A 2022 GoTo study says that 95% of companies plan to consolidate their tech tools in the next year. One way to respond to this downscaling is to seek out technology partnerships.
Organizations with more robust features will be in the best position to solve customer problems. That’s why we see so many organizations accelerating their transformation efforts. They are moving quickly to implement more modern technology, develop new proficiencies, and adapt their operating models to stay competitive.
Technology partnerships help organizations implement and optimize their technical systems. These partners are tech companies that work together to build products like apps, integrations, and plugins.
If done correctly, tech partnerships can help your organization grow. These partnerships create a host of benefits including the implementation of new tools, enhanced support, and access to greater capital.
But to make it work, you need to pursue a tech partnership that is comfortable for your organization. Additionally, when it comes to choosing a tech partner to build and execute your organization’s success initiatives, your legal technology vendor will need to be an experienced outfit.
Are you ready to benefit from this opportunity?
Tech Partnerships Can Boost Business
Tech partnerships come in a variety of sizes and levels of experience. And since these partnerships can often be long-term, they often evolve over time to become a marketing, channel, or strategic partner to your organization.
Technologies are often significant investments. Shorter technical partnerships may also change so that the time and resources lead to a positive return on investment (ROI).
The tech partnerships may include:
- The creation and development of custom web and mobile apps.
- The development of integrations between popular products to combine the potential of different tools.
- The expansion and improvement of a product that helps specific customers.
- The collaboration of strategic teams working together in ways to improve the organization.
When researching a tech partner, look for certain signals that they are competent within your organization’s industry and that they’ve worked extensively with similar organizations.
Building a Tech Partnership
You may have previous partner-building experience, but knowing that tech partnerships are unique will be important.
A vendor’s solutions with exceptional features and benefits will make a potential partnership look attractive. But do they have an understanding of your organization’s industry and unique challenges? (Also look for their experience with aspects like API availability, team size, and developer capabilities.)
When meeting potential tech vendors, ask yourself if they recognize and appreciate your business challenges and the outcomes you’re looking to accomplish, and take useful, numerous steps to find the best fit.
- Listen to your teams and get their input.
- Reach out to your customers for feedback.
- Ensure you have a good understanding of your tech requirements.
- Research partners that fit your enterprise-wide goals (culture, brand, innovation, customer expectations, trust, and mutual needs and benefits).
- Determine if they can manage your clear expectations and goals (revenue targets, approval processes, data sharing, and support and training).
Measuring your organization’s success will be paramount to a successful partnership. Creating systems and processes to make sure your combined efforts lead to great results will help to make tech partners thrive.
Making a Great Partnership
A tech partnership needs to give your business a boost with numerous elements important to your organization like advanced data sharing.
When getting started, acquaint yourself with why your organization might need a tech partner. This will help you dive deeper into strategic alliances, including how they’re beneficial for SaaS and how to know if you’re ready for one.
It’s expected that partnerships will encounter challenging moments at times. This is normal. But when these moments happen, it’s critical to have the mindshare of the leadership team of the partner. They are sincerely interested in solving your organization’s problems, they are fundamentally interested in your business and industry, and they are aligned with your goals and interests.
With a clearly defined operating model, your organization should be able to articulate your current model so your partner can align to it (if they practice Agile, how you manage remote teams, your specific software development life cycle (SDLC) process, a typical composition of your teams, and roadmap management to name a few).
Additionally, make sure you understand the difference between technical talent and technical experience. When establishing a strategic partnership, you need to look for both. A legal firm, for instance, will want a vendor that can supply the right technical resources with specific talents and one who knows the unique needs of the legal industry.
When looking to augment your technology stack with an external partner, ultimately your organization should partner with one that is determined to know your mission, establish initiatives to meet business objectives, and help your organization evolve in the right areas and at the right pace.
Technology is constantly changing. But your tech partner should be a long-term strategic partner that represents your organization and meets your needs as it grows. By investing the resources, time, and energy, the building blocks of a strong partner will deliver value to where it matters: enterprise-wide productivity, improved collaboration, and positive long-term outcomes.