Founded in the late 1990s by Roberto Corciulo, a chartered accountant, IC&Partners is a multinational company that has succeeded in establishing its leadership in the SME consultancy market, thanks to a quality service aimed at initiating, developing or strengthening their internationalisation process. Present for over 25 years in 17 countries with as many as 27 direct operating offices, this all-Italian excellence is today able to offer qualified and reliable consultancy in the fields of tax, legal, accounting, administrative, financial and human resources management abroad as well as entry strategy and export management services. A year after our last interview, we decided to meet again with Mr Roberto Corciulo to understand how, in all this time, the operational context in which the company operates has changed.
by Roberta Imbimbo
Dr Corciulo, with what mission was IC&Partners born?
The company was founded at the end of the 1990s with the aim of asserting its leadership in the market of consultancy for business internationalisation in the fields of tax, legal, accounting, administrative, financial and human resources management abroad, as well as in entry strategy and export management services. An ambitious challenge that it has succeeded in winning, on the strength of a strategic vision, an innovative business approach aimed at client centrality, and nonetheless an in-depth knowledge of the economic and social dynamics of each foreign market. Today, IC&Partners is a reliable and dynamic reality with no less than 250 employees and 27 direct operating offices located in 17 countries. Its mission is to seriously and professionally support SMEs – which represent the beating heart of the national production fabric – at every stage of their process of penetration of unexplored foreign markets, i.e. from the identification of the most suitable market (an important choice that guides the entire process of formulating the international development strategy) to the design of the strategic plan and its implementation.
How has the business environment changed?
Internationalisation is today at an epochal turning point, as globalisation and digitisation are creating countless growth opportunities for SMEs in different fields and areas of interest, forcing them to refine their expansion strategies in foreign markets. No company can think of remaining closed in its own market and feel immune from having to look for new outlets where it can sell its products and/or find raw materials at more advantageous costs. This being said, one must unfortunately consider the pressures coming from the international geopolitical climate, which have a significant impact on this expansion process, forcing companies to rethink their localisation strategy in foreign markets. The global scenario is in fact dominated by the extreme tensions and uncertainties generated by the Russian invasion in Ukraine, by the consequent economic sanctions imposed on Russia, by the rise in energy prices and the consequent difficulties in obtaining energy supplies, and by speculations on the prices of raw materials in some global supply chains (despite the fact that companies can obviate this increase by raising sales prices, as is already happening in some sectors, this choice obviously makes them less competitive in the reference market). For Italian companies, especially the more energy-intensive ones that find themselves having to compete with foreign players that have a much lower energy supply cost, this is therefore an enormous challenge, much more difficult than the one faced with the outbreak of the epidemic, which was indeed serious but never involved relations between states and above all never had such an uncertain time horizon.
In this operating context, how can the new growth opportunities arising from the internationalisation process be successfully seized?
As mentioned, globalisation is changing its skin in a rather disruptive way. Italian SMEs therefore need to rely on highly qualified figures, because the internationalisation process requires, today more than ever, specific managerial skills in terms of knowledge of the new global competitive context, of the political, economic, legislative and social characteristics of the outlet markets, and above all of the innovative technologies needed to overcome the new challenges imposed by digitalisation. Well aware that digital export represents a new lever for the development of company business in overseas markets, IC&Partners has signed an agreement with Webidoo Spa, a company specialising in Digital Transformation and Digital Marketing, the European service of Alibaba’s B2B platform, which has over 26 million active buyers in over 190 countries. Thanks to this valuable partnership, the “Digital +Export” one-stop shop platform has been launched to offer SMEs an increasingly innovative tool to support the development of their online and offline business, so that they can play an increasingly active role in this new digital and global revolution underway.
For more info: www.icpartners.it, info@icpartners.it
