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In life it is important to have strong partners that you can rely on in any situation. The same holds true in the business world. With today’s challenging environment, you need to have flexibility and the ability to respond to any task put in front of you. There are times you can handle new tasks or changes alone, but there are also times when you need to rely on someone outside of your company to provide some or all of that support. That is the reason to have a well-developed team of partners that can provide you with the assistance in time of need. Today we’ll discuss the value of a partner network and how to find potential partners and select the best one for your solution.
When you may need to work with a partner: It is not uncommon to be assigned a new project or task that has elements that you have limited to no experience with, or which exceeds your personal or department’s bandwidth. This requires you to make a decision; either you must invest the time and effort in team members to research the topic to gain the knowledge or you need to find the right partner and leverage their years of experience and technical expertise. This could include a product, a service, or both. Whatever the case may be, having an established network of reliable partners can remove the burden from your team allowing them to focus on their areas of expertise while delivering the best solution possible. Here is an example of how we used partners to deliver a solution to one of our customers.
We were quoting a major Test Dyne project that had a few technical elements that were outside of our core competencies. During the quoting phase we identified all of the major elements of the project and decided where we were a strong fit for and where we needed to find someone that could augment our team to deliver the best results for the customer. Work was done to understand the requirements for each element and then to research potential partners. Once a list of partners was found, time was spent meeting with and learning about each vendor’s product or service. NOTE: This can quickly turn into an unfocused sales pitch from a potential partner. It is important for you to thoroughly understand your project requirements and make decisions based on those. we decided on which potential partners fit best for our project needs and those selected were included and involved during the quoting process. By incorporating the selected partners in the project quoting and customer reviews, it solidified our position and showed the customer that we were committed to delivering the best solution for their project. At the end of the day, we were awarded the project and delivered systems that our customer is currently using to test the durability of their products
How to find a Partner:
How to know you have found the right partner:
It is important to understand that you need to do a tremendous amount of work before starting your partner search. You need to be aware there are potential pitfalls to working with partners. Not all marriages are made in heaven however when the right partners are selected, they bring tremendous value. They can become an extension to your current team and someone that can deliver the results now and in the future.
Are you currently searching for an engineering partner? Contact us today to see how you can leverage our core capabilities on your next project.
Ball Systems designs, develops, and delivers custom test systems and produces comprehensive build-to-print systems for companies creating or manufacturing critical electronic or electro-mechanical components for automotive, aerospace and defense and consumer appliance applications.
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