Effective alliance management relies on deep trust and transparency between partners. Yet what resources does an alliance manager have to facilitate this?
There are 5 core areas where a dedicated alliance management platform such as allianceboard can support an alliance manager to deliver their objectives and reinforce the trust they need to build within any partnership.
Planning
A fundamental part of alliance management, planning is the key to ensure that there are no surprises once an initiative is underway. Even with the best partnerships and the best alliance managers, a change in circumstances could stand to derail the best of plans. It then falls to the alliance manager to resolve any issues, adapt the plan, and get all stakeholders onboard.
When managing multiple initiatives across a complex alliance portfolio, spreadsheets, shared files, and voicemails can cause misunderstandings and delays.
Using a platform like allianceboard allows both parties to be updated and notified instantly. Communication is open and transparent and in real-time, allowing you to effectively manage problems while building on the trust you have already established.
Governance
Trust is the most important unwritten element of what makes good alliance governance.
Resolving issues, tracking timelines, and conducting effective steering committee meetings are all fundamental to govern an alliance and the bread and butter for any alliance manager. But partners need trust to commit to regular engagement, have hard conversations in a respectful way, and manage performance on both sides of the agreement.
allianceboard provides an easy way to create agendas for governance meetings and agreed upon escalation processes.
allianceboard also provides a secure platform for partners to collaborate on, managing their alliances together in real-time – for greater alignment and agility, reinforcing the trust the partners have in each other.
Stakeholder engagement
A key skill of any alliance manager is the ability to have engaging discussions with all stakeholders involved with an alliance or with parts of the organization’s partnership portfolio. This also means taking the time to understand each partner’s values and being able to advocate on their behalf within one’s own organization and on the behalf of one’s own organization within the partner’s organization.
Stakeholder engagement goes beyond the simple dissemination of information. It’s a 2-way conversation, the results of which need to be adapted into the ongoing alliance, blending the needs and wants from both partners in a way that maximizes organizational impact for both sides.
All of this takes trust. Trust that your counterpart is going to take the time to fully understand the reasons behind your needs and then represent you and your requirements as if it were you in the room advocating their cause. Trust that the information that is used for decision-making is accurate and up to date to empower stakeholders to make the best decisions for the organization and the partnership.
Managing this information in a way that is transparent to all stakeholders not only reduces risk of error but also ensures that all information is always up to date. This is important because trust in the information a partner provides greatly contributes to trust in the partner itself. And this trust is augmented if both parties have access to the same information in real-time.
Trust is further increased when stakeholder communication is dependable in quality and frequency. Digital alliance management platforms such as allianceboard support alliance managers by automating tasks like this across the entire alliance portfolio.
Security
Security in all of this is key. Exchanging spreadsheets of manually created values and charts – even when shared on a Sharepoint portal – may be cheap, but it’s not state of the art.
Secure collaboration on live data on a dedicated platform such as allianceboard allows partners the confidence and trust that you are aligned when dealing with sensitive information.
Are you still exchanging information by email or exchanging files via Sharepoint? A digital alliance platform such as allianceboard allows completely secure sharing of live alliance analytics and other information in a visually attractive way without the need for sharing static files.
Reporting
Ongoing management of an alliance will require reporting and regular monitoring of key performance metrics and long-term alliance health. This allows alliance managers and stakeholders to quickly identify areas of success, problems to address and trends that can be used to support future decision-making and strategy setting.
Using a platform like allianceboard will ensure that the alliance management function and all the stakeholders involved can report on and maintain granular insights for all facets of the alliance, instantly.
Accurate, dependable data available on request and in real-time offers transparency in the partnership that further reinforces trust between all parties.