Teqswitch Case - Ivey

TeqSwitch Case - Ivey

For TeqSwitch it was the first business contract outside its continent (Therefore Australian Company does actually belong to TeqSwitch, where as Unitas does not). The problem was that, they do not have any experience in doing business in Latin America. It is not only about the „clocks ticking slower", it is about talking to people differently, having different attitudes towards negotiating contracts. It does not make any sense, talking to your represantative only. Especially in Argentina people want to know each other, they have to have a trustworthy relationship as business partners. As long as TeqSwitch is only a big firm from the northern part of the continent with only one representative (consultant) talking to Unitas, which is not even from this country, companies maybe buy rather from national companies. The consultant has no idea of doing business in Argentina, as he was working only in Mexico before (which is actually not even really Latin America). Further on, they did not really know the 4 Argentinians, TeqSwitch does not know a lot about them or they working attitude. They left them with most of the decisions (letting them chose alone the workers and the contract partners), without any real supervision. But they said immidiately what they expect, that could have let to, to much pressure.

So what is to do?

TeqSwitch should figure out, what the market really needs, and how is business done in that market. They should have more than one represantative from the country, maybe team up. So that one canadian and one argentinan representative is there, talking to the joint venture company. They need frequent meetings with the head of TeqSwitch. Those people should be done there at least once a month in the beginning. They have to visit the country before. maybe different companies. So they can see how business works there. They need to be more patient and maybe they have to try to adapt the attitudes and the behavior of argentinians and their buying attitude. Otherwise it could happen the same thing that happened to the Disney Park in Paris, which was, in the beginning, not going well at all. But when the americans adapted european peoples attitude, people started visiting the park. Maybe in Argentina people cant use those computerchips because their computers are to old, or new ones are to expenisive, maybe even those chips are to expensive. People maybe have the attitude, that they do not need those faster chips, because it worked till now without it fine as well. And the costs they have to face with buying those chips are way to high to compensate.

In conclusion, they need a team of people negotiating with the joint venture AND talking to the joint venture (after the contrat negotiations). This team should have at least one TeqSwitch employee that worked for a while in the company in a position in which he or she knows