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Organizations must no longer stand alone in the marketplace if they want to be successful. According to panelists at the Chicago GSB Marketing Roundtable on November 17 at Gleacher Center, the way to optimize business growth is to form strategic alliances. In fact, developing mutually beneficial partnerships between the right companies can even be woven into a firm’s marketing strategy.
As customer needs rapidly change, market opportunities come and go quickly and the costs and risks of going it alone continue to increase, organizations have to consider strategic alliances as a key part of their growth strategies, said moderator D. Keith Pigues, founder and partner of Profitable Growth Partners LLC, a strategic marketing consulting firm.
Trust is a key element in a successful alliance, according to Ann Trampas, vice president of global alliances at SPSS Inc., which produces data analysis software. It can be the difference between a four-page contract negotiated in three days and a 350-page contract negotiated for several months, she said.
Organizations work because of the people who work for them, said John Conlon, vice president of global alliances at Infosys. A critical success factor of an alliance is the personal relationships developed between the champions of the alliance in each organization. Companies don’t have relationships. People do.
Firms that strike up relationships must have the right motivation, said Melissa Giovagnoli, president of Networlding, an organization that helps clients build better relationships both outside and inside the firm. There must be a reason to create a strategic alliance, such as, ‘How can we do something different and compelling?’
Marti Konstant, ’95