solutions to support your sales efforts. You don’t want to sell anywhere you can’t support warranties and maintenance contracts. Flash’s incomparable network of facilities staffed by seasoned experts, coupled with universal quality standards and easy integration capabilities, enables you to offer world-class support from the get-go.

We support your seamless success entering markets, whether they are established or emerging, and the benefits cascade from there. Once you’ve embedded in a region and established a reputation of on-time delivery, it is highly likely you will earn a glowing reputation and garner more referrals—invaluable assets in clinching further sales. With high–value technology, a referral from a peer is often the decisive factor in the decision to purchase.

The right partner enables you to do you.

The details are endless when it comes to expanding into foreign lands—and your success depends on continuous growth. How are you going to cover all the details in every market you need or want to be in?

Flash’s experts guide you through every step of the process to ensure your success, no matter where you go. From Kalamazoo to Kathmandu, from the Land of the Rising Sun to the outback Down Under, from the Serengeti to the snow-capped Andes in South America and all points in between, we’ve done the work for you. That saves you from a high learning curve that draws your attention and resources away from the core activities that grow your business.

Focus on high value, high margin product creation—while not worrying about inventory levels, staffing, trade compliance, or maintenance and warranty commitments.

Go and grow with Flash.

Nobody said growing a company would be easy. Expanding into new countries and territories is much like playing a global game of chess against your competitors. The landscape continues to evolve while you are trying to check-mate a competitor. Fresh players are coming into the game. Innovative technologies are emerging that will require you to change your strategy. Customers are changing their buying preferences while their demands for exceptional service are soaring to new levels.

Flash Global will tailor service supply chain solutions that address your specific needs while controlling costs and accelerating revenues. Time is of the essence. While you are sleeping, someone in Mumbai or Kigali or Sao Paulo could be introducing a product that could make yours obsolete. You’re on the clock.

What’s your next move? Find out.