Creating Winning Partnerships - Best Practices

In these turbulent markets, partnering often creates more synergy and value than doing
everything on your own. Partnering also creates new business opportunities and
expands the possibilities for the partners. However, many partnerships fail due to a
lack of strategic understanding and poor partnership execution between the partnering
companies.

This white paper presents some of the best practices that can be employed to create a
winning partnership.

Understand the Strategic Context of the Partnership

Some firms enter into partnerships without having a clear idea of the context in which
the partnership is supposed to operate. A lot of such companies jump prematurely into
partnerships. Some large companies struggle with more than one partnership with
different companies that run simultaneously across its business divisions.

Rather than following a tactical approach to forming partnerships, the organizations

should first clarify the strategic context in which the partnership operates. Deeper the
understanding, the easier it is to create more value out of the partnership.

The strategic priorities, core competencies, the nature of business opportunities, and
the organizational culture of both the partners are some of the most important factors
that affect the structure of the partnership. Understanding them deeply beforehand is
necessary to create a mutually beneficial partnership.

Develop a Partnership Strategy

Partnering on the basis of the available opportunities and tactical requirements can
pose some operational challenges later on. On the other hand, crafting a partnership
strategy that takes into account the strengths and weaknesses of both the
organizations, the gaps that need to be filled, the nature of the partnership, work flow
between the organizations, and drafting of clear management guidelines is more likely
to address the challenges of partnership in a more positive way.

Maintaining a degree of flexibility for both the organizations to respond to their

individual concerns is also an important factor that must be considered in the
partnership strategy. Clear partnership guidelines become even more important when
the partnership is meant to operate across business divisions and diverse markets.

Choose Your Partner with Care

A winning partnership needs a well thought-out partner selection process. The

selection process should ascertain the strategic confluence of the business interests of
the organizations, compatibility of the work cultures, commitment level of each
partner towards the partnership and advantages and risks each partner brings to the
partnership.

You need to have a compelling reason to have a worthy partner and also to be worthy
partner. What each partner brings to the table should be complementary and
synergistic in nature. Know what you can offer and offer it. Tell your partner what
you are expecting so that there is no misunderstanding in the later stages.

Nurture the Relationship

When the middle and lower level managements do not subscribe fully to the
objectives of the partnership, it may destabilize the partnership. To make the
partnership program a success, managements of both the organizations need to invest
in developing a common understanding of the purpose and goals of the partnership.

The relationship nurturing process should include all the important stakeholders from
both the partners. Each participant should be made to feel valued. Face to face
meetings, joint workshops, team building exercises and partnership reviews are some
tools that can be used to build trust between both teams.

Create Standardized Partnership Processes

To minimize misunderstandings and disruptions in operations, a standardized

operations process need to be created. The objectives of the program and the roles of
each participant in the program need to be clearly communicated in unambiguous
terms.

Each participant should have a clear idea of where the work flow progresses. The
partnership operations usually require robust information sharing mechanism and
strong communication platforms to ensure uninterrupted flow of business information.
Creating structured processes and making sure that every one perfectly understands
their role in the processes is the best way to synergize the strengths of the both
organizations.

Develop Go-To-Market Strategies

Executing marketing campaigns with partners can be tricky. They throw many
unforeseen surprises and setbacks. The best way to preempt these challenges is to
initiate a test run, if it is possible in your context, and see how it works out. Choosing
the easiest clients is a great way to build up confidence levels and nurture
relationships. Later on, the programs can focus on harder aspects of the partnership.
Developing a comprehensive go-to-market strategy is another way to offset any future
roadblocks. Such a strategy takes into account, the skills each partner brings to the
campaign and the challenges in synergizing them. It also helps to capitalize on the
core competencies of the partners and exploiting them to their greatest advantage.

Continually Monitor Your Performance

Things rarely turn out to be as planned. To make sure that the program progresses
smoothly as per the plan, you need to continually monitor its performance. If a person
or part of the plan is not performing as previously thought, then such discrepancy
should be corrected through a mutually agreed upon course-correction mechanism.

Technology-based and IP-content based partnerships are even more prone to distrust
and misunderstanding. Constant monitoring and high level interference to sort out the
issues is often necessary to keep things on the track.

As with all business activities, performance measurement is important in partnership

programs. The evaluation of each function with the appropriate metrics and key
performance indicators (KPIs) is necessary to make any necessary changes.

Create and Manage Partnership Portfolio

Very large corporations often have a multitude of partnership programs running side
by side. Sometimes, the same partner may be active in more than one partnership
program. Instead of delegating each program to the respective operations chief, it is
more useful to create and maintain a partnership portfolio.

Periodic review of all partnerships will throw light on the value that each program
brings. The insights gleaned from such analyses help the senior management to decide
the worthiness of each partnership program.

Know How to Exit

It’s not necessary that every partnership program turn out to be profitable to both the
partners. Incompatibility, shifting market conditions and a host of other forces may
derail the partnership or make the program redundant. In such cases, both the parties
need to work out a clear process to end the partnership in a mutually agreeable way.

Summary

Partnerships can fuel growth in unforeseen ways by producing value from the synergy
of two different organizations. While it might be tricky to identify a perfect
partnership, the rewards of embarking such a program are high. Creating winning
partnerships needs understanding at the top level managements and operational
synergy between the workforces.