A Risk Framework for New Country Compliance for Global Software Companies

Software companies typically select new countries of operation based on cost, talent availability and other factors. In certain cases, however, new countries of operation are determined by customer locations and preferences. For e.g., a product implementation for a customer in a new country or a global rollout of an application increasingly involves setting up some level of operations in new countries. Newer, less familiar countries are unknown entities from the aspect of the risk of setting up and running software operations. There is the need for a comprehensive risk framework that can aid in the proactive assessment of risk for a new country to enable the right business decision to be made. Additionally, the framework should enable the organization to proactively manage, respond to the risks well ahead of time, and ultimately help to establish successful operations in total compliance. We analyse the risk framework new country compliance from a large IT services company and propose areas of further research to increase the robustness of this framework.