4 Reasons Why a Business Alliance is Important

business alliance importantA business alliance is especially relevant for every business owner. This formal relationship of multiple organizations focuses on mutual business objectives. Essentially, a business alliance poses an important array of benefits to strengthen your business. Continue reading

Why Alliances for IoT Marketplace Success?

Creating alliances between companies involved in the IoT, (Internet of Things), can be tricky at times, but a requirement for entry into this marketplace.

The cold hard truth is that the IoT will not be able to survive if companies don’t create alliances between each other. There is not a single company that can provide all pieces of an IoT solution. It is very important that those involved in the IoT create partnerships.

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Choosing the Best Business Alliances

Today’s market is extremely competitive, increasing the need and the importance of forming the ideal business alliance. Alliances are formed for many reasons, including the need for increased cash, to come up with viable solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems, to stay abreast of new technological advances and the need to gain market shares, among others. Continue reading

3 Things Most Successful Businesses do to Build Strategic Alliances

How extensive is your vetting procesprocessTo reap the rewards of a strong strategic alliance, a business must first study and consider following the steps other successful businesses. Doing your research is mandatory to laying a solid foundation for thriving strategic alliances for the future. Planning and research before you start pays dividends long after the partnership has started.

Before making plans to build your strategic alliance, Continue reading

Good Communication is Vital to Alliance Management

In alliance management, according to a Harvard Business Review article, companies tend to forget that they are working together because of their differences. Rather they must embrace those differences and find a way to leverage and create value from them.  The article cites the partnership between Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft as a positive example of how this works.  At first, the two companies differed in their approaches to sales which caused friction and misunderstanding.  Continue reading

5 Key Alliance Management Tips

Consider this phrase: Alliance Management. On the surface, it sounds like a good idea, right? You want to carefully maintain your alliances. On the other hand, how exactly does one go about this? By the very nature of the word, you do not control – or entirely manage – those with whom you are allied. They work for another companyAlliance Management 700x400 with different management, different goals and different products.

How can you make this work, then? Continue reading

Is there an alliance for IoT marketplace?

If you know about the Internet of Things, than you know the next big thing. And it is already happening! The evolution of computing moved forward by combining computing and connectivity to change our world.

The basic concept is that makers of “things” will make them so that they can wirelessly connect to other “things” to create better solutions for people. Want an example? Continue reading

Alliance Organizations for the Internet of Things (IoT)

According to VentureBeat.com, a group of the largest heavy hitters in the IT world are forming what has been called the AllSeen Alliance with over 180 worldwide member companies. This alliance will take on the task of creating and maintaining unified standards for device-to-device communication. The Allseen Alliance announced its existence in 2013. It joins a number of forming alliances that are tasking themselves with the development of communication protocol standards to make the IoT operate smoothly. Continue reading

Alliances for IoT Marketplace: Evolving Alliances

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? Is it viable? Should my company be part of it and if so, how do we go about it? All good questions.

The IoT, loosely defined, is the ability of objects to share data with other objects wirelessly to enable that data to be used to control or manipulate devices intelligently. IoT is the next generation of connected devices. We have moved from having computers in dedicated rooms, to mobile devices to connected devices. Devices consist, as a minimum, of a controller chip and software. Chips are getting smaller. Alliances are a must! Continue reading

Constructive Forms of Strategic Alliances

 

The best strategic alliances between two or more companies are those where company resources complement each other. At the same time, not all contributed resources can be used effectively in an alliance.

There are two major forms of constructive strategic alliances between companies, Continue reading

6 Questions to Ask Before Developing Strategic Alliances

Strategic alliances can increase market share, reduce competition, improve expertise, and open the door to new funding opportunities – but not all strategic alliances are created equal. The truth is that sometimes a strategic alliance can cause more harm than good if the partner company has different goals, gets more than it gives, or otherwise fails to live up to its side of the deal.

Before you set up a strategic alliance, ask yourself these questions first: Continue reading

Avoid Making Business Alliances Vulnerable

Unlike many other partnerships found in life, business alliances are not the most natural thing to create. Human beings come together as friends, romantic partners, and co-workers, but businesses are often thought of as adversaries. Despite this general perspective, studies show business alliances often raise profits and generate other benefits for both partners. The only problem is many of these alliances fail.

The Facts About Alliance Failure

Entrepreneurs may be alarmed to learn about the high failure rate of business alliances. Continue reading

Deming Management and Business Alliances: Quality and Efficiency

As those familiar with W. Edwards Deming know, Business Alliances are the most important part of supply chain management. For those not familiar with Deming, he was an American economist who rebuilt post-war Japan and came back to the United States in the 1980s to address why Japanese manufacturing had beaten American manufacturing. Total quality control is his most well-known ideas, but one of his 14 points addresses the need to develop strategic partnerships with suppliers.

In Out of The Crisis, he points out that Japanese companies learned early that “the best  Continue reading

3 Steps to Vetting Alliance Partners

Alliance Partners bring unique strengths to your business. Each partnership can bring support, innovation, resources, and intelligence to your business. With so much on the line, how do you decide who is your best alliance partner?

In any relationship, there is a vetting process which takes place before you commit to the relationship. Business alliances are no different than any other relationship in the vetting process. A young couple begins dating with discovery, exploration, testing, and more. Shouldn’t you be doing the same when you create an alliance?   Continue reading

Channels of Distribution Slowing You Down?

Channels of Distribution are key alliances a business can enter into. As pointed out by Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary on almost every episode, not getting distribution kills a company. Channels of Distribution move your product to potential customers.

For manufacturing companies, your distribution channels will be wholesalers and retailers Continue reading

Succeeding with Business Alliances

Why enter into a business alliance? The main motivations include cost reduction, the improvement of service or capture more customers. Here are 5 kinds of business alliances that business-oriented minds need to know about: Continue reading

Pitfalls and Benefits of Strategic Alliances

There’s an old saying that “two heads are better than one,” and it has never been truer than today. There are several benefits to connecting with another company in forming a strategic alliance, the corporate equivalent of putting two heads together.

Leverage knowledge and expertise from another company, without having to hire additional employees

Working together with another company in a formal strategic alliance provides your company access to additional experts, without having to hire them. Continue reading

Strategic Alliances Embodies Five Characteristics

Alliances originate in every shape and size, and then evolve to meet the requirements of the partners. Strategic alliances are high-maintenance commitments towards particular purposes. Do not consider them to be spontaneous, nor short-term. Strategic alliances in the technology world start at 5-10 years. For the pharmaceutical world, the time from conception to market is very long and expensive. Therefore their strategic alliances exist closer 15-20 years. In my local community, the mayors of more than 25 communities created an alliance in the 1980’s to grow the whole community. The fruit of their efforts are now blossoming. Continue reading

Collaboration Improves Business Growth

There is an element of business that is completely competitive, but there is more to it than that. For the most part, people think of business as a dog eat dog environment, but there are some moments when it is better to work with other businesses through collaboration.

Always Be Mindful Of What You Say

Based on the fact that so many people Continue reading

3 Tips to Follow for Business Collaboration

Collaboration is a powerful tool in business. Many times your organization can collaborate with another business to produce amazing results that otherwise would not have been obtained. We will discuss 3 tips to follow when collaborating with another business:

Tip One: Open Communication is king. To be successful Continue reading