We looked at 68 companies that approached DolkHesper about expanding internationally.
Among first-time expanders, only 35% had definitely decided to hire locally. Among companies with some previous international experience, that rose to 74%. Among the most experienced, it was 82%.
The obvious explanation would be that experienced companies simply make bigger bets.
Perhaps. But that is not quite what our data suggest. Even among companies that had definitely decided to hire, small beginnings remained common.
Rather, experienced companies seem to be more certain about what needs to happen around the expansion.
One clue comes from bookkeeping.
Only 26% of first-time expanders definitely wanted bookkeeping support. More than half were still considering it. Among companies with some previous international experience, 54% already knew they wanted it. Among the most experienced, 70% did.
This is a slightly counter-intuitive result.
You might expect experience to make companies more self-sufficient.
Our small sample suggests something else.
Experienced companies seem to be more certain about what they do not want to organise themselves, and therefore what help they want to acquire.
Knowing you will hire is not the same as knowing what comes with it
The difference becomes more interesting when we look only at companies that had already decided to hire.
Of the first-time expanders in that group, six out of eight were still answering “maybe” to all three questions about bookkeeping, VAT and annual accounts. Only one had definitely decided that it wanted support with all three.
Among companies with previous international experience, twelve out of twenty definite hirers wanted all three. Among the most experienced, five out of eight did.
So the difference is not simply that first-time expanders are less certain whether they will do anything at all.
These companies had made a concrete decision. They were going to hire.
What remained less clear was what came with that decision. Who does the bookkeeping? What happens with VAT? Who prepares the annual accounts? What stays at headquarters?
Experienced companies seem more likely to arrive with answers to those questions too.
Nobody starts an international expansion because they have always wanted another set of annual accounts. Experience may simply make you more likely to remember that one is coming.
Experience does not remove the need for support
There is another interesting reversal in the data.
More experienced companies were more, not less, likely to ask DolkHesper for bookkeeping support.
That does not mean experience causes companies to outsource. Our sample is far too small and selective to establish that.
But it challenges a simple idea of organisational learning.
Learning does not always mean becoming able to do more things yourself.
Sometimes it means knowing which things you do not particularly want to do yourself.
What companies seem to learn
These are not survey results for international business as a whole. They come from companies that approached DolkHesper for help with expansion, and the groups are small.
But the pattern is consistent enough to be interesting.
First-time expanders often arrive with the commercial decision ahead of the operating model. They know they want to be in the country. They may already know they want to hire.
Companies that have expanded before seem to arrive with more of the surrounding decisions already made.
Perhaps that is one of the less glamorous benefits of experience.
The first time abroad, you discover what has to be done.
The second time, you know which parts you want somebody else to have ready.
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