3 measures that set your alliances up for success
Strategic partnerships are essential to achieve long-term growth. But ignore core indicators, and they likely will be among the 50% which fail in the long-term.
Here we suggest 3 key measures that provide senior leaders with insights into how well-managed their most important alliances are so they can deliver on growth ambitions:
- Speed of decision making
- Alliance risks and their mitigation
- Overall alliance health
Speed of decision making:
The pace of decisions significantly increases the chances that an alliance can deliver on its intended value.
An increasing issue-resolution time could point to underlying problems. Cross-alliance comparisons allow meaningful observations of overall problems and unseen barriers in partners. For example, in Figure 1 we can see that the Omega alliance is most at risk as the time taken to make decisions is consistently taking longer. The epsilon alliance is getting quicker year-on-year at making speedy decisions. Are there key learnings from the Epsilon alliance that are transferable?
Figure 1: Decision speed over time analysis
Alliance Risks and their mitigation:
Unresolved alliance-specific risk factors can lead to poor alliance outcomes at best or costly disputes at worst.
Understanding risks at alliance and portfolio level helps focus tactical and strategic discussions on ensuring existing alliances deliver intended value and future opportunities are aligned.
Snapshot reporting of risk probability and impact (see Figure 2) will highlight danger areas to focus resources. Risk management planning (see Figure 3) will show where mitigation planning is needed.
Figure 2: Risk probability and impact reporting
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Figure 3: Mitigation planning overview
Overall alliance health:
Interim outcomes and interactions shape partner perceptions, and in turn partner perceptions shape hard outcomes.
Understanding how alliance health evolves over time can help address problems sufficiently early – before small problems become large and expensive.
A snapshot, as seen in Figure 4, will highlight areas for improvement and help to set business goals and individual alliance KPI’s.
Figure 4: Overview of alliance health over time
As alliances continue to drive organizational growth, it is crucial for senior management to remain informed about the essential measures that provide insights into alliance management across the entire portfolio.
If you’re a CEO or an alliance professional reporting to the C-Suite and want to learn more about utilizing alliance management measures to power data driven decision making, increase growth opportunities and drive innovation, get in contact today for an informal chat.
Email: contact@allianceboard.com