Four Steps to Elevate your North American Trade and Site Strategy
Partnership Provides Comprehensive Site Selection Strategy to North America
In the spring of 2020, Global Location Strategies & Prodensa Consulting Services formalized a professional partnership. We now provide site selection and advisory services at the North American level. Prodensa and GLS have a combined 85 years of experience helping companies establish sustainable facilities in prosperous communities. In 2019 alone, both companies directed $12.9 billion dollars in capital investment to North America, bringing over 14,000 employment opportunities to the region.
Now we present you the four steps to elevate your North American trade and site strategy:
Determine the drivers that are unique to your project.
The USMCA preserves free trade. It drives North American competitiveness through the localization of supply chains, creating investment opportunities in the region. The foundation of a site selection strategy in North America is based on the project’s primary drivers. These are usually cost, quality, and risk. Identify and weigh their importance for the first step in elevating your strategy.
Collect data about the locations under consideration.
Gathering and organizing data for decision-making is the vital next step in the site selection strategy. Use a combination of primary and secondary sources. Key insights can be found in both databases and references to similar projects. Refer to your primary drivers to determine the data sources to take into account. Build a long list and narrow it down with more sensitive data. Beware: even labor, utility, and real estate costs can vary drastically across the same city.
Analyze the data to determine the best locations for further consideration.
Benchmarking data for site selection allows you to compare possible scenarios. Separate the comparative analysis into quality factors (ex: education resources) and cost factors (ex: estimated wages). Then adjust for your primary drivers. Use a weighted scoring approach to further narrow the site selection.
Test your assumptions.
Once you have benchmarked general locations, you must find specific properties within those areas of interest. Be aware of exchange rate variability across North American countries and how they reflect in labor costs. Analyze the Rule of Origin in the USMCA, especially in the automotive sector. Understand how qualitative factors impact future operations. Incentives are “icing on the cake”, but do not drive a sustainable site selection strategy. Finally, a site visit to the surrounding area and a real estate strategy can differentiate two highly-scored options.
Click here to watch the full webinar for more site selection strategy.
About the Speakers
Didi Caldwell, President & Founding Principal at GLS, has over 22 years of site selection experience. Since 1998, she has personally conducted location advisory services in more than 30 countries for both domestic capital investment and foreign direct investment projects totaling nearly $50 billion. Didi is a past chair of the Site Selectors Guild and one of the world’s most authoritative site selection and incentive negotiation experts.
Sarah White, Principal & VP of Site Selection at GLS, has worked in site selection and economic development her entire career. Sarah has over 12 years of experience matching corporations with communities for manufacturing, distribution, and office projects.
Xu Yu, Executive Director at Prodensa, has an MBA & Master in Global Management, is fluent in Chinese, English, and Spanish. Xu has focused her career in manufacturing investments and international expansion, especially in North America & Asia, including feasibility, site selection, operational & supply chain strategy, start-up, and joint-venture integration, which has led several investments over $100 Million.
Monica Lugo, Director of Institutional Relations at Prodensa. International Relations expert. As previous Undersecretary of International Trade, Monica led Mexico’s negotiations for various trade agreements such as TPP, USMCA, Mexico-US, Mexico-South America. Most recently, one of Forbe’s Most Powerful Women in Mexico.
