Sales, the Special Agency for international activities of the Milan Chamber of Commerce, elaborated the answers of the questionnaire "Training & Internationalisation” which was attended by about 500 representatives of as many SMEs. The questionnaire, as indicated by the title, investigates the relationship between training activity and internationalization processes. The aim is to understand what role training should have and what are the areas in which it is most required. The analysis of the answers also makes it possible to understand which are the major difficulties that the Milanese SMEs encounter in the internationalization processes and which are the fields in which the greatest training vulnerabilities are accused.
Coming to the analysis of the individual questions, it emerges how the fence non-tariff more difficult to overcome to operate with foreign countries are those Legal and those related to logistics and to transport, followed by the constitution of Distribution network and from difficulty in finding information on foreign markets.
Almost all of the companies involved in the survey (over 96%) believes that training plays a role of primary importance in making corporate internationalization strategies more effective. These training courses should be mainly focused on the pre-investment phase; in fact, the greatest requests are related to international marketing courses and drafting of business plans for foreign countries, the creation of an Export Office in the company and contracts and international payments. The importance of feasibility studies and investment analyzes in internationalization processes clearly emerges from these answers, since with these tools it is possible to identify the profitability of the investment ex-ante.
The areas that capture the interest of the companies involved in the survey are above all those with the highest growth potential. In fact, the BRICS countries are the ones most indicated by SMEs especially with reference to Russia and the two Asian giants.
