Company Visit - TNS

Our last company visit of Vietnam, and of the trip, was with TNS, a global marketing information company (http://www.tnsglobal.com/). We were given a presentation by Mr. Ralf Matthaes, Managing Director of TNS Vietnam. The presentation was an overview of Vietnam and its key sectors. This was a really interesting overview of Vietnam and spoke to many of the advantages that Vietnam has for foreign businesses. Ralf took us through a series of slides showcasing the "Advantage of 1" of Vietnam. Some of them are:

- 1 language - Viet
- 1 government - Communist
- 1 highway - HW#1
- 1 Coastline - South China Sea
- 1 Religion - Pragmatism
- 1 Direction - Market Capitalism

There were a few others but this gives the general idea.

We also learned some interesting facts for businesses to consider for setting up shop in Vietnam. The Vietnamese government won't block the internet like China will because they don't want bad press. Vietnamese are tech savvy with a 58% urban mobile phone ownership and with Internet usage in-home at 21%, which doubled in 2007. And interestingly, the biggest role model for the Vietnamese is Bill Gates.

There are 3 big things that are no-nos for coming to do business in Vietnam:

1. "Do what you say" - Don't talk about something unless you can do it
2. The Vietnamese don't like comparisons to China
3. Never talk down to the Vietnamese

Overall, Vietnam seems like a very hospitable place to do business in. The only thing you can't really do is criticize the government, although you can voice a positive opinion about something. The government is working to crack down on corruption, although they call it "transparency" and not "corruption". It goes back to the fact the government doesn't like negative press.

I'll compare China to Vietnam here only because it seems that Vietnam is making a bolder move to open up it's economy and markets to foreigners. The Vietnamese are much better at protecting the environment and are keenly aware of protecting the environment as they grow and start building more factories. This may seem small but after having spent 5 days in Shanghai and experienced the smog there, it's refreshing to know that Vietnam is taking a more active role to avoid that.