Keywords: networking

It's a program that aims to locate and match companies/institutions from different countries that have potential to cooperate. Bilkent CYBERPARK B2B Matching Methodology is an international business development program designed by Bilkent CYBERPARK to facilitate creation of partnerships at international level. Through this program, companies can reach the right partners.

High tech companies sometimes struggle to introduce their companies and solutions to partners, as well as to reach other business and professional groups that they can cooperate with. Well-designed matchmaking activities at international level are of great importance to overcome these challenges. Bilkent CYBERPARK B2B Matching Methodology locates and matches companies/institutions from different countries that have potential to cooperate at the highest level and enhance the global technology-based ecosystem. Even with regular trade delegations or fair visits, it can be difficult for companies to locate the right partners. For the correct match, the company should know about potential partners products and capabilities as well as terms of collaboration. As a first step of the B2B Matching Methodology, project executives meet with key institutions and companies to determine the scope of the program. Requests for participation are collected and profile documents completed where companies state their products/services, the sector, and types of collaboration (like tech transfer, distributor search, customer search, etc). All profiles are distributed among key organizations networks, and used to match participants.

Most existing trade delegations and matching activities offer direct matches without any analysis of the products/services offered, and have few expectations on any potential cooperation. With a regular matching event, two companies seeking a subcontractor on image processing can be matched and yet leave the meeting without any solid result. If there is a successful match, it depends on the luck of the participants. Thanks to Bilkent CYBERPARK B2B Matching Methodology, participating companies are able to see and select the other participants by examining the profile document of companies that will attend the event from other side, before it takes place. The efficiency of matches is enhanced by the fact that the event has been organized around scope determined during pre committee. All these efforts prevent irrelevant matches that can result in inefficient outcomes.

Bilkent CYBERPARK methodology was first applied at the Ethiopia-Turkey Business forum. Before the event, a pre-committee was organized in Ethiopia and the scope of the event was established. Then, participating companies were matched and B2B meetings held with 45 companies from Turkey holding at least 10 meetings each. There were more than 450 meetings in total. A delegation from Ethiopia subsequently visited Turkish participant firm NetCAD to transform the existing negotiations into an international business alliance. The methodology was also applied at the Malaysia-Turkey Business Forum where a similar pre-committee delegation determined the scope of the event before participating companies were matched. Each participating company carried out more than 15 meetings and over 200 interviews took place. After the event, the participating companies visited Malaysia and the Malaysian companies came to Turkey. Negotiations are continuing intensively to transform negotiations with Malaysian companies into a jointly established international partnership. To sum up, under that program, Bilkent CYBERPARK arranged two international events in Ethiopia and in Malaysia. In total, 58 Turkish companies joined these events and more than 650 B2B meetings took place. As all the meetings are pre-studied and held on a need-demand basis, the percentage of follow up meetings is much higher.

The main users of the program are high tech SMEs that want to increase their presence in the international arena and open to any cooperation type at any international level.