2024-09-04
The Future of Retail: AI-Powered Personalization and Customer Experience
01 June, 2020
Technology
Knowing how to engage a technology partner is a crucial element in your digital journey. A strategic partner can bring onboard capital and help in leveraging on its brand. Technology companies are using partnerships to seek growth opportunities, introduce new products and seek new markets. If this is the way to go, why isn’t every business doing it?
In this hypercompetitive market, strategic partnerships are getting exceedingly complex. It’s simply not that easy to get the right partner! Simple. Industries and businesses have been watered down as a result of bad partnerships. Every technology company now knows that to be competitive in the future, you need the help of others. This is either through improving capabilities, insights, channels, or anything you can benefit from getting a strategic partner to give you the edge.
It is no longer a question of if technology companies need to innovate or not. It’s a matter of how fast they can do that. In as much as getting a technology partner will get you towards your digital journey, how do we avoid the horrifying stories of disruptions in the industry as a result of partnerships?
Here are the rules you need to follow to successfully engage a strategic partner and enhance your digital journey and innovation.
1. Make the Partnership Strategic
It’s vital to center a partnership towards a precise strategic cause. Ensure that you have a formal strategy and vision before engaging a technology partner. Only then do you start winning one. This ensures that a partner comes in to drive a mutual cause towards innovation and furthering your digital journey.
This strategy should be clear and concise. For instance, it should direct the areas the organization seeks to innovate as well as the level of digitalization the company needs. The tactic can go as far as stipulating focus areas such as digitalizing customer experience, operations, or the introduction of new products. This way, the role of the strategic partner is clear, as well as helps you decide their strengths in helping achieve your levels of innovation and digitization.
2. Concentrate On User Experience and Not Just Value Exchange
You will understand the importance of user experiences if you have been keen on the digital and technology space. The most successful partnerships are as a result of providing an exceptional consumer experience. If a partner can bring a wealth of know-how in creating user capabilities, you are already on the journey to digital innovation and success.
To achieve this, focus on human-centered design that addresses an actual user problem and not just transactional benefits.
3. Focus On the Proper Balance between Customization and Scale
If you concentrate on a broad network of partners, you may find it quite expensive. Most major partners may demand segregated results that are unique to their requirements. Therefore, to minimize costs, look at a style that focuses on a customized partner approach.
This ensures a tactic that combines maximum reach (scalability) coupled with a low customization cost for each strategic partner. To achieve your specific innovation and digital journey goals, develop your technology items like apps or software around specific strategic partner objectives. This element eventually gives your technology company an edge in engaging a strategic partner in the long term.
4. Run Your Partnership like A Business
Do you know why too many technology partnerships do not achieve their purpose? Of course, most of the successful partnerships get alot of talk, and you may read about them. But the majority of partnerships fail. Why? The partners do not invest and dedicate resources or commitment that may drive a meaningful effect.
To achieve success in technology development is no easy task. It takes commitment, costs money, and requires some hard work. This cannot happen over a short time. To get a partnership right, you have to run it not like a one-time deal but a business.
5. Define Mutual and Individual Value
Most individuals fail to define their values when interacting with a strategic partner. While a technology partner may increase your brand value, among other benefits, ensure they understand what you bring to the relationship.
It is vital to define your value upfront. This establishes your footing almost immediately. Otherwise, your value may not be clear from the beginning. And who wants to work with a partner whose impact is insignificant?
Before formalizing a strategic partnership, ensure you understand the customer-centric value that will come up as a result of the partnership. Stipulate how the partnership value can be enhanced. If the answers are not clear, then there is no need to proceed with the connection.
6. Identify a Shared Vision and Principles
This is where most people go wrong. A partner who does not share your vision will not be impactful towards your digital journey. Create principles and a vision statement that can act as a guide. Although you are not creating a new company, it helps by forming a foundation for how you collaborate and interact.
Remember, this is a marathon and not a sprint. Look at the vision statement as a culture in the relationship for the duration of the partnership. This also helps during times of conflict. Sometimes, you may not agree on a particular aspect. The written set of principles and vision can come in handy to remind you of the goal.
No matter how much we may want strategic partnerships to last, sometimes, that is not always the case. It is, therefore, vital to prepare when it ends. This can happen after a project or in less than rosy terms. Having a prior agreed-upon exit plan will ensure the transition is smoother.
Why Choose Us?
We have ten years’ experience providing digital solutions for our customers. PRONIX Inc. understands the dynamics of most industries in the contemporary world. Therefore, when it comes to your digital journey and innovation goals, you can trust us to deliver on your specific needs. We have tech experts who can provide top-notch solutions for your digital needs leading to an overall reduction of your costs. We identify with your vision and help you develop apps that strike a balance between customer experience and value exchange.
What Now?
The importance of reinventing our approach to a strategic partnership in the tech world cannot be underestimated. If this issue is not on the agenda of every tech company in the world, then it should be. With increased uncertainties and complexities in emerging technologies, the prominence of strategic partnership will only be higher.
Therefore, organizations that continually reinvent themselves through their operations and digital products will be successful in the long run. Always follow these tips if you want to achieve your digital journey and innovation goals.
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