Exchanging expertise in Guangzhou
When I founded SYSVISION (Hong Kong) Ltd. www.sysvision.com.hk in 2005 as a sister company of our Hamburg-based software company www.sysvision.de, we basically started without any business contacts or clients in China.
I've been a member of XING since the first year, though for a long time I was only an occasional user, mostly using the site to stay in touch with former colleagues or existing contacts and friends. But as soon as our Asian plans came up, XING really helped us to find professional footing and first business contacts - be it partners, staff or potential clients.
We are a software development company, and our business is mainly project based and people oriented. We don't sell products to the masses. Therefore, personal relationships are important in what we do, and personal relationships take a long time to develop. The most difficult part is always the first step: getting to know people in the first place.
After having lived in Hong Kong for half a year, I found it much more difficult to meet English-speaking Chinese people in Guangzhou (population of eight million), as networking events such as those organized by the Chamber of Commerce are less common in Guangzhou than in Hong Kong. In other words, the XING offline event fit in perfectly.
Now I’ve begun to recognize the real potential behind the platform, especially when you're new to a city or even to a country. In order to get the most out of our networking activities, we even organize XING Live events every first Tuesday of the month in Guangzhou (Southern China). We started this January 2nd, and 20 people attended the first meeting - not bad for being the day right after New Year.
For our next event in February, over 50 people registered. Thanks to Kate Lu of XING China and the supporting Guangzhou group co-moderators, we’re starting to get the offline events rolling.
As a foreigner in China, it's the perfect way to meet people in a casual atmosphere. I think it's the right approach to be successful in China, and our valuable business contacts we made so far prove it – the story of meeting Lian Tan through XING, for example, is interesting:
One day I received a message from Lian Tan, founder and CEO of 1bib.com, an Internet platform for selling used cars in China. Lian initially sent me a message through XING to contact me - actually with no specific business or service request, but more to get to know other entrepreneurs new to Guangzhou. We both were new to the city and decided to meet up for a coffee and to share our experiences in Guangzhou so far. We were talking about the city, formalities and difficulties compared to other cities and countries, and of course also about Internet business and her start-up. It turned out that my software company actually focuses on the same technologies used by 1bib.com for their Internet platform, and that Lian was having trouble finding qualified programmers in the area. Because she had just raised fresh venture capital, 1bib was ready to kick off with the development, but was lacking the necessary human resources. We decided to work together, and defined a small project to support with our software technology know how and help with basic IT-architectural issues, while Lian continued her search for full-time programmers.
In this specific example, as is often the case, XING helped to establish an initial contact between people one would be unlikely to meet otherwise - because you simply do not know where to search for and find them. Of course, an Internet platform cannot replace the value of meeting face-to-face, and building a trustworthy relationship. Also, it naturally takes some time from the initial contact until you are actually doing business together. The business benefits you might get from such a contact can be of various types: you can do direct business with each other, or another person may recommend you to somebody else through XING, which is very useful because the third person can actually see a photo of you and get to know about your background, references, and so on before actually deciding to contact you and place a project. Especially in project-related business (consulting, agencies, IT), business is done between people rather than companies. This is one key way in which XING has been important to us.
About XING:
XING is the social network for business professionals. More than 10 million members worldwide use XING to boost their business, job, and career. XING is a platform where professionals from all kinds of different industries can meet up, find jobs, colleagues, new assignments, cooperation partners, experts and generate business ideas. Members can meet and exchange views in over 40,000 specialist groups, while also getting together at networking events. The platform is operated by XING AG, which was founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 2003 and has been publicly listed since 2006. In December 2010, XING acquired amiando AG, a Munich-based company and Europe’s leading provider of online event management and ticketing. Please visit www.xing.com for more information.
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