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Why does it seem like alliance plans never deliver the value they're supposed to? The simple answer is that most companies plan for alliance results, but they rarely achieve the desired vision.
Successful Alliance Execution requires the creation of detailed plans, inclusive of all the activities necessary to achieve those results: they know where they want to be, but they lack true focus upon and buy-in for the alliance, have not identified the joint commitment needed for success.
The world's leading alliances succeed because their planning process is structured, clearly defined, consistent and cuts across both companies. The results are internal alignment within the company and external alignment with partners to drive real results for end customers.
The bedrock of successful alliance execution is a clearly defined vision of the relationship and the results it will generate for you and you partners. Through our professionally facilitated Alliance Partner Planning™, or APP, process, Alliancesphere helps our clients create a detailed master alliance plan defining the fundamental value, strategy, and solutions for the alliance and outlining the governance and measurement necessary for supporting it.
APP consists of three subject areas: (1) We expose your team to the foundation of fundamentals for building and maintaining successful alliance relationships; (2) We focus your team on specific success strategies for an individual alliance partner; and (3) We facilitate the creation of your team's written Alliance Partner Plan with focused initiatives to guide construction of a joint alliance business plan with that partner.
The Alliance Partner Plan contains:
- Alliance Partner Profile, including basic demographics and key information about the Alliance Partner and the relationship history
- Vision for what value the Alliance will deliver to your partner
- Key Goals, Objectives, and Metrics identified for what you want to accomplish and how you measure success
- Value Proposition defining why the partner would work closely with you
- Target Solutions for the Alliance to develop and deploy
- Target Accounts, market segments, and the ideal customer for the target solutions
- Marketing, Sales, and Readiness Plans for driving Alliance initiatives
- Rules of Engagement for all activities related to the Alliance
- Governance Plan to define escalation and closed-loop oversight for the Alliance.
APP primes your alliance program for tight alignment with alliance partners.
Working with the Alliance Partner Plan (or from a similar foundation), Alliancesphere's Collaborative Partner Planning™, or CPP, process enables alliance teams to create joint business plans that really work and drive field implementation direction.
CPP is designed specifically to ensure that both companies link corporate planning initiatives to field activities – a link that is broken in many alliances. CPP also builds the foundation for an effective joint selling process between partners by enabling each partner to understand the other's goals, identify the best joint solutions and target the right accounts for maximum return. And CPP establishes rules of engagement and a clear process for governing the alliance to create overall impact.
The facilitated workshop component of CPP:
- Aligns company goals and develops joint win-win goals and shared vision for the alliance
- Designates markets, vertical and horizontal, for the alliance to penetrate
- Identifies market needs that the partnership can most effectively address
- Pinpoints the best repeatable vertical and horizontal solutions to drive into these markets
- Determines the top accounts within each market that will result in the greatest joint opportunities
- Develops detailed initiative plans for sales, solutions, marketing and readiness
- Provides a governance model with rules of engagement, sales process mapping and leading and lagging indicators
- Builds offering plans with specific budgets and forecasts
CPP focuses on helping each company in the partnership leverage the other's
strengths to drive more revenue, reduce costs, leverage resources, increase
margins, and create true competitive advantage.
Alliancesphere will help you take planning to an entirely new level and get you there faster then other approaches. Our planning processes create internal alignment within your company and external alignment with your partner to drive results for end customers. With our holistic planning, you will:
- Deploy comprehensive, end-to-end internal planning, linking corporate to region to field
- Engage programmatically with their partners on all aspects of the relationship
- Integrate their own planning methodologies with those of their partners
- Address the gaps and obstacles in planning that typically consume unsuccessful alliances
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