Dralla Group participates in ETAS automotive group internal event to promote best practicies in partner management

On March 24 of this year, Mr. Joost Allard, Managing Director of Dralla Group, presented his perspective on how to prepare a company to avoid common mistakes in partner managment. Mr. Allard, who is also Chairman of ASAP Germany, the German chapter of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, was involved with the preparation of this full day program at ETAS GmbH in Stuttgart, Germany from the start.

Purpose of this internal event was to bring together both ETAS employees involed with one or more partnerships from the perspective of product management, sales, marketing etc. as well as representatives of several ETAS partner companies. Goals of the organizers:

• Stimulating discussion about partnering practices
• Creating a common understanding of the challenges involved with successful partnering
• Meeting, sometimes for the first time, counterparts of partner companies in an informal setting

Mr. Allard emphasized that partnering is a new concept for many companies, but that it is possible for any company to be(come) successful. Many of the pitfalls are easily avoided if a company takes the time to educated itself, its employees and its partners about the most suitable approach to working with partners.

Some of the main points Mr. Allard made were:

• Companies need to perform a 'readiness review' to determine if, and at what level of maturity, they are ready to egnage in partnership activities.
• Most partnerships are between companies of unequal size and experience. The future partners need to be clear how they plan to compensate for this and what the additional investment in the partnership will be that needs to be budgetted for.
• Organically grown partnerships show a great level of trust between the partners, because of their history. However, before an existing relationship is developed into a partnershiip, both companies must reflect and research whether the criteria for 'partnering' are met:
  • Motivation for long term linkage of destiny
  • Complementary products or services
  • Potential for incremental revenue
• Partnerships need to perform a 'health assessment' at regular intervals to determine if the partnership functions as planned and the goals that were set are being achieved. This health assessment is often best performed by outside service providers who are knowledgeale about typical challenges and can probe for them