Industry Association: joining forces for the same interests

When you create a new company a new person is born, a juridical person, which is going to develop in a certain market. In the same way as any human being this new company is going to have different needs and interests. However lets remember that as in the real world some businesses will have a lot of power while others wont have as much power generally according to their size and role in the market.

Usually when we decide to create a new company we enter into the second group, of small and medium businesses, which are powerless. Though fortunately different countries have Industry associations, that help among others small and new enterprises to acquire more power and in with the help of the industry they can achieve more easily their objectives.

In this point I am going to talk according to my experience with the company I created with my brother. Four years ago, we started a consulting firm which advices in innovation subjects especially in Technology and Internet.  Our business, 360º Consulting is a boutique consulting firm, and in this way we don’t expect it to grow on the long term. According to our size it was very difficult for us to have speak and vote in our environment, until we became part of a industry association for e-commerce called Cámara Colombiana de Comercio Electrónico (CCCE).

Being part of this industry association has helped us in various ways. In first place this is the first instance where we meet the industry players through networking. In second place we became part of the education and statistics commissions, which are the subjects we are interested in. It is very important for our business that the companies learn about the importance of strategic Internet and e-commerce and we also need to know the industry statistics. Additional to what I have just written about we have benefited from training sessions organized by the CCCE.

Thereby my advice if you can do it is to join an industry association that handles subjects your company is interested in. Usually this is not free, but as you can see the benefits are greater than the costs. And if your company is small with more reasons you should take this strategic decision, because in this way you might have speak and vote in decisions that are important for your business. Before I finish remember that making part of an industry association is not just to pay the subscription fee but also to actively participate in it.

Image taken from Flickr.com