Strategic partnering: Compelling Winning Solution

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The times are indeed turbulent in the marketplace. Competition is tough and getting tougher. Businesses, no matter what it takes, must stay afloat. We must mitigate challenges in the marketplace; strive for improved performance and enhance strengths in order to compensate for weaknesses. We must think through efforts that are not giving us the much-needed results, adopt better and greater efforts and ramp-up urgently, value-adding actions.

In view of the present state of affairs in the marketplace and according to statistics, 90 percent of businesses across the globe have made a definite shift and developed as well as grown appetite for strategic collaboration or strategic partnering. Sixty-five percent are still “in and out” and 35 percent have adopted it in emerging markets. Strategic partnering and alignment has become the solution “to attack volatile and hostile marketplace”.

Strategic alliances are voluntary arrangements between organisations. The features are; sharing of knowledge, resources and capabilities with the intent of developing processes, products and services. It enables successful implementation of corporate strategy and achieving corporate goals. Another name for it is: “the partner synergy that drives resource alignment and dynamic business stratification”.

Some of the advantages are: the strengthening of competitive advantage. It enables participating companies to enter new markets and provide access to complementary assets e.g. raw materials and intermediate goods. This strategy promotes marketing and sales, and after sales services as well as support. It enables participating organisations to learn new capabilities that create a hedge against uncertainty in the market place. Collaborating organisations create larger pies by way of products and services in this strategic arrangement.

“The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators”, according to Edward Gibbon. Strategic collaboration and cooperation is partnership navigation. This deliberate and successful navigation requires deep strategic skills, strong determination and resilience. You must keep it going until you achieve beneficial goals. According to the three Bardins; Luc, Raphael and Guillaume: “These enterprise navigation, performance progression, destination and substance navigation as well as people and internal navigation, are like the best stories that require the right beginning, and an orderly and continuous narrative to ensure they reach a fantastic ending”.

It boosts performance by enabling pragmatically thought-through business plans, cross-fertilization of ideas by leaders of partnering organisations, deep understanding of tasks. It also delivers transformed values, builds engagement, enables better preparation and guarantees achievements of targets.

John Izzo and Jeff Vanderwielen pointed out that strategic partnering marked the real beginning of the “Purpose Revolution”. It is a game changing progression.

Inge Thulin, President and Chairman of 3M said that “an enterprise that is not focused on strategic collaboration to ensure sustainability for their products, services and customers will not exist in 50 years”.

Mutual Benefits Assurance Plc, a financial services conglomerate, aligns with the words of Stephen Odell, Executive Vice President of Ford Motor Company, “Our business thrives on strong value-adding partnerships to remain at the forefront of competition and change”.

In Mutual Benefits, partnership is the key to growth and the reason for the company’s verifiable successes. It truly sustains competitive advantage, unify strategic collaborators and has essentially transformed Mutual Benefits’ value. Collaboration removes chance from business strategies, guarantees value-adding relationships, long term value creation and strategic thinking as well as flawless and determined execution. It fosters trust as an essential mechanism for shared successes.

We partnered with Punch Newspapers to alleviate the company’s risk management activities. We facilitated purchase of brand new Hyundai and Toyota cars to middle class employees in the private sector; and buses for primary and secondary schools.

We created an all-risks cover for PZ (Peterson Zochonis) to ensure value to their customers. Purchase of Samsung phones and devices were made possible through Mutual Benefits lease arrangement. We collaborated with retired top armed forces’ officers and former Chief Executives of big private companies to “sell” insurance and achieve regular inflows under a franchise arrangement. Car-hire owners at all Nigerian Airports also benefited from Mutual Benefits strategic partnering programmes. Also, Lagos State Association of Butchers and Ladipo Spare Parts Market traders benefited from partnering with us.

Our company shipped knocked-down parts of motorcycles and assembled hundreds of thousands of them, to ease the acute transportation problems in Liberia. Today, in Niger Republic, low and middle class workers have access to good health and medical facilities through collaboration with Mutual Benefits.

The growth potentials of this win-win strategy include; revved-up revenue and inflow, enhanced products and services, greater value-adding impact on customers, high growth, technology exchange, joint development, packaged solutions, knowledge and solution sharing and offering, training, marketing and operational collaborations and all-round new initiatives.

It is not only money that strategic partnering makes available but also better machinery and mechanism for production and revenue. Also, outside-in and inside-out perspectives for employees of partnering companies.

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Strategic partnering and alignment impacts the entire workforce of participating organisations. You must invest resources: money, time, talent and understanding; reputation: visibility, credibility and brand equity; critical capabilities or core competencies; chemistry of key people: culture, character, personalities and partnering companies’ vision which includes values and strategy. According to Stanford University, everybody must personally work to make the partnership successful because there are good reasons for partnering and the alignment is for the benefit of all.

Lynda Kate-Smith, facilitator at Stanford University’s seminar on partner synergy, outlined the “best practices for managing and measuring partner relationship”. We must tell the truth to ourselves always. We must seek to understand each partner’s position in case of conflict and never talk negatively of each other. Do not undermine each other’s organisation. Personal interests of opportunistic individuals must not be allowed to mess things up. We must stick to each other, focus and appreciate each other’s value.

It is a life cycle and partnering organisations must therefore demonstrate commitment to continuous value-adding relationship on progressive scales. Lynda Smith said “You must commit to the fact that there is a life cycle behind the relationship. You must therefore, be there for each other. We must fully understand the alignment, the strategy, opportunities, tactical moves and compelling motivators.” We must encourage enablers and be mindful of blockers. Measurements can be done regularly on success achieved.

I strongly recommend that you adopt strategic partnering to make the difference in your business.

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