Building A Collaboration - Driven Business Strategy

By M. Isi Eromosele

As global companies strive to enhance their value networks and relationships, they need to particularly consider two vital tenets of business. These are (1) a focus on core competencies and strategic assets and (2) promote collaboration partnerships.

With the increased speed and value demanded by today’s markets, few companies can provide both core offerings and take advantage of new markets trends on their own.

As global companies aim to make their value networks sources of greater shareholder value, they must define their core and non-core activities as well as the strategic assets they possess.

Subsequently, it is highly useful for these companies to either independently develop competitive advantage and marketplace differentiation or collaborate with partners to do so. This approach sharpens focus within the company and increases its agility to respond to changes in its business and marketplace environments.

In forming partnerships, companies should be very careful not to outsource their strategic options as the cost of doing so can be prohibitively expensive.

Many global companies are building collaboration through partnerships. These partnering arrangements work best when a company is at subcritical mass in a particular area. This can be facilitated through Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

Business Process Outsourcing provides companies with the ability to focus while providing new options for building new capabilities, achieving faster speed to market and gaining new levels of efficiency.

BPO moves entire functions and processes outside the organization, creating new hybrid extended enterprises. BPO allows an organization to assemble core capabilities through the extension of its value network, a further indication that companies are increasingly viewing competition as occurring between value networks rather than individual firms.

Global companies of all shapes and sizes are implementing collaborative partnerships by providing customers, suppliers and design teams with real-time access to critical common data. They share assets that sustain and are sustained by an Eco-driven mindset.

These companies collaborate on product innovation, share information and pool intellectual capital on a global basis, which helps them identify conflicts early in the product design process, thereby reducing work, cycle time, required resources and costs.

As a result of the above, collaboration is not merely a convenient trend, but a growing competitive necessity. Collaboration helps companies change the pattern and quality of the business and creative connections they have with each other to their mutual benefit.

As the technological component of innovation accelerates, collaboration takes on a new and multi-directional meaning. Even with only modest investments, collaboration now works for a wide range of companies.

To be successful in building partnerships that foster business collaboration, your company needs to adhere to the following principles:

• Understand your network of relationships as a key asset. The rapid velocity, transparency and role blurring of today’s changing global business environment is moving the basis of competition from the individual company to the value network. Companies must proactively embrace this structural shift.
• Identify and focus on your strategic assets and core competencies. As companies look at their value networks, they need to understand the role they play in those networks and how they contribute to creating value. Simultaneously, they must strive to retain and enhance the qualities and attributes that differentiate them from others in their networks.
• Foster collaboration within your value network. The reduction of transaction friction and availability of information are creating new opportunities for collaboration and create value. Both values are essential to success.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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