Two companies going to market together can be a powerful thing.
And there are more benefits to joint solutions than might initially meet the eye.
Anil Kumar Mishra is the Associate Vice President of Strategic Alliances & Marketing at CSS Corp, and he knows just how important alliances and partnerships are to his business.
CSS helps clients with their digital transformation initiatives and provides IT and support maintenance. They want to ensure they are providing great customer experiences. CSS has been in the technology and alliances space for many years working with a variety of different vendors.
Anil has 14 years of industry experience where he started in the B2B marketing world before shifting his career more towards strategic alliances and partnerships. He is a firm believer that one plus one equals more than two when companies come together; He believes it becomes 11. That’s just how powerful the synergy can be that is created when partnerships are formed.
We spoke with Anil in this episode of Alliance Aces about the power of joint solutions, how to accelerate the client decision making process and the strategic advantages of alliances.
The Power of Joint Solutions
Large amounts of innovation happen every day in the technology world, and alliances help companies thrive off of these advancements together in order to achieve their goals. In many instances, it just makes sense to partner together; it’s a win/win to partner in these tech decisions in terms of market share and innovation of new technology.
In an age of hyper-specialization, joint solutions are a crucial area of investment. When partners come together, they achieve great results for their end clients:
- Partners bring out strong capabilities in each other. Joint solutions have the ability to allow each partner to focus what they are good at. This allows them to develop their core competency and deliver the best possible product or service that can be further enhanced with another solution.
- Delivering strong solutions. Two heads are better than one. When the best and brightest from two companies are leveraging what they do best, they can come up with a joint solution that serves the client’s needs better than they could have alone.
- Agility to respond to client needs. Agility to change your solution to meet client needs keeps them happy and invested in what you have coming next. Partnerships in the marketplace allow you to respond quickly and precisely.
Accelerating Decision Making Process
More and more business leaders are diving into technology decisions too; this is no longer just limited to IT departments. Marketing, Sales, and other business groups are getting involved very closely in these decisions. The biggest challenge clients face is leveraging all of this new technology.
This is where Anil and his partners love to brainstorm; they leverage all of the technology at their fingertips with a common goal of helping the end consumer. Leveraging tech that’s already in the marketplace can accelerate the entire decision making process for these various business groups needing to execute on their plan.
Alliances as a Strategic Advantage
There are strategic advantages for both sides, services partners and vendors, when alliances are formed. From a services perspective they are able to address client needs faster with alliances. From a vendor perspective, they are often gaining entry to newer markets that they may not have been able to join easily otherwise.
For example, Anil tells the story of a a mobile marketing platform that recently partnered with Microsoft. They wanted to take their platform & user base and bring it to a new marketplace. Without Microsoft’s reach, they could never even dream about getting their platform in front of as many people as they have today.
This company was small compared to Microsoft, but they caught Microsoft’s attention, and now they are officially partners. They have newer opportunities and a huge competitive advantage now in trying to break into the market themselves.
From Microsoft’s point of view, they acquired technology that is on the cutting edge that their team did not have access to. This is a clear picture of how bringing two companies together often equals much more than the sum of its parts.
Check out other Alliance Podcasts here.
This episode is part of the Alliance Aces Roadshow. Watch the video interview with Anil.
To contact the host, Chip Rodgers, with topic ideas, suggest a guest, or join the conversation about alliances, he can be reached by:
- Email: chip@workspan.com
- Twitter: @chiprodgers
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chiprodgers
