Export Academy: new conditions – new opportunities

№ 1, 2023
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The business course "Export Academy" has already become a traditional annual project of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This year marks its fifth anniversary. Over this time, the project has undergone great changes, evolved from Export School to Academy with an updated program, teaching staff, and training formats. In 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic, we mastered online training, and the Export Academy had a hybrid format.

In 2022, we were back to traditional offline format, and we're very happy about that.

Over five years, more than 1000 managers and specialists of Belarusian enterprises have graduated from the Export Academy business course. They have received applied knowledge about various stages of export project implementation, entering overseas markets and promotion of their products and services on these markets from representatives of state authorities, financial institutions, lead experts of the BelCCI, famous business coaches and successful practitioners.

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Last year the business course had the program "New Conditions – New Opportunities". It was formed ­taking into account the need to train representatives of exporting companies to work in the conditions dictated by the challenges of recent years.

Thematic modules of the business course successively covered all stages of export project implementation, such as "Export Strategies and Marketing Research", "Assessment of the Export Market Potential", "Sales Management", "Public Speaking Techniques from Voice to Presentation", "New Approaches in Organizing and Holding Exhibitions", "Customs Support of an Export Project", "Export Contract", "Management Accounting: Cost Management", "Transportation Logistics and Cargo Transportation", "Taxes in Export Activities", "Business Etiquette and Protocol".

Thematic modules were developed based on the relevance of additional knowledge on legal and tax regulation, financial resources management, transport and customs support of foreign supplies, marketing activities, cross-cultural aspects of business communications with counterparts. During the training, participants considered new approaches in organizing and holding exhibitions, received information on export strategies and market research, paid attention to the development and ­management of distribution in new markets, distribution chains building and sales management in the current context, and considered possible legal ways of overcoming the restrictions caused by sanctions. Particular attention was paid to the deve­lopment of new export niches, the introduction of modern mechanisms and formats of work, and the expansion of sales markets in the current context.

A separate module "The Eurasian Economic Union" was devoted to the development of foreign economic relations within the Eurasian Economic Union. Specialists of the Eurasian Economic Commission highlighted a number of important and relevant topics related to the involvement of business in the integration processes in the Eurasian space, including strategic directions for the development of the Eurasian economic integration until 2025, mechanisms for the implementation of a common trade policy, benefits from the implementation of free trade agreements between the EAEU and third countries, measures to protect the domestic market, peculiarities of goods labeling, transport policy, areas of cooperation of the EAEU business in industry and the agro-industrial sector, the currently existing barriers in the domestic market of the Union and possible ways to eliminate them, antimonopoly regulation tools.

In addition, the participants learned about the activities of the EAEU Court, the procedure for dispute resolution and enforcement of its decisions. A step-by-step instruction was given on the assessment of regulatory impact and business interests in decision ­making within the EAEU.

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The graduates of the "New Conditions – New Opportunities" business course training program were 157 representatives of 62 enterprises and organizations of Belarus.

At the end of the training, the participants evaluated the overall organization of the course, the content of each module, the relevance of the topics and their disclosure by the speakers, the possibilities of practical application of the acquired know­ledge. The course got an average of 9.8 points out of 10 maximum.

The Export Academy's business course will develop and continue in 2023. The Business Training Center has already started working on the business course 2023 content. We are waiting for new participants who want to get really useful and practically applicable knowledge and skills in promoting products and services abroad.