N&D.hol. International expansion (I)

The general shareholders’ meeting of the business holding company ‘night&day kabushiki gaisha’ (N&D.hol) approved in its last meeting the conduct of a descriptive-projective study. This study is expected to encompass different candidate countries - from which one will eventually be selected - as well as an algorithm that allows monitoring the evolution of the various markets where the consortium operates. Furthermore, it will be necessary to take into account the different variables that could affect the success of international expansion, consistent with the various parameters and requirements that will be detailed below.

N&D.hol is a group of Japanese companies, a leader in its sector, with a mission to improve the well-being and health of its customers and a commitment to sustainable development. The main line of business is the management of wellness facilities for the elderly - such as senior residences - but they are also involved in other areas such as the production and distribution of medical supplies and equipment, construction of healthcare infrastructure, marketing of healthy food products, and research.

The holding has been implementing a corporate social responsibility plan for several years. Consequently, it has prioritized alignment with various goals and targets of sustainable development promoted by the UN and other international supranational institutions (Miluska.Jara, n.d.; “Measuring Progress Towards the Sustainable Development Goals - SDG Tracker,” n.d.). Specifically, the corporate social responsibility plan has emphasized various initiatives such as:

• Reduction of poverty (goal1?):

• Decent work and economic growth (goal8?):

• Consistent with the nature of the business group, good health and social well-being (goal3?):

Therefore, the business objective is the selection of a data-driven country for the group to initiate international expansion. The key performance indicators would be established as follows:

• Recovery of the total investment in the chosen country within five years.

• 12% net profit in the sixth year.

• Achieve a 15% market share in the country within 3 years.

• Positive assessment and evolution of N&D.hol’s perception as an entity committed to sustainable development goals in the markets where it operates, resulting in a 5% annual improvement in brand image perception through traditional surveys, social media, and other similar channels.

Likewise, the situation analysis leading to the selection of candidate countries should consider the following aspects Hennig (2015)

• Cost-benefit analysis.

The trio of countries must meet a preliminary requirement based on the density of the aging population in the coming years, ensuring a sustained high demand for the types of products and services offered by the holding. Additionally, based on the most up-to-date available data, there should be a consistent customer base.

The candidates should be nations that have experienced positive economic growth in recent years in terms of per capita income.

To operate in line with the sustainable development goals outlined in the corporate social responsibility plan, the candidate nations for N&D’s international expansion should be countries facing issues such as poverty, inequality, decent work, and economic growth where the company can make a meaningful contribution. However, at the same time, the population should have sufficient income levels to generate demand for the products and services offered by the holding.

• Availability of resources.

The country or nation should have a skilled workforce - including doctors, nurses, and care staff - to support the operations and services that the holding plans to deploy.

Additionally, there should be a network of medical establishments and facilities that provide at least basic healthcare services.

• Risks and contingencies.

The candidates should have the best possible ratio in terms of labor legislation and regulation of private property rights.

Furthermore, they should have the lowest possible ratio of criminal activity.

• Project requirements.

The candidate countries or nations should have the best possible balance in the previously highlighted aspects or variables, accompanied by various data analyses that can help justify a data-driven decision.

The project should be scalable to incorporate new variables for analysis in the future.

Moreover, the outcome of this work should result in a predictive-descriptive model with the ability to update with new data over time, which can assist in future needs or objectives for international expansion.

Regarding the goals of the data mining project, the following are considered:

1. Candidate analysis performed using scientific and data analysis techniques with the established parameters and variables, followed by a ranking and evaluation of the results. The outcome should provide a deliverable with the top 3 candidates for investment.

2. Predictive analysis on:

• Economic trends.

• Evolution of different sustainable development indices.

• Evolution of various sociocultural aspects considered in the data mining project.

Therefore, as a summary, the expected deliverable is an updatable descriptive-predictive model that meets the present and future analysis needs based on the terms and variables established by the company’s board of directors.

Finally, in terms of the project plan:

1. The project will be structured around the Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) model. This model encompasses six sequential phases that form the basis for the data science process.

2. The “data understanding” (2), “data preparation” (3), “modeling” (3), and “evaluation” (4) phases will be carried out using the R programming language and the RStudio integrated development environment (IDE) with RMarkdown.

3. Given the nature of this work, the use of other collaborative tools or version control systems is not considered. However, under normal circumstances, tools like Git for version control and facilitating iteration between different project phases until reaching a final product could be employed. Additionally, depending on the team size, collaborative work tools such as Slack or Teams may be required.

4. Similarly, and in line with the previous point, a detailed plan with a schedule for each phase would be necessary.

Summary of tasks addressed in this phase:

• 1. Definition of the population: Countries with a population at or above the threshold of senescence, with a positive economic evolution.

• 2. Data collection: Due to the nature of the required data, primary data is unavailable as it pertains to “state” data not held by the companies. Therefore, we need to collect data from:
  • Secondary sources: Data collected by other institutions or derived from research studies.
  • Tertiary sources: Data collected from third parties. These sources do not directly come from the publisher but are reputable sources such as the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), etc. These official sources compile data from other official sources, in this case, states or nations.

For this project, the data will originate from third-party sources as described above, which are official data collected by institutions with the social objective of conducting statistical work.

• 3. Identification of variables: In this phase, we have identified income, population density, age, infrastructure, resources, and population safety as key variables for the target population.