An alliance is a collaboration between two or more businesses to create increased value for their customers that would be difficult to achieve independently. Partners agree to share assets, risks and rewards and they commit to align their internal operations for the benefit of the alliance.

Alliances are business investments that both result from as well as shape the corporate growth strategy. A recent survey amongst businesses worlwide revealed that 40% of companies intend to enter alliances to accelerate top- and bottom-line growth (*).

The ability to close deals and cooperate successfully with other businesses has always been a prerequisite to survive in the marketplace. Analyzing the power mechanisms at work within traditional supplier relationships, licensing agreements, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, ultimately final control and decisions are not shared between business partners but remain in the hands of only one partner.

In an alliance, no partner can singlehandedly decide, steer and control the business collaboration. As a consequence, a specific set of management skills, collaborative processes and control mechanisms will need to be developed within each organization involved. Guiding companies efficiently and effectively through this organizational transformation is our core business.

Given the highly collaborative and cross-organizational nature of alliances, most ‘business as usual’ managerial practices simply don’t work. Without prior alliance experience, it’s tough to develop corporate alliance capabilities from scratch.

Corporate alliance capabilities are build up gradually by introducing a set of interconnected organizational building blocks into the organization : e.g. intent to repeated alliance experience, development of dedicated alliance fonctions and implementation of learning processes that allow to accumulate and leverage alliance management know-how and skills.

Alliance management is a professional discipline alike project management. Don’t let your teams loose valuable time while discovering through trial and error which alliance management best practices work and which don’t. Not to mention take the risk of loosing your company’s reputation in the marketplace and becoming that company with which collaborative ventures are best to be avoided.

Our seasoned consultants are dedicated to support companies that want to develop their own corporate alliance capabilities in a cost effective way. Each consulting assignment enriches our own extensive body of knowledge with the latest alliance initiatives and alliance management trends worldwide. Contact us, we look forward to share our knowhow with you.