Sustaining strategic alliances for success requires short-term planning and planning over the long-term. You need to determine how to best use your available resources to ensure you have the infrastructure in place. An article posted on the Financial Post talks about building and maintaining strategic alliances.
“As companies enter into an array of alliances, the potential for achieving benefits can increase dramatically.”
A portfolio of alliances needs to match your corporate strategy to properly manage complex issues and risks for failure that are present. This requires identifying the requirements that are needed for building strategic alliances. An alliance that you create needs to support existing business strategies.
Portfolio Partner Selection
This is a process that involves creating criteria for partner selection, developing a process that you will use for evaluation and the testing of any potential partners. If you currently have existing partners, then you need to ensure new partners will be cohesive and have the required experience. You need to make sure a balance exists between needed experience and effectiveness. An alignment is needed between new partners and the core values of your business. This is important when making alliances that have a language or cultural barrier.
Building Alliance Structure
The growth strategy for your business will need to be a good fit and have resources available that measure results after implementing partnerships. You may need to assign a person in your organization to assess threats and find solutions to any obstacles that occur. This is crucial to ensure that the resources of a partner can be easily integrated.
Portfolio Growth Measurement
The tracking, identification and capturing of metrics is important for the success of a strategic alliance you create. Metrics that you will need include those related to your strategy, financial data and the relationship with customers.
If you have any questions about strategic alliances, then contact us for more information.