Our Blog
Culture of Collaboration
Posted Monday, August 23, 2010 at 09:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Is your company partner friendly? Or is every attempt at collaboration an uphill battle? I heard one partner manager describe her partnership with one company as “hand-to-hand combat.” Another partner manager described his partner as “infested with partnering antibodies,” -- not surprisingly this was from the life sciences sector. On the other hand, some companies stand out as “partners of choice” where collaboration is infused into the corporate culture, “It’s in the DNA.”
The Collaboration Imperative
Collaboration is emerging as a crucial competency for long-term business viability. Collaboration is a source of growth and innovation. Collaboration is essential in optimizing business processes internally and business relationships externally.
Proctor & Gamble, a company known for innovation and excellence, dramatically changed its innovation model after a near-death experience in 2000. Today half the company’s new products come from innovation originating outside of P&G labs. This hails not just a change in business model but also a significant change in culture, in the mindset of their engineers, researchers, and product managers. How do you achieve in-sourcing 50% of your innovation? Through collaboration with external partners!
“Our vision is simple. We want P&G to be known as the company that collaborates – inside and out – better than any other company in the world.” -A.G. Lafley, CEO, P&G
Collaboration is Not Technology
Web 2.0, social media, and collaboration technologies are exploding in adoption rate. Facebook just announced 500 million users. Companies are rushing to put up Facebook pages and tweeting their company news. Web conferencing is now main stream. All these technologies are supposed to somehow improve collaboration, but they are only the medium.
Collaborate is a verb. It is a conscious act of working together.
Alliance and partner managers are in essence collaboration professionals. Our roles are about creating corporate value from collaboration. We can develop our skills at collaboration through training and education, but most of us learn by doing on the job. We can benchmark our personal skills through the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals credentials: CA-AM and CSAP certifications. There are books written on how to manage partnerships and even an emerging standard on managing collaborative business relationships, which will establish a model for the business practice of partnering. But what do we know about building a culture for collaboration?
Benchmarking Culture
How does one measure collaborative culture? How do measure the antibodies or the capacity for collaboration embedded in a company culture beyond the processes and technology or the skill of the individual alliance managers? What is it about partner friendly organizations that make collaboration the norm? Do we just know it when we see it? We definitely know it when it is absent!
Two respected colleagues, Prof. Ard-Pieter de Man and Prof. Dave Luvison, have researched alliance performance and behaviors. Most recently, they have created a baseline for benchmarking collaborative culture working with the Quintiles alliance organization and the membership of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. More importantly, they have begun the work of validating that collaborative attributes do matter and have a positive impact of alliance performance. I invite you read their work in the PhoenixCG resource center: “Alliance Culture: It’s in the DNA!”
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The Benefits of Professional Development
Posted Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 06:00 AM by Ann Trampas
When I first began my career -- fresh out of college -- I didn't have a clue about the value of professional development. After all, I had a few degrees, a little experience, that's enough, right?
Wrong. Oh, so wrong.
Like many alliance professionals, I worked in a variety...
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Tags: Ann Trampas, Norma Watenpaugh, CA-AM, CSAP, Professional Development, ASAP, workshops, seminars
Building Sustainable Partner Value Propositions, Part 2
Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 12:00 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
In my last post, I talked about the "value triangle," and how it creates win-win-win value propositions for you, your partners, and customers. Today, I'll flesh out what I mean by solution, financial, and sales and marketing value, as well as present a case example of how a global systems integrator...
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Building Sustainable Value Propositions
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 06:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Building Win‐Win‐Win Value Propositions: The Key to Sustainable Partnerships
by Norma Watenpaugh, Principal, PhoenixCG...» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: value proposition, partner, value triangle, sustainable
Case Study: The Power of Marketing in the Alliance Ecosystem
Posted Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 09:00 AM by Leslie Sutherland
The Participation of APC by Schneider Electric in the Cisco Data Center of the Future
By Kim Tremblay, Marketing Director, WW Strategic Alliances, APC by Schneider Electric
Listen up – alliance marketing has arrived.
In 2009 the tables turned. Traditionally...
