OCRI Global Marketing is here to help support and to help expand you business, to facilitate trade, and to relocate your business to the Ottawa region.  OGM focuses on four major areas to achieve its goals of globally marketing and branding the region, facilitating trade, and attracting investment, people, and companies critical to our growth and success.  These four areas include Investment, Business Development, Cluster Support, and Information Management:

Investment

At OGM our focus is to be your key point of contact as you work through the site selection process. After an initial conversation that helps us to understand your needs, we are able to:

• Prepare a summary of the most current market, economic and demographic information.
• Supply individually tailored research on available land and buildings, labour availability, research and development opportunities and any other issue specific to your project.
• Coordinate site visits to help you understand how the Ottawa region can best support your company’s growth.
• Work with local business development partners to ensure your requirements will be met.
• Coordinate with all levels of government, helping you with such matters as research and development tax credits or designing workforce training programs.
• Coordinate with local professional services to ensure that you are provided with reliable and current advice on all matters associated with your expansion project.

Business Development

At OGM, our focus is to provide information, to facilitate trade and to help our local high tech businesses expand locally and globally.  We work with our local Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to foster growth and trade:

Locally

• Responding to requests for information and strategic support from internal and external stakeholders.
• Taking the lead in developing and promoting a consistent message that positions Ottawa and Ottawa-based businesses for success.
• Facilitation of incoming business missions.
• Business matching – the pairing of international companies with our local businesses with similar interests to facilitate trade, mergers, joint ventures, growth, etc.
• Provide marketing materials on the region and local industries, which are downloadable and usable by our local companies.
• Ensures the coordination of efforts between the three levels of government, the academic sector and the private industries.
• Trade Show support and coordination for local SMEs.
• Provide information sessions on trade and export information into specific target markets and locations – including our Doing Business Series.
• Conduct and accumulate comparative research on Ottawa’s position in the global knowledge-based economy.

Globally

• Market, brand and promote a consistent message that positions Ottawa and Ottawa-based businesses for success.
• Provide exporting information to local SMEs.
• International relationship management focusing on key areas and informal partnerships to aid in the international expansion of our local firms.
• Explore, research and evaluate market entry into target locations for our local SMEs.
• Facilitation and coordination of outgoing business missions and international business matching for our local SMEs to target areas.

Cluster Support

OGM has been assisting the City in the development and implementation of a cluster support program. The principal of this support is to ensure that the clusters maintain their identity and flexibility while maximizing the effectiveness of volunteers and minimizing demands for funding:

OGM provides the local industry clusters with:

• Logistic support including financial management, website and database management, and event organization.
• A mechanism for clusters to partner and leverage existing community resources, including OCRI, ultimately to accelerate the growth of companies and employment.
• Forums to identify the challenges facing local companies, and develop company-backed strategic initiatives to address the challenges.

Information Management

We manage the database and web functions used within the OGM group in order to:

• Ensure that these tools are responding to the needs of OGM.
• Maintain and update the Ottawa Technology Industry Guide.
• Monitor the common data and information to ensure its timeliness, integrity and accuracy.