Case Study: Digivizer
Digivizer is a platform that allows businesses to analyse the performance of their digital marketing programs, in real-time and across all the main social and search channels. The company was founded by Emma Lo Russo in 2010 and has grown rapidly.
“We went from having none to having 14 staff throughout 14 countries in Asia within one month. Since then, we have won a lot more business in Asia because we have that footprint.” — Emma Lo Russo, CEO, Digivizer
The company now employs over 55 employees across 14 countries. In 2016, Digivizer won a contract for work throughout Asia for a leading global technology company. The company very quickly went from having no physical presence in Asia to establishing a regional network with a hub based in Singapore.
Digivizer’s experience illustrates some of the challenges that smaller businesses face when building an Asia strategy and expanding internationally. Emma had worked in larger companies and led successful growth strategies into the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, including China — but with significant resources at her disposal to back those moves.
Digivizer engaged an agent in Singapore to help facilitate the visas and to provide some of the banking infrastructure for paying employees in the region. But Emma also leveraged her own experience and smarts to attract talent. She promoted her executive assistant at the time to Head of People, and backfilled the EA role. Together they began hiring new staff throughout the region. Digivizer’s strategy has been to hire nationals with local language expertise in addition to strong English skills, who understand the cultures and have the in-depth knowledge of the markets in each country. “It is part of our secret sauce,” says Emma.
There are real benefits to having an established network throughout the region. The business model ensures that the company is on top of developments in Asia and can best meet existing and new clients’ needs.
Geographic dispersion of staff resources also poses challenges. Most employees are the sole Digivizer employee in their country of operation. A degree of remoteness is inevitable and creating (or extending) a culture to embrace the team based overseas, and to ensure they share the values already established, is critical.
“I realised that while we could win such a great opportunity, I couldn’t afford a Big 4 consulting firm or rely on an HR department or finance department to hand over the task of making our move into Asia a reality. So it was pretty much me, my EA and an intern working on how we could set up in Asia within 30 days!” — Emma Lo Russo, CEO, Digivizer
To address this issue, Digivizer uses strong collaborative technology to ensure daily connectivity between staff in the region, as well as monthly team video briefings and cross-region face-to-face learning. Annually, the staff also meet in person for team-building activities. And Emma and the Digivizer leadership team make a concerted effort to visit staff on the ground regularly.
“We continue to prioritise where our strengths are, and having that commitment to focus on what we can actually deliver, growing with customer-first thinking, is essential to supporting the success of the team in Asia.” — Emma Lo Russo, CEO, Digivizer
“The way to grow as an organisation is to make it personal. The more personal and passionate you are about what you are doing, the more that employees and business partners will be invested in what you are trying to achieve.” — Emma Lo Russo, CEO, Digivizer