What considerations are most important as you seek to optimize your existing international operations?

When evaluating the considerations most important to optimizing their exiting international operations, respondents were clearly more focused on MICRO over MACRO concerns.

Using the same methodology as the previous question, respondents listed 26 MACRO (i.e., Long term economic conditions, worldwide economy, finding markets for my products, etc.), 55 MICRO-Internal (i.e., cost reduction, good trustworthy local people, access to legal support, etc.) and 6 MICRO-External (i.e., red tape, ease of currency transfer, regulatory interference, etc.) considerations. This provides clearer evidence that once a firm has identified and entered an international market; their primary focus revolves around the need to optimize the effectiveness of their operations both within these business environments as well as their overall corporate structure. This concern can be further seen in some of the comments received. For example, one respondent emphasized "Local presence, local autonomy, communications with headquarters" and another "autonomous operations against goal based objectives. Clear separation of roles and deliverables, and ease of integration of the output product".