Types of partnerships

- Like a jigsaw puzzle, your company's partner portfolio has many different and interlocking pieces. Not surprisingly, not all business partnerships are equal. You need to find just the right piece to compliment your company's goals and the partners you already have. In this video, you'll learn about the different types of partnerships so that you can successfully recruit the right partner for the right need. All partners fill a specific need, or in some cases, like strategic alliances, they may fill several. The first type of partnership is a technology partnership where your company either uses a technology solution from a partner to enhance its own product or offers some component that helps another partner, such as a large platform provider, to offer a more complete solution. These are crucial to your company's success in part, because technology is deeply woven into every industry. For example, a large computing or storage service provider can give your company the crucial foundation on which to build your company's offerings. Relationships in which one partner builds another partner's component into the final product is a type of technology partnership called OEM, which is an old term meaning original equipment manufacturer. Technology partnerships assume a great deal of co-creation and technical integration to be successful. Next, are go-to-market partnerships. These take a couple of different forms, but all of them help you to secure new customers and create more revenue. One form of go-to-market partnership is the channel partnership in which the channel partner resells your company's products or service and often add some sort of value to it like customization or a service contract. The unique value of a channel partner is its understanding of and relationship to the customer or the customer's industry. In general, the channel partner acquires your product from you at a reduced price and marks it up to the customer. If they add some feature to your product, they might also be called a value added partner or a VAR. You'll probably develop a whole portfolio of channel partners, each of them covering a unique geographic territory or a type of customer. Another form of go-to-market partner is a sell-with partnership. In this relationship, your partner jointly calls on customers with your company's sales force. In other words, you both sell some part of your product together to your customers. This enables you to sell a complex product that could require significant customization on both sides. For example, you may have a partner that specializes in a particular component, such as a type of management software that makes it easier for customers to use your machine tools. In the sell-with arrangement, each partner is compensated for their own sale, although there may be a markup or referral fee. Finally, strategic alliances are broad-based relationships between partners who might roughly be equivalent in size, scope or market reach, but who specialize in areas that compliment those of the other. For example, there may be a global systems integrator who can sell, install, customize, service and operate a major platform company's technology, or coffee shops set up in large retailers to serve their mutual customers and enhance the shopping experience. So keep in mind strategic alliances can contain aspects of both technology and go-to-market partnerships and usually change in intent, scope and size over time. Because strategic Alliance partners possess many capabilities, they mix and match these between one another to take advantage of new and different opportunities as market conditions evolve. Now you know something about the different types of business partnerships. With your new knowledge, think about your industry and how various players fit into this landscape. Are they technology partners, go-to-market partners or both?