KOTRA, Korea's national investment and trade promotion agency, will transform into a global business consulting firm by improving global networking of its overseas branch offices. KOTRA president Hong Gi-wha Wednesday unveiled the master plan of the agency's organizational reshuffle aimed at leveraging both the innovative capacity of the company and the business efficiency of its 105 overseas branch offices in 73 countries worldwide. "KOTRA has lived on revenues from standardized routine businesses such as organizing overseas road shows and investor relations sessions by grouping Korean companies and supporting small and medium enterprises' overseas marketing activities," Hong said. Likening KOTRA's current situation to a BMW 7 Series with the chassis of the latest 2005 model but with an engine developed five years ago, Hong said the time is ripe for his company to enhance its overseas branch offices' innovative capacities that would help attach high added value to KOTRA's businesses. Hong said the "Innovation KOTRA" project is aimed at improving efficiency of global networking among overseas branch offices and converting its overseas branch offices and employees from generalists to specialists. The organizational restructuring is largely based on the "select and focus" scheme, shedding some industrial areas that are deemed unprofitable. Under the organizational shakeup, which will take effect on Oct. 1, KOTRA will reorganize its 101 overseas branch offices under eight regional headquarter offices, seven function-specific belts and 10 industry-specific belts. Most notable change in the organizational reform is the adoption of 10 industrial belts: automobile, IT, cultural contents, plant, textile, machinery, environment, medical and biotech, agro-fishery products, and optical. For instance, KOTRA will create a direct organic cooperative network among its overseas offices in Frankfurt, Nagoya, Shanghai and Detroit, cities currently serving as production bases of global auto giants, to form an automobile industry belt. Such specific industry specialized belt, in which its overseas offices in auto powerhouse cities share information, would enable KOTRA to grasp both global auto industry and overseas customer trends more accurately and swiftly, thereby allow Korean vendors and investors to act ahead of their global rivals and rapidly cope with global trends. Functional belts will link overseas branches into seven groups by specific functions categorized into convention and exhibition, investment opportunity exploration, logistics and distribution network, international bids for government procurement projects, energy cooperation, market research and attracting investment. The regional belt will maintain the current structure of eight regional headquarter offices that are divided into strategic foreign markets of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, China, Latin America, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Central Asia. KOTRA will also redesign the marketing strategies according to specific regional markets. Another key concept of the functional reform of KOTRA's overseas branches is that the headquarters will no longer take the initiative in running all the overseas projects but a foreign office will be in charge. Thus, the direct communication channel will reduce the time wasted from overseas offices exchanging information only through the headquarters. KOTRA plans to execute more than 30 percent of its annual budget on reorganizing its overseas offices under regional, functional and industrial belts to settle the system in a short period of time, while seeking active participation by specific industry lobby groups and associations. The agency plans to reduce the number of previous trade shows and investor relations sessions to ease the workload increase for its overseas offices from the organizational shakeup.