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Tags: DCoF, Cisco, APC by Schneider Electric, Data Center of the Future, Marketing, Alliance
Successful Collaborative Selling: Part 1
Posted Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 01:15 AM by Tom Halle
Part 1: The Squeeze Play
I’ve been at the strategic alliances game a long time, and in my experience the most difficult aspect of building partnerships has been facilitating successful collaborative selling between two companies. Selling with partners is an unnatural act...
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Tags: Collaborative selling, sales, partner sales
Navigating Stakeholder Alignment
Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 12:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Aligning team members and stakeholders to support the work of an alliance or any business relationship can be surprisingly treacherous. One would think that if the strategic intent and return on investment on an alliance is clear the rest falls into place. Well, guess again.
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Collaboration Philosophy
Posted Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 11:00 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Launching new website turned out to be much more of an involved exercise than I imagined. In this day and age, the website is the face of the company and so a new website caused us to rethink the business, the practice areas, and the positioning of PhoenixCG for the future. Since the founding...
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The Nature of Trust
Posted Saturday, February 6, 2010 at 02:28 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
I did a study three years ago of partner health across 14 strategic alliances and about ~400 respondents and found something very interesting about the nature of trust in alliances. We did a correlation of heath attributes against overall partner health. We found that when 'trust' was present it...
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Tags: Alliance Management Best Practices, Alliance Strategy
Creating Value from Innovation and the Role of Alliances
Posted Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 11:52 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Innovation takes many forms. We often focus on innovation as technological breakthroughs and indeed those are important to fuel corporate growth. But there are other forms of innovation which can be just as powerful and just as disruptive to the status quo in creating strategic competitive...
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Tags: alliance, Collaborative innovation, competitive strategy, innovation, partnering, partnerships, value creation
Collaborative Capability
Posted Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 05:52 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Certification assures Collaborative Capability: Taking Partnering to the Next Level
I was fortunate to be featured in an interview for the Marketing Thought Leadership series with Linda Popky, Marketing Master and recently named one of Silicon Valley's Top 100 Women of Influence...
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Tags: alliances, collaboration, collaborative capability, partnering
Social Media at Your Service
Posted Monday, October 12, 2009 at 02:50 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
One area in which social media is gaining traction is support services.When you combine partners in an interactive forum they become a self-help community.When you add customers to the mix, your partners become very competitive in demonstrating their expertise to the customer base.The result...
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Tags: Social Media, self service communities
Managing Communities and Ecosystems with Social Media
Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 08:46 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting Group, June 2009
Social media is gaining presence within partner ecosystems
These are natural communities and naturally lend themselves to these media.There has been a trend for some time by large...
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Tags: Social media, partner ecosystem, ecosystem management, partner strategy
Is Social Media Crossing the Chasm in Partner Management?
Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 04:38 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting Group, June 2009Well, arguably yes and no. Some technologies that might be labeled early Web 2.0 were in pretty widespread usage. Others such as Twitter are caught up in the tornado. Some, such as MySpace, already seem...
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Tags: social media, partner marketing, ecosystem management, partner ecosystems
Social Media and Partnering
Posted Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Social media hype is everywhere. We are deluged with it on-line. We see it on TV. Our kids are absorbed by Facebook. The State department even requests that Twitter delays maintenance to ensure continuity in the information flow from civil unrest in Iran. Even as we are coming to grips with Social...
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Tags: social media, partnering
Social Media and Partnering: What's working?
Posted Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 09:14 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting GroupOf the 20 partner managers we interviewed, most were realizing productive benefits from the use of social media. Benefits were described in terms of strengthening relationships versus the hard metrics of generating...
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Tags: social media benefits, partner strategy, enhancing collaboration, partner ecosystem
How are Partner Managers using Social Media?
Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 10:19 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Findings from a Survey Conducted by Phoenix Consulting GroupWe asked twenty partner managers What is social media?
By far the most common response was Good Question! After a thoughtful pause, we heard social media were tools that enabled users to communicate, to...
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Tags: Social Media, Partnering, Partner Ecosystem, Collaboration
Two new, emerging best practices in alliance management
Posted Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 12:23 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
The ASAP 2009 State of Alliance Management Report looked at thirty-six commonly recognized best practices of alliance management and benchmarked them across the community of respondents representing 431 companies. This year the researchers looked a bit deeper into innovation alliances and identified...
