The definition for an alliance is when two (or more) organizations combine their resources to create new value that could not be (easily) achieved by either party alone. Innovation is often described as the process of combining disparate ideas to create something new and in today’s business climate often requires a collaborative approach. It is [...]
Market Impact embraces those strategies that are aimed at growing the businesses of the allied partners. It includes strategies such as entering new markets, gaining a market share position, and generally expanding the capability to gain new customers. The top five selections of our best practices survey respondents in this category are depicted in the chart below: [...]
The Strategy of Alliances Alliances in the technology sector are overwhelmingly evaluated based on revenue and for good reason. They deliver incremental revenue over above business as usual. However, revenue is a lagging indicator and does not provide insight into whether the alliance is achieving the strategic objectives for which it was formed. Revenue at the [...]
Business model transformation is one of the most disruptive changes a business can face and it isn’t pretty. As often is the case in disruption, those companies with the most invested in the old model have the most to lose since making the shift will cannibalize their existing business. But if they don’t make the [...]
Collaboration between technology providers and their channel partners has never been more important. Creating a sustainable partnership begins with the customer value proposition. Without customer value, there is no reason to partner! This requires you to get inside the head of the ultimate end user of your products and services and fundamentally understand the motivation to buy. [...]
Because more and more, channels are becoming the preferred route to market for alliances. As a recent CRN article on the VCE alliance illustrates, when alliance managers choose channels they need to understand how they work, what motivates channel partners, what are the economics, and how to deal with channel conflict. With new models of [...]
Channels are under pressure as never before. They have been subject to compressing product margins over the years; first on hardware, then software and now - pressure from a business model perspective in adjusting from transactional payment to recurring revenue driven by the SaaS (software as a service). Forward thinking resellers have been migrating their business [...]
One of the challenges of professional development is retaining the knowledge and incorporating the new learning into the day to day business practice. Most of us intuitively understand the limitations of classroom training. While most well-crafted training includes discussion and practice exercises, it is through immediate use that learning is best retained and the business results are realized. Reinforcement and motivation [...]
Every organization has a unique culture as a result of the norms, values and accepted behaviors that are held within the community. People are often unaware that they do function within a company culture. However, when they begin to work closely with another company culture, they become aware of those differences because of the disconnects [...]
Collaborative competencies are a distinct set of skills that effective alliance professionals have in applying the processes and practices described in the previous blog but collaborative competencies also include many ‘soft skills’. The softskills are ironically the most difficult ones, often gained through on-the-job-training and years of experience. These include being able to assemble virtual, [...]