My wife and I were recently flying back from Bangkok to Guilin on Bangkok Air, where we repetitively heard, "Bangkok Air, Asia's boutique airline." I had to work my brain around that one and try to figure out what they were talking about.
"Boutique" keeps popping up. Today, I read an article about the positives and negatives of working with global service firms in China. It raises the issue of whether many businesses would not do better to look into China's "boutique expat service firms."
It is all a matter of what job you need done and how you want it done. Sometimes the price tag for the "big guys" is not really worth it.
New Frontier Consulting is one of these "boutique" consulting firms, and we like it that way. The smaller consultant firms are nimble and ready to do things your way. The global folks are always going to have a certain amount of paperwork and "organizational drag" which comes hand in hand with their impressive array of abilities.
Let's not joke ourselves. The small firms cannot do a wide assortment of tasks as well as the big firms can. And you should be wary of any who claim to do such. Hopefully, the small firms should focus on a specific field or set of services.
With the growing number of firms in China, the chances are high that a small firm can do exactly what your business needs done. Finding them may be the trick, though. What kind of firm you need depends entirely on your business's needs.
New Frontier Consulting is more than happy to steer clear of the bustling East Coast of China. Consultants, qualified and no, abound in the big cities. We are focused on the less developed Southwestern regions of China, particularly Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan provinces. It is a different ball game out here.
Cities like Liuzhou and the rural areas surrounding it are full of the resources and products you seek. And of course, Liuzhou has its own local and qualified consultants.
The counties are the starting point for agricultural products which are shipped around the world. If that is what your business is looking for, you certainly do not need to pay the global firm price tag to do something in which a smaller firm is specifically specialized.
If you need personalized service in Southwest China, the global firms will be of little help.