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Tags: emerging, best practices, alliance, management
Serving our Customers thru better Partnering: Doing More with Less
Posted Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 06:25 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Certainly in this economy doing more with less is an imperative we all face. It is also the fundamental premise of partnering and in these times Partner Managers are pressed even harder to do even more with even less. A few weeks ago I was asked to moderate a gathering of senior alliance executives...
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Tags: customer service, resource management, optimization
The Power of Green Alliances
Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 02:32 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Attended an ASAP Green breakfast this morning and it was certainly eye opening even if the coffee arrived late.
Hal LaFlash, Dir Emerging Clean Technology Policyfrom PG&E -that's Pacific Gas and Electric for the non-Californians - spoke on the many alliances that PG&E has been...
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Tags: power, green, alliances
The ROI of Loyalty (Part II)
Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Part I discussed how demographic segmentation allowedtargeting programs, benefits, and attention to engender greater loyalty and business through their developers. Part II addresseshow segmentation by 'Loyalty' itself helps to identify andto address specific concerns of developers. While...
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Tags: roi, loyalty
The ROI of Loyalty (Part I)
Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
I was approached by a client some weeks ago to present at conference some work we did on Developer Loyalty. Now there are a lot satisfaction type surveys out there, but my client presented a very specific challenge. She was new in the role as the Director of the Developer Community and...
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Tags: roi, loyalty
Strategic Alliance Bookshelf
Posted Monday, January 5, 2009 at 03:09 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Have you read a book in the past year that made an impact on you and how you manage alliances and partnerships? Could even be one you've written!! Here are some that I read this past year which I found had relevance to the field of alliance management. NOT listed in any order other than how they...
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Tags: alliances, reading, list
Alliance Strategy in Challenging Times: Rebalancing the Portfolio
Posted Monday, December 15, 2008 at 10:18 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Is it time to reevaluate your alliance investment? Do you have the right partners to weather the economic climate?
Are you retaining the right partners to ensure you have a strategic advantage when the thaw comes?
Regular portfolio rebalancing is a best practice even in good times...
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Tags: alliance, strategy, challenging, times, rebalancing, portfolio
Alliances in the News
Posted Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 08:32 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Plans for Strategic Alliances on the Rise
Nearly one-third of consumer products companies plan to forge new strategic alliances in the upcoming 12 months (30 percent), up 8 points from the second quarter of 2008 according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers
NEW YORK, Dec 4, 2008» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
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Alliance Strategy Realignment: Finding Opportunity in Economic Disruption
Posted Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 09:44 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Have you rethought your alliance strategy in terms of what new opportunities lie ahead? Are you prepared to find the opportunity in disruption? We can assume that business as usual is not going to work in today's volatile economic climate because business has become unusual. Yet, disruptive...
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Tags: strategy, realignment, opportunity
Strategic Alliances - More now than ever
Posted Monday, October 13, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
Strategic alliances are often viewed as a strategy for growth and perhaps not always a strategy for economically challenging times. But many of the reasons that make strategic alliances a good idea in good times make them an even better strategy for uncertain times. What are these reasons to partner...
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Tags: strategic alliances, importance
Driving Growth through Win-Win Alliances
Posted Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
What do you think of, when you think win-win? Most business people will interpret that as "I win and my partner wins". Unfortunately quite a number will behave differently: "win-win means I win twice!" This, as you can imagine, does not produce sustainable partnerships. Smart business people will...
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Tags: partnering, growth
Coopetition - Sleeping with the Enemy
Posted Friday, April 25, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
The April meeting of the Silicon Valley/Norcal Chapter of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals featured a panel discussion on Coopetition. It turns out to be as hard to pronounce as it is to do. The panel often...
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Tags: alliances, cooperation, competition
Collaborative Innovation: Leveraging Partnerships
Posted Friday, March 28, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
"Collaborative Innovation: Leveraging Strategic Partnerships for the Global Playing Field" Sunday, March 30, 2008BlogTalkRadio: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/CoachforInnovation...» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partnering, innovation
Strategic Alliance Secret #4 Success Begins at the Top
Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
A successful alliance program begins at the top with the support of the CEO. Like many other things, the CEO influences company culture, models the behavior, and sets the priorities in collaborative relationships. CEO support and that of the CXO staff fosters the environment where alliances can...
