What does it take to be ready to export abroad? Export-ready firms are flexible businesses aiming to create international value for new business partners to help grow their businesses.
An export readiness assessment can help your firm achieve its export goals. This type of assessment involves evaluating the qualities of your firm’s goods or service that increase the likelihood of selling abroad successfully. With an increasingly interconnected world, businesses of all sizes may receive overseas demand inquiries of their market offerings, which represent opportunities to export a product or service for the first time or expand internationally.
An export readiness assessment then helps businesses determine if they have the capacity and resources to deliver a marketable product or service on a global scale at a competitive price. Various points to consider for assessing export readiness are listed in the Canadian Trade Commissioner’s Step-by-Step Guide to Exporting. We summarize key takeaways from this guide below.
Many trade government agencies and business support organizations have developed tools and online “tests” aimed at helping businesses assess their export readiness.
These tests score business performance across several areas, including:
Export readiness scores can guide businesses through following the necessary steps to become fully export ready. There are four practical steps that can help a business become export ready:
Examples of export readiness assessments tools are the Canadian Trade Commissioner‘s export quiz and the U.S. International Trade Administration export readiness assessments.
The U.S. International Trade Administration provides three different export readiness assessments depending on a business’s level of trade experience: