ExpatriateConnect (EC) is an initiative, conceived to assist Australian enterprises, to achieve export outcomes by adding tailored resources and personal insights, shared by a pool of global mentors.

For many SMEs the thought of exporting can be rather intimidating. Contending with local competition, foreign cultures and currencies, in addition to significant establishment costs, these issues often outweigh the desire for a business to grow and potentially increase its sales and profits abroad.

EC is a recent program designed to encourage Australian exporters, via a network of in-market, experienced, mentors (comprised of off-shore Australian expatriates or recently returned repatriates); who provide relevant business development insights and help facilitate export outcomes for Australian companies. From SMEs to divisions of large organisations EC is a practical, low risk solution to accelerating export performance. EC provides gears to leverage Australian businesses into overseas markets at a time when more exporters are essential to Australia's prosperity.

EC evolved from a concept developed by the AIC (Australian Institute of Commercialisation) and the Southern Cross Group (SX) into a global program for Australians and Australian companies, seeking filtered channels and opportunities to tap into global market resources, as well as, the Australian business community.

The AIC and SX set out to see if it was possible to harness the expertise needed to assist Australian companies seeking to export, within the diaspora of expatriate Australians; currently estimated to be close to 1 million people. The response both from companies seeking access to appropriate expertise and the off-shore Australian community was overwhelmingly positive. This test reaffirmed to the AIC/SXs' insight that a major under-utilised opportunity of linking companies with off-shore Aussies to provide Australian based companies with in market Australian expertise, was real.

To further explore the opportunity of linking off-shore Aussies and repatriates with Australian business, the AIC defined and resourced a project team which included on line tools, project managers, economic development organisations and ALBA National to champion further development.

EC expanded into 3 states – Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales which provided basic interfaces and opportunities in the form of companies, suggestions and events. In parallel the on line resources pulled in expressions of interest from Australian companies in every state (and some from overseas) plus global interest from candidate mentors (Australian expatriates and repatriates). The process of matching quickly outstripped traditional solutions as over 1000 candidate mentors and 400 companies were providing information and looking to be matched, communicated with and supported.

A process for profiling companies and mentors (expatriate and repatriate Australians) was refined and developed to a point that it was built into the EC matching engine (an on-line facility) and coupled with email marketing tools to accelerate data collection and communication. EC also attracted groups with aligned interests to partner in delivering outcomes including: UK Trade & Investment, Austrade, Italian Trade Commission (ICE), CITCSA, SABAN, Chambers and associations.

Feedback has fed continuous improvement into the EC program in servicing over 3223 expressions of interest from candidate mentors and 620 expressions of interest from companies looking for export insights and mentoring. A next generation on-line data collection and communication resource was released in early 2007.