Team Scotland's Export Promotion Support: evaluation

10. Depth interviews and process analysis (including satisfaction with delivery)

10.1 Depth interviews, to shed light on the "how" as well as the "why", were conducted with 23 Scottish beneficiary firms – a mix of exporting and non-exporting companies – to provide insight on how export support led to the outcomes and how satisfied respondents were with that support.

10.2 The majority of firms (87%) considered the support they received relevant to their business objectives. Primary reasons for seeking support related to product development and expanding into new markets, suggesting that respondents with established relationships felt able and comfortable in seeking the support for growth in exporting, more so than for early-stage exporting.

10.3 Beneficiaries on average rated their satisfaction with the way the support was delivered at 7 out of 10, with about half (53%) rating it above 8. In terms of quality of the support, more than half of interviewed firms were positive (61%) noting the quality was "good", "very good", "great", or "excellent", citing factors such as delivery partners' responsiveness, engagement and professionalism, consistency of quality, and contribution to achieving results. For those firms that evaluated the quality less positively, reasons included irrelevant exporting advice, delays in support decisions, and insufficient support provided.

10.4 Thinking on the "how" of the interventions, firms linked the increase in export sales to developing contacts and networks with potential buyers and stakeholders. Other reasons cited by individual respondents included identifying areas for marketing to be prioritised and early-stage financial assistance to help the firm set-up. For those that reported less positively, this included reasons around the insufficient support opportunities for their sector and ultimately not exporting the product.

10.5 Depth interviews asked firms to consider types of support that they would have liked to receive that would have been helpful in achieving more export sales. These were largely centred on missing out on potential export sales and market opportunities, such as financial support to establish offices abroad, R&D support to develop the product for exporting, marketing support to raise awareness of the product, and overseas business development to bring in more sales.

10.6 Looking to the future, beneficiary companies were typically optimistic about their exporting plans and cited a few ways in which delivery partners could support these plans with the top responses being to continue the current support offering; providing grants/funding for product development, marketing, staff, and business growth; and supporting specific markets of interest.