Small businesses and organizations can richly benefit from strategic collaborative partnerships. Identifying the areas of the needs/wants you have and choosing the suitable partner are the keys to reaping the benefits.
Benefits of Strategic Partnerships and Effective Collaboration
Successful partnerships and collaboration can reap many benefits for your company or organization. Here are a few benefits of strategic partnerships.
- Faster time to market for your service/product through effective and efficient collaboration
- Better deliverables since both sides of the partnership are focused on areas they are most comfortable with
- Eases the stress on both staffs to learn or perform tasks that they have little or no previous experience with
- Empowers you to tackle bigger and better projects
Identifying the need for a partnership
Most of the time, this is the easiest part but should not be taken lightly. Are there particular products or services that you currently offer or want to offer that stick out in your mind? Evaluate all your options and move forward in the direction you want to go.
Choosing a strategic partner and testing the waters
The second step is to research for a suitable partner to assist you with the development of a new product or service offering. You should focus on finding like-minded businesses. Once you get to know their mission, products, and services, you can test the waters with a single product/service. After this initial project, you will have some evaluation to do and decide if the partnership is a good fit or not.
Five practical tips for acquiring a strategic partner
- Evaluate all your team’s current contacts and vendors for possible partners
- Talk with ones you trust to find possible partners
- Once potential partners are identified, reach out to them
- Evaluate the potential partner’s business knowledge and experience
- If you are comfortable after discussion and evaluation of the possible strategic partner, then set up an initial project to test the waters.