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Tags: partnering, success, alliances, secrets
Secret #2 Build, Build or Partner
Posted Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 09:14 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Does your organization have a clear discipline in determining which strategy to pursue to achieve an objective? Build? Buy? or Partner?
If you answered, NO - you are in the majority. Unfortunately. A few organizations do, however, and one Proctor & Gamble has had excellent results...
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Tags: partnering, build
Where should alliances report in the organization?
Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 07:16 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
This is a question I am frequently asked and one for continual debate. As far as I know there is very little published work on this topic, only fleeting references on the challenge. My opinion: there is no perfect answer but the best answer relates to what are you trying optimize?
Functional...
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Tags: partnering, reporting
Secret #1 Winners Collaborate
Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 07:49 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
In the Eight Secrets webcast, we reviewed some research data indicating that higher performing companies were extensive collaborators.
Here I'd like to share some thoughts behind a fundamental change in attitude towards collaboration and partnering that I've seen in past few years. Some...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partnering, collaboration
Certification: R-E-S-P-E-C-T for Partner Managers?
Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 at 07:53 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
One of the major efforts I have been part of this past six months is developing a certification exam for alliance professionals for the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. Consumed, may be a better description of the time and effort that has gone into this initiative. The alliance with...
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Tags: partner management, certification
Eight Secrets Update
Posted Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 06:36 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
With great relief, I can report the "Eight Secrets" webcast went well. The producer and technical staff at AMA made it easy. The producer commented it was well attended and one of the best received webcasts they have done in terms of the feedback survey results. Whew! Here is one of the viewer...
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Tags: partnering, webcast
Pheathers Phlying
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 10:29 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Launching a blog for Phoenix Consulting Group in the midst of Pottermania has been a hoot, to steal a phrase from Hedwig. Looking for a blog name, I investigated everything Phoenix and found everything Harry Potter. Trying to get clever, I tried the current spelling Phoenix Pheathers which...
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Tags: blog, business development, interation, collaboration
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Tags: partnering, innovation
Strategic Alliance Secret #4 Success Begins at the Top
Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 11:17 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
A successful alliance program begins at the top with the support of the CEO. Like many other things, the CEO influences company culture, models the behavior, and sets the priorities in collaborative relationships. CEO support and that of the CXO staff fosters the environment where alliances can...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partnering, success, alliances, secrets
Secret #2 Build, Build or Partner
Posted Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 09:14 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Does your organization have a clear discipline in determining which strategy to pursue to achieve an objective? Build? Buy? or Partner?
If you answered, NO - you are in the majority. Unfortunately. A few organizations do, however, and one Proctor & Gamble has had excellent results...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partnering, build
Where should alliances report in the organization?
Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 07:16 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
This is a question I am frequently asked and one for continual debate. As far as I know there is very little published work on this topic, only fleeting references on the challenge. My opinion: there is no perfect answer but the best answer relates to what are you trying optimize?
Functional...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partnering, reporting
Secret #1 Winners Collaborate
Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 07:49 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
In the Eight Secrets webcast, we reviewed some research data indicating that higher performing companies were extensive collaborators.
Here I'd like to share some thoughts behind a fundamental change in attitude towards collaboration and partnering that I've seen in past few years. Some...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partnering, collaboration
Certification: R-E-S-P-E-C-T for Partner Managers?
Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 at 07:53 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
One of the major efforts I have been part of this past six months is developing a certification exam for alliance professionals for the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. Consumed, may be a better description of the time and effort that has gone into this initiative. The alliance with...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partner management, certification
Eight Secrets Update
Posted Sunday, August 19, 2007 at 06:36 PM by Norma Watenpaugh
With great relief, I can report the "Eight Secrets" webcast went well. The producer and technical staff at AMA made it easy. The producer commented it was well attended and one of the best received webcasts they have done in terms of the feedback survey results. Whew! Here is one of the viewer...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: partnering, webcast
Pheathers Phlying
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 at 10:29 AM by Norma Watenpaugh
Launching a blog for Phoenix Consulting Group in the midst of Pottermania has been a hoot, to steal a phrase from Hedwig. Looking for a blog name, I investigated everything Phoenix and found everything Harry Potter. Trying to get clever, I tried the current spelling Phoenix Pheathers which...
» View Full Post and Leave Feedback
Tags: blog, business development, interation, collaboration
