With the new global economy and proliferation of computers, the sale of software across continents has become commonplace. The website designer may be located in the UK with the software supplier located in the United States.
It is a good thing if you are shipping your CD’s to the United States. Within 2-3 days, utilizing standard parcel post, your shipment will be in your customer’s hands and installed on their computer system. Now, I want to tap into the 900 million person European Union and UK Market. How do I get my software CD to my customers?
Shipping your computer software from a United States or any North American location to Britain, Germany, or any of the other European Union countries can open up a litany of issues for you.
With the new terrorist guidelines that are in place in the United States and Europe, this transfer could contain vital terrorist information, at least in the government’s eyes. So, even though you are not a terrorist, you may come into conflict with the governments involved.
This explanation period will only lengthen the time it takes for your software to arrive. Your international delivery could be as short as one week and as long as two months. If your customers are like most, then in their eyes the responsibility for the delivery of the software resides with your company not the parcel post.
So, how do you get around this little problem? If your software is important enough, you can hire a personal carrier for approx. $10,000 US.
This will still take you three or four days to realize, but the customs organizations will not hold up the works. But if you are a small company and the total cost of the software is not that much, how can you safely distribute the software within the UK and Europe?
One solution is to use a company that distributes software on a daily basis to the UK and Europe. They write the code to the disk and then use internal parcel post to delivery the packages.
Once you apply for their service, upload your software and send them the destination. You can expect for your customer to have the software CD in their hands the same day with some of these services.
Your customer will be amazed at the speed with which your software is able to arrive. The cost is also quite affordable, allowing you the global presence in the market for distributing your software products. It will also allow you to have the peace of mind that the proper trade procedures are being utilized.
Always keep in mind that with software distribution, the location that you distribute to can be more important than the location that you are selling from.
Clearing customs or not having to clear customs can be integral to your customer success. The last thing you need to have complicating your software sale is a customer that is angry for not having their new software in the proper amount of time.
So, utilizing a global software distributing company will give you the global presence that your software deserves.
Chris McElroy manages the Developer Tools & Tips Blog for Mindwarp - Let us help you deliver your software to your customers in the UK! |
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