Cresent Engineering achieves its goals in Brazil

Jim Land, the founder and managing director of Aberdeen-based safety training specialists Cresent Engineering, can certainly lay claim to be a pioneer in digital technology, having launched the first e-learning training courses in Aberdeen as far back as 1994.

“It was quite a challenge in those days, since PCs had no video cards, and file sizes, although tiny in comparison with today’s, seemed absolutely massive,” he recalls.

“But we could see the potential of the medium, and soon moved up from basic Powerpoint-style static presentations to the brave new world of audio-visual.

“In those early days, this called for a bit of creative ingenuity – like filming a presenter with a bushy beard and moustache so you couldn’t see if he was out of lip-synch or not – but we produced an award-winning safety programme for Amoco which went on to run and run long after Amoco became part of BP.”

Jim Land and Tracie Watson of Cresent Engineering In those early days, Cresent, like many North East service companies, worked internationally but only on a reactive basis. “We would get calls from all sorts of places, often from people who knew us at first hand from our Aberdeen work, and we would go out, do the job and then come home again,” Jim recalls (shown right with co-director Tracie Watson).

Towards the end of the 1990s, however, he could see the Aberdeen market was eventually going into decline and the company made a conscious decision to proactively market their innovative services in the international arena.

“We set ourselves the target of earning 30% of our revenues from overseas, which seemed quite a stiff challenge at the time, but today it is now coming on for 75% of our turnover,” he recalls. “With hindsight, it is one of the best management decisions we ever took.”

Keeping your eye on the ball

Cresent originally targeted the Brazilian market, and with invaluable funding support from Scottish Enterprise, Jim began the tough struggle of market penetration.

“One of the hardest things about internationalisation for a small company is the negative impact the development work has on your day-to-day operations, including earnings,” he observes. “There are even times when you wonder whether internationalisation really is a time-effective activity.”

Following a number of market visits to Brazilian oil shows in Rio and Macae, however, Cresent set up its Brazilian office in 2003 and is now poised to reap significant returns from that bold step.

“Brazil was doubly valuable in also giving us a firm reality check on the timescales involved in international business development,” says HR and Finance Director Tracie Watson. “We now know that it may well take up to five years before an overseas territory really starts paying its way.

“That might be OK if you are a larger corporation with other revenue-earning operations – but it can be quite a challenge for smaller businesses where the same company principals who undertake the business development are also prime service deliverers.”

Cost-conscious approach

Jim’s typical Brazilian business itinerary reflects the degree of commitment you have to make to cultivate new territories – three or four development visits per year. “We have had invaluable financial support from Scottish Enterprise Grampian along the way, and that has made a world of difference,” Jim notes. “But we are still a very cost-conscious company – every time I go to Brazil I stay with a friend to save on the travel budgets.”

One of the most effective export support activities, however has been company mentoring by former Business Gateway International Trade Manager Colin Crabbe, who chaired regular two-monthly export strategy sessions with the management team.

“Along with the services of an external consultant, we quickly found we had put together a very effective export strategy team, which totally changed our international perspective,” explains Jim.

“Colin was very good at keeping us focused, and in quite a short space of time we became highly proactive, and successfully opened up in the Middle East in a far shorter timescale than it took us in Brazil.”

Quality thinking

Cresent is now also working in Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Australia and Canada, and the directors’ personal commitment to business development is being rewarded.

“I have even had Portuguese lessons funded for us by SDI, and it is amazing the added credibility you have in contract negotiations in Brazil if you can follow the basic terminology,” says Jim.

Cresent is yet another prime example of a successful North East SME taking on board all the challenges of strategic internationalisation, even when that process may take you well out of your comfort zone.

“I think one of the added-value benefits of the whole internationalisation process has been to improve the overall quality of our strategic thinking,” admits Jim.

“It has reminded us what we are really good at, for example, so we are more clear about what really are our competitive strengths, and less likely to get distracted into non-core activities.”

For more information on Cresent Engineering, visit the company’s website at http://www.cresentengineering.com/