Adventures in alliances land #11 – permanent conversations; joint solutions a) taxonomy
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
There are many names and labels that are used for the thing that an alliance wishes to sell – a solution, an offering, a proposition.? Using different terminology can mean this important early step in building something clients will find relevant and valuable can start with friction immediately, so I set off to find out if there is any standard taxonomy for technology and professional services/GSI alliances creating joint offerings.? One example of the differences in language between? technology companies and consulting firms is the definition of the word ‘service’.? For a technology firm ‘service’ probably means a piece of software code running on a piece of remote hardware delivering some features over the internet.? For a consulting firm it probably means people doing work.? Searching for an accepted taxonomy of language that is consistently used for alliances I didn’t find one.? Looking at how the hyperscalers describe what they offer on their websites all three use the distinction between ‘products’ which are the individual components (compute, storage etc) and ‘solutions’ which are combinations of products with specific configurations either for an industry problem (eg credit card fraud) or a domain use case (eg analysing).? Of the largest hardware providers the trend is to use the label ‘products’ or the product type, ‘server’ for example, as the top of the naming hierarchy and when opened shows the product family or the product models available.? Half of the ones I looked at had a separate ‘solutions’ area of their website which was also combination of products for industry or use case.? Of the largest software and Saas companies there is some variation; some have the same two product and solution descriptions as the hyperscalers but most have a single menu labelled either ‘products’ or occasionally ‘platform’, which when opened shows a list of products and industry and use case solutions.? The difference between the hyperscaler & hardware companies naming and the software/Saas comes from a couple of reasons.? First is because the hyperscalers and hardware companies tend to have a broad portfolio of foundational infrastructure components so these have to be combined together in different ways depending on the problem being solved for, so making ‘solutions’ explicit helps buyers navigate to the right place.? Second is that the software/Saas companies tended to have started with either a functional solution (eg a Customer Relationship Management CRM) or a use case (eg managing enterprise data) so from that perspective the ‘product’ is the ‘solution’ and in some cases its also implicit who the intended customer is.? A decision maker for CRM is likely to be the Sales Director for example, and the decision maker for HR workflow is likely to be the Chief People Officer or equivalent.? Whilst there is some minor variations, in general the technology companies call what they offer ‘products’, so I’ll try and stick with that terminology.?
Getting back to the point of joint solutions, the below is one good example of a joint solution I found in my travels
The mission at Water Utility Co – the largest water and wastewater company in the UK by geography – is to provide clean drinking water and bring social and environmental prosperity to the region it serves. Currently, there's a mix of chalk streams in the region that are in poor condition, which is endangering species.? <consultant> partnered with Water Utility Co and <technology company> to test the world’s first ecological?digital twin?of a chalk stream for the River using the?<technology company>?platform. The aim is to protect biodiversity, particularly since this is one of only about 300 chalk streams in the world. The solution brings data together from across several sources in a connected stack so the company can digitally model a spatial river catchment map to show cause and effect.?AI?can then be used to run simulations based on the data that flows through the model.
The case above illustrates an example of a joint solution.? In this case there is at least three technology products in the solution; digital twin, data storage/integration and AI.? The consultant is bringing the industry expertise of the water sector to build the digital twin, technology expertise to integrate multiple products and presumably also bringing environmental knowledge to inform how to model the river.? In the next article we’ll dive a bit deeper into examples of joint solutions.
What do you think best practice is for defining and building a joint solution with a consultant/GSI and a technology company?
?
领英推荐
Other resources