Introduction

"Key alliance success factor – dedicated alliance directors"
--ASAP State of the Alliance 2007

Would you launch a new business without a dedicated leader? Of course not.

Why would you launch a new alliance without a dedicated alliance director?

Alliance management is a growing profession, guiding organizations to innovate and succeed through collaborative networks of alliances and other types of relationships.

Alliance directors must be part entrepreneur, part strategist, part advocate, and part coach and mentor.

Work with us to build the alliance management capability that is right for your company.

Management Excellence

Alliances are an increasingly important component of organizational strategy. They provide the resources – the knowledge, talent, and access needed to innovate and reach key markets. What is often unappreciated is the management challenge they represent.

As a result, approximately 50% of alliances fail to achieve desired outcomes.

The Rhythm of Business works with organizations to grow their ability to succeed with alliances. Our approach is especially designed to be entrepreneurial and resource friendly. It builds in an appreciation of the reality that part of the job of alliance management is to develop the ability of others to work with a variety of partners and collaborators. Our methods also acknowledge that some organizations want to develop the capability to manage alliances and collaborations, but don’t want to establish a specific function.

We combine our collaborative network management methodology with widely accepted best practices to produce an alliance management methodology customized for your organization. Components of the alliance management function include:

• Mission
• Roles
• Alliance segmentation criteria
• Governance
• Accountability
• Collaboration

We help you develop and implement the guidance, processes, and tools that are right for your alliances today and can adapt as the organization changes.

Collaborative Network Management

Alliance management has traditionally focused on point-to-point relationships, primarily between a company and its specific partner. As collaborative networks increasingly become the norm, alliances are one of many forms of relationship that exist within networks. The very success of an alliance may depend on the effectiveness of other relationships within its network.

All the relationships that make up a network must be appropriately managed, and every relationship must be sufficiently collaborative to achieve the purpose of the network—even if the relationship is not an alliance. Activities must be coordinated, information communicated, and resources leveraged. Organizations that have dedicated alliance management groups can benefit from this expertise to realize greater alignment, effectiveness, and capability from collaborative relationships. In many instances, alliance management has developed a management methodology, consisting of guidance, processes, and tools for alliance team members to use in their daily business.

The opportunity for alliance management now is to customize their methods and practices for the needs of the strategically important non-alliance relationships that must be collaborative.

Work with us to develop a consistent and flexible way of managing all the key relationships in any collaborative network.

The Value of Alliance Management

Alliance management is a new profession that contributes to success not only by what happens—but also what doesn’t happen. This presents challenges for organizations to make the best use of alliance management capability, and to judge the return on investment in alliance management.

At The Rhythm of Business, we are committed to demonstrating a value proposition in alliance management by developing a simple and effective Alliance Management Communication and Metrics Program within your organization to:

• Better understand the needs and frustrations of alliance stakeholders
• Help stakeholders understand how best to use alliance management
• Demonstrate the value alliance management delivers