FIVE STAGES OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP LIFECYCLE

By Anand Parikh

Having worked on strategic alliances and partnerships over the last 25 years with companies of all sizes and shapes, in a variety of technology domains, across diverse geographies and cultures, I thought it would be useful to jot down a few things I have learnt about business development. I hope this would be useful to others on their business development journey. 

Here I discuss the lifecycle of technology partnerships. See also my other blog Five Pillars of Successful Partnership, in which I discuss five factors that are critical in making a partnership successful.  

A.    Strategize, Prioritize and Identify

1.    If not already done, start with a build/buy/partner analysis for all key components of the solution you want to offer and make sure there is strategic alignment across the key stakeholders for the components where you need to partner or buy (and not build). Start with the architecture of the overall solution that you want to provide and identify the components you would want to procure and integrate from third parties, or just interoperate with.

2.    For these components, define a prioritized and weighted list for technical, support and financial requirements. Develop an RFI/RFP that can be shared with the candidates.

3.    Identify at least 3 candidates for each technology area that you want to partner for. Doing an objective comparison between alternatives will help in choosing the best partner and negotiate the optimal agreement. Get inputs from your engineering or product teams about potential candidates. Engage some friendly customers or advisors to get their recommendations as well. 

4.    Ask the candidates to respond to the RFI/RFP. Evaluate each candidate’s response across the requirements and score them against the weights and priorities. If a candidate does not want to spend time on responding to the RFI/RFP, that’s a good indication that they are not interested.

B.    Select, Negotiate and Contract

1.    From the evaluation, make the list of the top two finalists. You may want to bring their solutions in your lab and test them against a test plan or do a technical bake-off if needed. This will help you validate the paper analysis and select the top candidate.

2.    Ensure alignment on expectations of mutual deliverables and timelines, both internally and with the partner. Agree on the go-to-market strategy and technical support for the integrated solution, and what help you might need from the partner, if any. Define what success would look like for the partnership. If you are procuring, OEMing or integrating the partner’s technology or product in your solution, create a forecast for the revenue you would generate for (not necessarily commit to) the partner for their product or technology. 

3.    Map out your starting and walk-away positions on key issues internally. There are many aspects to a typical contract, that is best worked on in conjunction with the legal counsel supporting you on the project.

4.    Start negotiating the agreement with the top candidate. Have an escalation process for negotiations if you reach an impasse. Make sure that the final agreement works for both you and the partner. It must be a win-win agreement, otherwise the partnership will not last for long.

C.   Onboard and Implement

1.    Create a joint project plan for integration of the 3rd party technology and training of your team.

2.    Execute integration based on the plan. Make sure there is a support process in place with the partner for them to support the integration efforts. This should have been spelled out and agreed to in the contract.

3.    Create documentation of the integrated solution that can be used by the product team as well as go-to-market teams for customer-facing collateral.

4.    There could be many go-to-market activities depending on the nature of partnerships, such as co-marketing of the integrated solutions at conferences, webinars, tradeshows, web presence and social networks; and co-selling of the interoperable solutions with the partner depending on the nature of the partnership and the solution.

D.   Measure, Manage and Adjust

1.    Establish a review process to monitor progress and success of the integrated solution in the market. Gather feedback on the solution from customers and share the appropriate parts with the partner that may improve the integrated or interoperable solution.

2.    Have support process in place (as part of the contract) for technical support by the partner for the issues you would see with the integrated product in the market.

3.    Have a process to feed your product requirements to your partner for their product roadmap. Depending on the level of dependency your solution has on the partner components, this may be a very critical step in ensuring ongoing success of the solution in the future.

4.    Have a quarterly review meeting to discuss issues (both technical and business). Make adjustments as needed based on the progress to ensure success.

E.    Continue, Scale-up or Retire

1.    If the integrated solution meets the market needs (based on real customer data), stay on course or expand partnership to other technologies if appropriate. If the partnership is successful in one area, it’s a good idea to leverage it and expand it to address you other business needs. Of course, you should not take it for granted that just because the partnership was successful in one area, it would also be successful in other areas. Go back to Step A to evaluate the fit. Rinse and repeat.

2.    If the solution does not meet the needs of the market, think of changing or retiring the partnership. If the data shows that the joint solution is not meeting the market needs, it is best not to continue to pour more resources into it. 

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