What general name would you call a company that acts as an intermediary between other companies around the globe? May be a silly question but my English is failing me. NAF.
Agent?
Perhaps you’re thinking of broker?
Or maybe an escrow company.
Broker, if they act as intermediary, bringing together two other parties who will then effect a transaction. In addition, a broker will usually act as agent for one of the parties to the transaction. There might be more specific terms in particular fields of commerce or trade.
As a generic, what’s wrong with intermediary?
Thanks guys I just got called into a meeting where they outlined this plan for me and asked me what the English word for that would be. The plan in essence is a single contact point within Japan for a range of services (legal, financial, accounting, translation etc etc). I thought of:
ABC facilitator
ABC liason
ABC portal
They had in mind ABC producer, which gives me a different connotation.
OK, the contact point in Japan is presumably giving people access to services provided by other entities, not to services which it provides.
I agree with you that “producer” is wrong.
Would you say that ABC entity was marketing or selling the services of the other entities? And, is ABC the sole entity in Japan through which these services are sold?
ABC may be a sales agent, or an exclusive sales agent, “Agent” used to be quite common as a term for a business which has the right - often but not always the sole right - to market some imported product or servcie in its territory. Thus you could have “X and Sons Ltd - Agent for Steinway Pianos”. Or “sole agent in Australia for Steinway Pianos”. Thus if you were in Australia, and wanted to buy a Steinway, you would have to deal with X & Sons.
With globalisation, companies more and more own or part-own their distributors in foreign markets, and they rename them as, e.g., Steinway Australia. Even if they don’t own the local distributors, they will often licence them to use the company name. Owned or not, the local distributors are still agents for the manufacturing entity, but the descriptor “agent” is not much used.
No. In fact the client might not even know who ultimately does the work. ABC would only market themselves. They would do some of the work, and outsource what they couldn’t handle.
No. A client could go elsewhere to get the same services, but they would have to deal with multiple entities if they wanted services from different professions. It would be more of a ‘one-stop’, all your needs fulfilled, kind of business.
OK. In that case, ABC is providing the services, some of them directly and some of them by arranging for others to do so. To the extent that ABC provides services itself, “producer” is not unreasonable, though “producer” more normally refers to goods than to services.
The “one-stop-shop” concept is supposed to be seamless, so the customer is presumably not supposed to care, and possibly doesn’t even need to know, which of the services are provided by ABC directly, and whidh by other entities. In that case the way in which ABC is named and marketed to potential customers will presumably not draw attention to this point, so a name like “ABC Services” would seem indicated.
However, in terms of describing what ABC actually does vis-a-vis the other entities whose services it secures for its customers, I think they are agents for the other entitles.