Being able to expand overseas is one of the core aspects of scaling up a business outlined in The Scaleup Report, which was published back in 2014.

I wrote recently about some attempts to support this on a pan-European level, but in true Brexit style, there has recently been a new digital platform launched to encourage trade across the Commonwealth.

Commonwealth Trade

The Commonwealth Trade Initiative launched this week to support greater trade and collaboration between the 53 member nations of the Commonwealth.

The project, which was developed by the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, consists of a digital platform that allows members to easily showcase their products and services to member markets.

The platform, which has the support of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, uses machine learning to match up businesses that they believe could do business with one another.

“The technology at the heart of this platform will enable thousands of companies across the Commonwealth to identify and exploit new business potential that would otherwise go untapped.” Pierre Proner, CEO of the developers AMPP Group told me at the recent launch event.

This algorithm is primarily based upon the content provided it by members, with a gamification element to the profile encouraging users to add as much information as possible.  Indeed, more matches are opened up the more information is added.

Businesses can also add content to their profile to further flesh out their offering and give the algorithms more information to go on when matching them up.

Global markets

The numbers are indeed big, with the team trumpeting that the 53 Commonwealth countries represent 1/3 of the world’s population and a combined GDP of $10.4 trillion.  The reality is slightly less grand of course, as the algorithm only matches you with those businesses that are members of the platform.

Thus far there are 4,000 businesses with approved profiles on the site, with up to 12,000 expected within a few months, with these members split evenly across industry sectors, with a reasonable representation of countries from across the Commonwealth too.

The site ultimately aims to get every export-ready business in the Commonwealth on board, although with this likely to extend into the millions it’s a heady goal indeed.

Whilst this ultimate aim is certainly noble, its ability to open up new markets overseas will depend largely on their ability to get lots of companies signed up to the platform, and understandably they are relying heavily on organizations such as local Chambers of Commerce on the ground in each country to round up businesses.

Managerial support

Of course, access to new markets is not the only element of support needed to scale-up.  A recent report from Cambridge Judge and Oxford Saïd business schools highlights the crucial role managerial support plays in the ability of a company to scale-up.  This is especially so when expanding in markets about which you have little experience.

“Most SMEs experience zero or little growth,” the report says. “Although ‘gazelles’, the companies that grow turnover by 20 per cent for three consecutive years, are much talked about they are in fact a rare species: they are responsible for most of SME growth but they amount to only two per cent to four per cent of SMEs.”

The report was born out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where discussions explored both the why and how of scaling up start-ups.  It provides six core recommendations for growth:

1. Be determined to grow
2. Build an excellent management team
3. Develop partnerships and alliances
4. Develop systems to help you grow
5. Identify your core competencies
6. Use these strengths to spread into new markets whilst developing economies for scale

There isn’t much in the way of managerial support offered to start-ups via the platform, so the hope has to be that local projects can help with this aspect of scaling up, leaving the Commonwealth Trade Initiative to focus on what it does best – matching up buyers and sellers in vast markets.

It will be a fascinating project to follow and you can sign up to it for free here.