Too Many Broths Spoil The Cook!! Leverage The Power Of Partnership

Unlike the old saying goes “too many cooks spoil the broth”, considering the current economic recession and market several cooks are needed to cater all the broth!!
Every innovative and kinetic organization today needs to keep improving and extending its service boundaries and quality level. Of course with such competitive market out there no business can work through all these verticals simultaneously. The best approach for such scenario is to build up sensible alliances.
To ensure that your business survives in this era of highly unpredictable market trends and unstable economical conditions all around the globe; global partnership, alliances and co-sourcing is the key.
However, there are several considerations before attempting to build a successful business alliance. Some of those are as below:
o Identify your and your targeted partner’s strengths and limits.
o Discuss and clarify the corporate goal of both the companies.
o Set out clearly the role of each partner, the expectation from each other and most importantly the plan how to execute the partnership efficiently.
o Remember that this relation is not just to add a name to your partner list but a successful partnership is where everyone involved gets the benefit that one could not have achieved individually.
o Define, discuss and revise the targets of the venture.
o Seek and layout opportunities for shared-services, shared resources and other such “non-financial” benefits.
o Encourage your partners to coordinate with your other partner so as to keep and maintain a partner network. There are more benefits attached when a network is formed as everyone can see profits for their business and thus want to be an active participant of the network.
Partnerships can be the best step in improving your company’s ROI. BY leveraging on each other’s strengths, sharing service and resources and by co-sourcing projects the investment cost of project can be lowered as the investment burden is shared while the returns will be better as compared to the investment.
If you want to earn benefits for your company, plan a partnership model that yields benefits for your partner too because only those partnerships survive that are beneficial equally for everyone as no one has time to bring profits to your company unless its beneficial for them.
To capture all the potentials that your market has to offer for your business, without risking your investment in too many verticals, the most intelligent choice is to make sensible alliances with the aim to make them long-lasting and trustworthy.
I specially like a quote by Henry Ford for the benefits of working together “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”



5 Comments

  • Olga Lednichenko

    Yes. Too many – is a bit too -many 🙂
    its hard to manage many .. unless of course :
    [1] Despite the individual aberrations and inclinations – they -share-and-work toward a common goal
    [2] Their individual differences are a source of advantage – not a bottle-neck.
    [3] They can collaborate in tandem
    Cheers
    Olga Lednichenko
    http://olgalednichenko.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/bridge-between-content-business-technical-pros-the-q-as/
    Cheers
    Olga Lednichenko

  • David R Bristow

    Hi Tabinda,
    You find the synergies and work with your major customers by combining the best of their in house strengths with your won resources on combined promotional, marketing and selling initiatives. By leveraging the best of the strengths of both organisations in a common purpose you achieve numerous win wins.
    1. You lock yourself into your client making it hard for the competition to compete and gain relative share.
    2. You add your own excellence to that of the client in a mutually symbiotic and beneficial relationship.
    3. You increase your possibility of sales growth as you exploit your own and your clients networks, skills and opportunities both learning in the process.
    4. You increase your level penetration into the market particularly as manufacturer working in parallel with 3rd party distributor.
    5. You develop much closer working relationships than you ever would in a typical push pull client scenario.
    6. You find new ideas and opportunities through this symbiosis as a different perspective, knowledge and experience is added to your own.
    7. Now your client has a vested interest in making this relationship work and this means more commitment to the success of the venture.
    I have used this strategy extremely effectively in widely diverse industries including within a multinational for the last 25 years and to my surprise a year ago I supervised external sales training courses where it was presented as a novelty and new thinking!!!
    Perhaps I really should write that book…….
    Best wishes
    David

  • Hi Tabinda,
    Considering that an impending recession could affect adversely the profitability of a company in their traditional markets, partnership with other companies could prove be helpful from a long term perspective, if we consider the following issues:
    1. Outsourcing non-core business activities could be an excellent tactic in reducing operational costs, assuring operational continuity in critical operational environments and providing the right conditions to concentrate time, resources and talent to core tasks with true business value.
    2. Offshoring part of the workforce when costs of talent in countries like India could be lower than those for equivalent talent in USA, and taking in consideration that collaborative technologies like videoconferencing, instant messaging and knowledge management systems will offer the opportunity of managing effectively to teams geographically dispersed, looking for partnership in other countries as a cost-effective way to offer a better customer service could be an excellent idea to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency.
    3. Partnership is a common alternative when a company is looking to participate in new markets or wants to develop its commercial operations in other countries. In such a perspective, this partnership is instrumental in mitigating risks related in developing operations in other countries with different cultures, taxes and commercial regulations.
    4. In companies developing new products, partnerships is needed to make associations with providers of electronic components for these products as a valid tactic to ensure the existence the parts and components needed to product and market such product commercially in a competitive way.
    I hope this helps you.
    Octavio

  • I agree. This is why I agree. Some companies today still do not get the fact that by going global can help your long range longevity in a business. some think that by being local is the way to be they dont see the need to go beyound borders or oceans and they the non wonderers risk the chance of becoming obsolete. so yes it it imparative to partner up globally and make your business model reflect that.
    Point in case today I had the chance to be at a import -export meeting with business owners that have gone on to make there companies global. some had no idea what that meant to theirs it was not an option they see that by having a product and others need it it makes good sense to export it out that to keep it all in one location and risk it not selling versus the need of the world being bigger and more of better option to get their goods sold. the gold of many and most business is to make money. ok some are non profit
    Thats my story and Im sticking to it.

  • Strongly agree.
    I tried to bring US products to international markets and I had very limited success.
    Once I engaged international partners and JV’s they helped us understand the uniqueness of their market needs, and leveraged their relationships that ultimately resulting in accelerating our sales
    Links:
    http://www.gettunedin.com
    Mark

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