Get your alliances right: IDC

BANGALORE: IDC's annual survey of alliance professionals reveals that companies are investing in alliances and that they are seeing incremental revenues as a result of those investments. More than 90 percent of survey respondents report that their alliances account for at least 5 percent of their company’s annual revenues.

"Getting alliances ‘right’ is critical as companies build and expand the scope and scale of their solutions to meet increasingly complex business challenges," said IDC’s Software Strategic Alliances program, research manager, Nicole Gallant. "As companies increase their alliance activity, the stakes are also raised for how companies select alliance partners, implement agreements, manage relationships, and assess the success of those alliances."

IDC's survey also reveals that while companies are investing in alliances and generating incremental revenue, the critical activity of tracking performance is a challenge for the majority of companies surveyed. A vendor’s ability to accurately track and manage alliance performance has implications for a company’s ability to manage and predict ongoing and future revenue flows, which, in turn, has implications for a company’s ability to accurately and effectively allocate alliance investment.

Alliances will bring the highest rewards to organizations that focus on management basics and provide the resources required to execute, manage, support, and measure alliances. IDC believes companies that invest in executing on alliances in favor of quick revenue hits or landing "big fish" alliance partners will have a more sustainable competitive advantage in the longer term.

To learn more about alliance best practices, IDC surveyed alliance professionals in leading software companies about alliance management strategies — what works best and how that success is measured as well as some of the biggest challenges these alliances will face in the upcoming year.

IDC’s recently published third annual report, "Strategic Alliances 2002: Winners, Innovators and the Next Generation" provides findings of this survey and explores what leading software vendors are doing with their strategic alliance partners to maintain competitive advantage and capitalize on business opportunities.