From shortlist to setup

The 90-day window most teams underestimate

Most expansion projects pour energy into the location decision — assessment, shortlist, board approval. The work that determines actual outcomes happens after the decision, in a 90-day window most teams under-resource.

This is the gap between “we’ve chosen Country X” and “we’re operating in Country X.” It’s where momentum is preserved or quietly lost. Six months later, the difference between a clean entry and a stalled one is almost always traceable to choices made — or skipped — in this window.

What usually goes wrong:

• The team that ran the selection isn’t the team that runs the setup. Knowledge transfer is informal. The detail of why specific commitments were made gets lost between handoffs.
• Entity setup is treated as a checkbox handled by a corporate services firm. It is. But the sequencing — which approvals trigger which, which government touchpoints unlock which timelines — is rarely owned by anyone with the relationships to expedite it.
• The first local hire is rushed. Because the rest of the project can’t move until someone local is in place, the bar drops. A mediocre first hire creates two years of compounding cost.
• Government relationships built during selection go cold. The state team that helped you decide deserves regular updates during setup. Many companies disappear after signing the MoU and reappear only when they need something. Responsiveness drops accordingly.
• Real estate is locked in before the operating model is clear. Lease commitments made on headcount assumptions that haven’t been validated.

The discipline that helps is treating the 90 days post-decision as a managed project with the same rigour as the selection — same project lead, named handoffs, weekly stakeholder updates including to government, real estate sequenced behind, not ahead of, hiring conviction.

Nueconomy stays engaged through this window — managing the government cadence, sequencing approvals, and keeping the relationships warm while the operating reality takes shape. The decision matters. The 90 days after often matter more.