Question

What is meant by “partnering”? Please categorize the five factors of partnerships.

Answer 1

Partnering refers to long-term strategic business relationship between suppliers or stakeholders such as production, marketing, sales, etc and its customers that is purely based on implementing best practices in the relationship and ensuring sustainable competitive advantage at all steps.

The five factors of partnership are:

1. Goal Aligning- It is important both the parties have shared goals. Hence, it is necessary to realign the goals frequently to ensure success in the partnership.
2. Continuous Improvement- Partnerships would be successful if there is a focus of continuous improvement and self-evaluation. There should be a good balance of skills and motivation and this is possible via self-evaluation. This leads to improving the weak areas eventually resulting in continuous improvement.
3. Drive essentiality- In partnership, both parties should have the drive to achieve the goals together. Even if one partner is an investor and the other is the working partner, both should have the drive to achieve the goals together.
4. Complementary skills- Partnership is about coordinating the business activities with the different skill sets. Be open, and identify the areas of weakness. It would lead to complementary skill sets of the other party who might be highly skilled in that specific area.
5. Trust between partners- Above all, the most important thing is to trust each other in partnership. It results in enhanced business relationship and effective team building to achieve the goals together.

Thus, it is pertinent to say that partnering is successful if these five factors of partnership are practiced in their relationship.

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