Adventures in alliances land #11 – permanent conversations; joint solutions b_examples
I’ve been in a lot of debates in the last few weeks about designing and building joint solutions/propositions/offerings /services/etc - which is another example of a ‘permanent conversation’.? Whatever the choice of the name of the thing we’d like to sell, agreeing its definition and building it has been a permanent conversation in my 20 odd years of strategic alliances.? A ‘permanent conversation’ is something that has been true forever and despite learning it well needs continual effort to align for successful partnerships.? They are points of debate, iteration and friction that are enduring and therefore need continual attention, adjustment and intervention from professional strategic alliances practitioners.?
I’ve been thinking, writing and doing strategic alliances for more than 20 years.? When something in the alliances space catches my attention that I can share, I will – so if ecosystems, partnerships and alliances are your gig and your passion too I hope you’ll find these scribblings useful.? If you enjoy this article please follow me, subscribe, like, comment and repost.? My book on strategic alliances is here if you’d like to read more adventures in alliances land.? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategic-Alliances-Fieldbook-Art-Agile/dp/103212900X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=strategic+alliances+fieldbook&qid=1691319592&sr=8-1
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There are multiple examples of how alliances joint solutions are described, listed on technology companies partner finders or on consulting firms websites.? Below are two examples describing the same joint solution, the first from a large consulting and systems integrators website and the second from a technology company partner finder web site:
“<consulting solution> provides you with three integrated elements for transformational success. Using our tried and tested operating model, implementation suite of tools and ongoing evolution services you can choose your desired functional outcomes then make them a reality.? Our knowledge of leading practice is built-in to a comprehensive design framework, so you can shape your transformation across every layer of your business.? Achieve greater value, faster and reduce risk. We’ll help you implement pre-built tools and methods that reflect leading practice and incorporate AI and advanced automation to simplify your functional transformation.? We provide managed services to drive consistent improvement that’s based on the latest technological innovations, helping give you a clear market advantage. <consulting solution>? is enabled by market leading platforms, including <technology products>.”
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“Leveraging experiences and lessons learned from deploying <technology product> to transform the business of IT across hundreds of clients. The offering decreases time to value and mitigates risks. <joint solution> helps IT organizations accelerate transformation by starting with and expanding upon pre-packaged, leading practice solution. The offering includes key capabilities, including; IT processes, policies and procedures, Target IT operating models, ITSM governance, IT Transformation methodology, agile delivery processes and tools, operational metrics and KPIs.”?
What you notice about these examples of joint solutions is the emphasis on the business implementation part of the solution.? What I mean by ‘business implementation’ is the operating model assets that come as part of the solution that embed the product into the clients business processes.? Technology solutions/products are typically described as a set of features and illustrated as screen shots showing the GUI with the target business benefits from the use of the service.? There were no public domain examples I could find of the technology company alone offering business implementation assets (eg operating model, design frameworks, policies etc).?
When I was running a technology consulting practice the firm spent many hundreds of man days of effort creating the business implementation assets to smooth the path to deploying the product and embedding it into the clients business processes.? To differentiate the value of the consulting IP to clients we found the most tangible way to demonstrate it was to show up with a library of about 300 pages of material we called the ‘thud book’ because that was the noisy impact it made when dropped on the clients desk!? As examples of business implementation assets a joint solution might included all or some of the following. 1/Functional specification, which is a set of detailed level 1, 2 and 3 process ‘swimlane’ diagrams showing how various teams would hand tasks to each other across the end to end process.? Without this as a starting point different teams within the client can debate for long periods about who would do what. 2/Role definition, is a job description of each role in the process.? Clients can use this to understand how roles would change from the ‘as is’ to the ‘to be’ for teams and individuals as the technology was deployed across the process.? 3/Data model, provides an exhaustive list of field names and drop down menus for each field associated with the process and the roles.? Whilst this sounds like a technical deliverable in fact it is more about helping the client agree the business labels given to various bits of data that flowed through the process.? Again, it reduces dramatically the delays caused by detailed business design workshops and debates between client teams about naming conventions.? 4/Service level definitions, which provides internal Operating Level Agreement (OLA) between the process swimlanes within the functional team, and the external Service Level Agreement (SLA) to the end customers of the process.? This helps the client teams agree things like durations between escalations in the management hierarchy in the departments in the swim lanes for process failures, and what the overall elapsed time for particular activities should be and how they will be measured using time stamps on different parts of the data model.? 5/Work instructions or Standard Operating Procedure, which takes the form of end user training material as a sequence of screen shots showing specifically what data to enter in which fields at what point in the process.? It also explains how the business roles interact and the relevant policies, for example how service levels are applied in different scenarios, and what the responsibilities of each role are if an SLA was breached. ?
These are just a few examples of the business implementation elements of the IP that consultants can provide in joint solutions, which typically don't come from the technology company.? There might be a few other more technical elements, a data base design that links to the data model for example and a configuration file to build the test version of the system to match the swim lane diagrams to reduce manual configuration time.? The reason for describing so much detail here is to illustrate how those business implementation elements are all related to one another, and make the point that without them the amount of time it takes for the client to absorb the product into their process is much longer.? Time to value is a critical part of clients decision making on product choice, and if a consultant can demonstrate in a compelling way how their experience can materially accelerate the project by providing pre-built models, frameworks, template, methods etc so the product will get embedded in to the business process and start creating value the client is more likely to choose that product and that consultant.? Pre-building the business implementation assets also helps the consultant reduce effort from their delivery team, which gives them the option to make the fees lower, and therefore an improved ROI for the client, again increasing the chances they will choose that consultant and that technology product.
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The case study from pg 254 of the book illustrates this; “Figure 9.3 Case Study Training Material Value In real life….a case study The technical training material is not only of value to the delivery teams, it could also be of value to the end customer and used as a selling tool. As an example, a PS built training content that included technology reference architectures, deployment code and test instructions as well as operating model that included work instructions and job role descriptions. This material took a small team of about 400 man-hours of effort to produce. Having these assets was necessary to support their ambition to scale globally because they had to communicate to a distributed delivery team what needed to be done. What they hadn’t fully anticipated until they talked to prospects was that sharing the material was a powerful differentiator that helped them win work. This was for three main reasons. The first was that the depth reassured clients that they were not taking a risk on an unproven solution. The second was that it demonstrated clients were not going to suffer an expensive long-term ‘lock-in’ on a proprietary configuration because the material was provided to the clients as part of the fee. The third was that it saved the client’s own time for the operating model. One client estimated that the people and process designs would save them three months of effort, and therefore reduce the total project costs and position the consultant as higher value-add than competitors.”
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The takeaway here is that technology and consulting firms create value for clients in different ways, and working together they can deliver much more than either alone.? The consultant does not have to write code to deliver their IP in a meaningful way to a client, in fact if they do they create potential competition and redundancy with the technology companies IP.? The value of the professional services company IP that is distinct from the technology is getting the product into production and adopted, embedding it into company process and value chain.? If the product is not embedded the client won’t get value, which means the technology company will ultimately receive less money either because it’s a license fee that won’t be paid again at renewal or low usage means consumption based billing is small. ?This is a wonderful example of the win/win/win of a joint solution.? The client gets a meaningful improvement in their business process.? The consultant wins work and has profitable engagements.? The technology company increases revenue and customer satisfaction scores.?
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Do you agree that joint solutions are a ‘permanent conversation’?? What do you think best practice is for building the business implementation assets for a joint solution?
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