The Ady International Corporate Site Selection Process
Ady International Company offers unparalleled experience advising corporations worldwide about corporate site selection.
A host of environmental regulations and labor laws—all of them in flux—make corporate site selection an extraordinarily complex process, which is even further complicated as you consider the demographic pros & cons of the available workforce. And the consequences of error are great.
Also consider: the features and benefits of potential locations are not static. Their respective characteristics will likely change over time. Therefore, any decision must evaluate not only how a location satisfies your corporate requirements today, but more importantly, its ability to meet your company’s long-term objectives as well.
This is why purely Web-based approaches to corporate site selection are dangerous, as they merely offer a laundry list of miscellaneous data without experienced guidance and skilled evaluation.
In stark contrast, every domestic or international corporate site selection consultation conducted by Ady International Company is executed with precise respect to your kind of enterprise and its unique requirements in terms of infrastructure, workforce, available incentives, environmental regulations, building codes, labor laws, and more.
Our proven processes include extensive data collection and proprietary analytical tools that we apply with specific respect to your precise kind of business or industry.
Our independence and singularity of purpose allow us to provide you complete objectivity.
Unlike consultancies that are mere departments of accountancy firms, Ady International Company is a wholly independent consultancy exclusively dedicated to providing C-suite executives with expert research and evaluation about potential corporate sites for location, relocation, or expansion.
And Ady International Company is not a subsidiary of any commercial or industrial real estate firm. Thus, we are not conflicted with respect to any parent company’s core business.
As well, we are often aware of available sites and buildings with excellent potential well before other site location consultants: a byproduct of Robert M. Ady’s decades-long experience and expertise as a business relocation consultant as well as a business expansion consultant.
Your corporate site selection process must integrate a myriad of tangibles and intangibles that are crucial to your company’s success.
Too many site selection companies naively treat corporate site selection as if it were merely a change in geography for a company—especially if they approach it from other disciplines, such as accountancy or commercial/industrial real estate.
In contrast, Robert M. Ady understands that your corporate site selection process must be facilitated with particular respect to your company’s:
- Long-term goals (Organic expansion? Acquisition? Consolidation? )
- Strategic objectives (Distances to supply chain and/or markets?)
- Product initiatives (Geographical implications for new launches, re-launches, new categories?)
- Corporate culture (Psychographic and demographic needs of your employees and management?)
- Workforce Retention (How many will relocate with you?)
- Workforce Suitability (Does a city or region have suitable human resources?)
- Internal culture (Schools? The Arts? Restaurants? Entertainment?)
- Political climate (Taxes? Anti-growth initiatives? Onerous regulations?)
The Ady International Company site selection process identifies and evaluates all the location criteria crucial to your precise kind of business or industry—both objective and subjective.
Our process is wholly confidential, which is essential, because premature disclosure of your company’s plan to relocate can have devastating effects on employee morale, community relations, public opinion, your external brand—and even political ramifications. Learn about:
- Clarify your project criteria
- Defining your search area
- Screening communities
- Fieldwork
- Recommendations
- Incentives
- Implementation
1. Clarifying your project criteria
We conduct structured interviews with you, your team, and other important stakeholders to clarify the goals, parameters, and timelines for your project. Over 35 years of experience as a site selection consultant have shown that this first step—too often neglected by others—is of paramount importance for keeping your project on schedule, preventing “creeping specs,” remaining within budget, and achieving your strategic objectives.
2. Defining your search area
Ady International Company will initially identify and analyze broad geographical areas that hold promise for meeting your initial project criteria. A list of geographic areas of interest is thereby derived from this preliminary assessment, saving you the time, manpower, and expense of investigating grossly unqualified regions. It will also spare you the negative PR implications that can arise from publicly considering a community and then rejecting it out-of-hand, as premature disclosure of your company’s plan to relocate can have devastating effects on employee morale, community relations, public opinion, your external brand—and even political ramifications.
3. Screening of communities
Conducting one or more major work sessions with you and your team, we will help you develop a shortlist of highly qualified communities derived from your search area, again saving you the time, manpower, and expense of vetting marginally qualified locations. Subsequently, we will present a matrix of your broad areas of search, comparing the relative attributes of specific sites and available buildings across a number of location criteria that include but are not limited to:
- Labor costs by job class
- Unemployed & underemployed
- Leadership & political climate
- General business climate
- Local and state incentives
- Education & training resources
- Quality-of-life issues
- Transportation infrastructure
- Existing sites & buildings
- Utility costs & reliability
4. Fieldwork
Within your shortlist, we will aggressively question community representatives and conduct confidential discussions with local business leaders. As well, we will assess the suitability of available sites and existing buildings. Perhaps most importantly: we will begin incentive negotiations.
All of this is done with precise emphases on your unique requirements in terms of local infrastructure, workforce, available incentives, environmental regulations, labor laws, and whatever additional criteria might be of particular concern to your company.
And of unique benefit to you: Bob Ady’s decades-long experience as a site location consultant means he will ask the questions, raise the concerns, suggest the incentives, and otherwise vet each potential site in ways—quite literally—that no one else can.
5. Recommendations
Unique among business relocation companies and as an integral part of our corporate site selection process, Ady International Company will develop an objective metric for you by which you can impartially assess your shortlist of potential corporate sites. Our independence and singularity of purpose allow Ady International Company to provide you complete objectivity about the relative merits of potential corporate sites.
Final contenders are compared to one another, and each is evaluated in terms of overall suitability across the variety of variables that are crucial to the unique requirements of your particular company. This is in stark contrast to non-personalized Web-based approaches that merely offer a laundry list of miscellaneous data without experienced guidance and skilled evaluation.
6. Incentives
Maximizing incentives to locate in one city or region over another is a crucial part of corporate site selection, the long-term results of which directly affect your company’s viability and cost of doing business. Yet, these sorts of negotiations must be led with sensitivity and finesse, lest you jeopardize the goodwill of the community, city, or state that you ultimately choose. Learn more about Ady International Company incentive negotiations here.
7. Implementation
Our commitment to you does not end with your final selection of a community. Mr. Ady will work with your legal staff and outside counsel as an advisor to ensure that everything negotiated with community leaders and other stakeholders on your behalf is explicitly detailed in any and all documentation that concerns your new corporate site. This includes letters of commitment; lease or purchase agreements; and especially documentation of negotiated incentives.