You’re in it so manage it!

Wherever you look companies are working together. Supply chains and networks abound, alliances develop, everybody is someone’s customer or supplier whether it’s goods or services. Some of these will be huge and span the world. Others will be smaller and more focused. Their aims will be to serve markets more efficiently, standardise quality, improve resilience and reduce complexity. There will be a variety of degrees of closeness from buying or selling just on cost to team working.

 All of this can add up to a very complicated picture and you are in it whether you know it or not. Regardless of what kind of relationship you think you have it is important to discover exactly how crucial to your business they are. You can do this by answering the following questions for each one:

 ·         Who are the companies that supply you? Who are your customers?

 ·         How strategically important is their product or service to you?

 ·         Who do we talk to and who talks on our behalf? How often do we talk to them?

 ·         What is the level of uncertainty in this product/service/relationship?

 ·         How complicated is the product/service/relationship?

 ·         Is there potential for growth or a new direction/opportunity?

 ·         What are the risks from relationship failure and what mitigation is there?

 If the answers to questions have made you realise that certain relationships require greater oversight than you are currently providing, then you are missing opportunities for increasing your bottom line. Many organisations like the idea or caché of being seen to be ‘Successful Collaborators’ but do not put any effort into partnering relationships. In our experience this benefit can amount up to 30% bottom line improvement year on year.

 “We didn’t realise that they pre-tested the boards before delivery and guaranteed 100% reliability. We had our engineers on rotation testing the 40 individual components for the last 5 years.” CEO, non-destructive testing equipment manufacturer

 For more in-depth discussion and guidance on how to identify and manage collaborative relationships see our book