Strategic Alliance and Your Business
What is Strategic Alliance?
An agreement between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon objectives needed while remaining independent organizations.
This strategy provides more flexibility than a joint ventures because the involved parties do not need to merge any assets or funds in order to proceed.
Benefits:
– Your strategic alliance gives you instant endorsement and credibility
– You gain access to the networks of your partners through their database of customers, members, or employees
– You develop a referral partnership
– You associate your business with another established brand
– You decrease your overall marketing costs, while expanding your reach
– You position yourself as the specialist (expert) in your niche through the endorsement of your strategic partner to their network
– You learn from other businesses regarding what has been successful for them in the past
Here is some great advice when it comes to alliances:
– Create a solid business plan backed up by a detailed contract
– Define metrics for assessing the value your alliance delivers
– Seek common ground with your partners
– Establish formal systems and structures
Here are some principles that complement the conventional advice above:
– Focus less on defining the business plan and more on how you’ll work together
– Develop metrics pegged not only to alliance goals, but also to alliance progress
– Instead of trying to eliminate differences, leverage them to create value
– Go beyond formal governance structures to encourage collaborative behavior
– Spend as much time on managing internal stakeholders as on managing the relationship with your partners
Source Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_alliance
Source Credit: https://hbr.org/2007/11/simple-rules-for-making-alliances-work
If you would like to learn more about how this might apply to your business, let’s talk:
