1st Edition

The Strategic Alliance Handbook A Practitioners Guide to Business-to-Business Collaborations

By Mike Nevin Copyright 2014
    384 Pages
    by Routledge

    384 Pages
    by Routledge

    Strategic alliances offer organisations an alternative to organic growth or acquisition when faced with the need to develop the business to a new level, innovate in terms of products or services or significantly reduce costs. The Strategic Alliance Handbook is a clear and complete guide to the nuts and bolts of the process behind successful collaborations. The book enables readers to understand the commercial, technical, strategic, cultural and operational logic behind any alliance and to establish an approach that is appropriate for the type of alliance they are seeking and the partner organisation(s) with whom they are working. Whether you are an alliance executive, responsible for the systems, strategy and performance of your organisation's alliancing programme or an alliance manager needing to ensure the success of a given partnership, The Strategic Alliance Handbook is an essential guide.

    Contents: Foreword; Preface: how it all began. Part I Emerging Alliance Best Practice: Alliance success factors; Common challenges. Part II Alliance Analysis: Benchmarking alliance relationships; Organisational alliance maturity; Alliance optimisation; Creating a new strategic alliance. Part III Common Success Factors: The commercial dimension; The technical dimension; The strategic dimension; The cultural dimension; The operational dimension. Part IV Special Strategic Alliances: Co-opetition: sleeping with the enemy; Insource/outsource/smartsource. Part V Developing Alliance Capability: Partnering with SMEs; Developing alliance programmes; Alliance standards and schemes; The strategic alliance professional; Collaboration: the future. Appendices; Index.

    Biography

    Mike Nevin is the founder and first chairman of ASAP Europe, The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. He now runs his own consultancy firm, Alliance Best Practice Ltd (www.alliancebestpractice.com). This is a research and benchmarking consultancy specialising in collaborative business-to-business relationships (alliances and partnerships). The consultancy uses proven methodologies and tools (alliance best practices) to help clients initiate and manage alliances. It also maintains a database of over 200,000 observations of alliance best practice in action. The company has worked with over 300 alliance leading companies including; IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Capgemini, Accenture, Logica, Tieto, BT, O2, Rolls Royce, GSK, AstraZeneca, DuPont and BASF.

    ’The methodology that the author describes in this book matches exactly the processes that an experienced alliance manager would recognise as best practice. By identifying this with his 52 common success factors, the author has described a template that can be used by any alliance manager to build a successful alliance and to diagnose where there are weaknesses in the relationship.’ Jim Whitehurst, Alliance VP, SAP and former UK President of Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals ’At last, the one book which accelerates an Alliance program between companies using a common methodology. Creates an aurora between Alliance partners where each has the desire to work together delivering exceptional joint propositions. This book will be utilised by Canon worldwide.’ Frank Steggall, Striata ’This book takes a comprehensive and critical view of alliance best practices and presents a structured and practical system for both analysis and intervention. Importantly, it has been thoroughly road-tested through Mike Nevin's vast experience of assisting companies to improve their partnering capabilities. A key strength is its applicability across different industry sectors. A must for any serious partnership professional!’ Peter Thurlby, Principal Consultant, Phase7 ’In this book, Mike Nevin, a strategic alliance practitioner with over 25 years’ experience brings together a comprehensive model of common success factors which can be identified as being best practice for strategic alliances. ... The comprehensive explanation of the 52 success factors and their relevance is supported throughout the book via 34 case studies. These case studies demonstrate both best practice in alliance partnerships and provide insightful lessons to be learnt in the development and implementation of a strategic alliance.’ Jeremy Noad, Corporate Strategy and Performance Transformation, The Linde Group 'The ’Strategic Alliance Handbook’ is the most comprehensive examinati