Global warning

The B2B Services sector is diverse but contains some of the world’s most successful businesses. Leading players are capitalising on waves of outsourcing, acquiring to accelerate their growth, and stock markets are increasingly recognising their attractive combination of cyclical resilience, forward visibility of earnings, and growth potential. However, beneath the sparkling track record and immense potential, there are some difficult questions that CEOs and shareholders increasingly need to address.

One of these is about how best to exploit international opportunities: which countries to target, in what order, and how? To identify the long-term success factors, OC&C has drawn on its experience of helping a range of incumbents and insurgents develop winning strategies, and created a database to examine in detail 200 of the top global firms in B2B (a group we refer to as the B2B 200). Collectively it’s a powerhouse group, turning over £1.4 trillion annually, present in every continent, and including leading businesses from Construction, Engineering, HR, BPO and other B2B sectors.

The findings from analysing the data on the B2B 200 has provided several key insights …