The UK is a fairly varied nation. The rules, customs, and socioeconomic conditions that prevail in one part of the country often differ wildly from those that prevail in another. From a business perspective, what works in London might not work quite as well in rural East Anglia.
This has big implications when you’re trying to run a business that spans the entire country. If you want to optimise your operations, then you’ll need local expertise – especially if you’re going to be expanding into a new part of the country.
Local knowledge that shortens the learning curve
Let’s take a closer look at East Anglia. Here, a number of sectors stand out as pivotal. These include agriculture and the life sciences. If you work alongside local experts who understand these sectors, and the way that the build environment is set up, then you’ll be able to avoid making avoidable mistakes – because you’ll have experts to guide you.
Scale when you need it
In some cases, regional teams will need to collaborate with central specialists, in order to do things that the specialists alone could not. This might mean passing and analysing data, consulting on key questions, and arriving at decisions collectively.
In some cases, this might mean working alongside firms that are highly specialised. For example, if you need legal oversight of a project in Norfolk, then you might seek to deal with a solicitor in Norwich.
Practical delivery models
When you’re dealing with local teams, you might employ a variety of techniques to ensure delivery. You might use an onsite workshop to take a deep dive into the scope and requirements of a project, and thereafter use virtual updates to keep stakeholders apprised of what’s going on. You can define the fees involved up front, for the sake of maximum clarity.
Governance and risk comfort
You’ll need to ensure that your local teams are going to carry out the work in accordance with relevant regulations, and that they’re appropriately qualified and accredited. The terms of the deal should be made as clear as possible.
Outcomes that travel
In some cases, the success of a given regional project might provide a template for other, similar projects, in other regions. You might therefore view a variety of diverse projects as something of a testing ground, wherein new workflows and strategies can be discovered and stress-tested.
For example, you might consider the development of ticketless bank card payments on London Underground trains. This project allowed problems to be ironed out before similar projects were rolled out elsewhere in the country. The result proved that things like fare capping could be automated, amongst other things.
