How Do You Manage a Gorilla for a Partner?

Case Study Project Description

A software and consulting firm had developed a sought after add on tool for a popular software application. This tool added robust functionality and enabled project managers to get far more reporting to make better decisions.

Project Problem

When a company lacks the brand name status of the big players in software, it is vital for survival to partner with a company where your product adds value, and the prospect of greater sales to a partner company. However, the challenges of managing this partnership have to become part of the business equation rather than something to be ignored after the partnership agreement is signed.

Solution

You are only valuable to a large partner as long as your product helps sell their product; your company understands and supports the partner’s goals; you add big new ideas to their operations team; you find ways to be beneficial to the marketing team; and you realize that even though the partner’s product support team may love your product because it fixes something in their product, this is not enough to stay relevant for a long time to the partner.

Partnerships in software have a short shelf life. They should be focused on some immediate markets, with an action and implementation and then a harvesting of profits. Then the big company will have moved on to other partnerships or evolved their solution to the next version making your offering irrelevant or worse, behind in its own development so it gets dropped. Realize these facts before deciding to chase after the partnership with the big gorilla in the market.

The owners of this company were constantly at odds with their partner because they had different expectations than what actually occurred. We developed a program to get the product support team on board, which they were delighted with. But then the corresponding marketing program (a coupon for the add on product in the partner product’s packaging), never materialized any extra lead generation. The software marketer has to constantly be monitoring the affects of any of its activities and constantly make changes to the copy, the placement of the message and other aspects of the action plan. If one thing doesn’t work, come up with another idea and present it to the partner company and collaboratively improve on it.

Results

We mapped out several marketing routes and managed the interface between the owners and the partner company through several versions of the product over several years. When immediate results were not achieved, both parties became contentious and were not interested in working together. Despite numerous patch ups and re-engagement efforts, we were not able to change the tide in attitude. The company spent a great deal on advertising, nothing on public relations and didn’t work collaboratively on solutions with the partner company to keep tweaking the messaging. When the partner company came out with the next version, the add-on was quietly forgotten. The company could not keep the development pace of the partner’s product.

We’re Growing Faster than Our People Are

Case Study Project Problem

A large sub contractor had the largest market share in their region. They won lots of jobs, were the first pick of many general contractors and were often voted the best place to work amongst journeymen and project managers. Yet, inside the company, the owners were tap dancing as fast as they could. With a shortage of trained people and more and more opportunities coming their way, the management team was working over time, getting increasingly frustrated at their people’s inability to take responsibility to lead and manage. Crises management created a powder keg of issues and tempers were short.

The good news was that revenue growth was through the roof. But were the owners getting any more out of the bottom line besides mental, physical and emotional stress? Was it worth it?

Solution

The first step that we took is to analyze their financial situation. They were unable to get the kind of reports from their financial software that would reveal where they were losing money so we pieced together a trail of documentation to be able to track the variances from year to year. What we discovered was that the gross margin variance was getting larger each year: what they estimated they would earn on each job differed from the actual accounting at the close of the job.

This financial fact pointed to a problem in the systems and processes that their people followed. We found that each person had a somewhat different understanding of reporting and some used software and some didn’t. The fact that the systems were not followed magnified problems and people often blamed one another for not following or using different systems. This created a culture where people would not be motivated to take responsibility for their actions.

By identifying the root of the problem on both the operational and cultural fronts, we worked with the owners and managers on both issues, instituting key performance indicators, performance bonuses tied to producing the indicator information and focused on helping get all systems onto a single software platform. Senior managers and owners all were coached on running effective meetings, their attitudes, methods of dealing with problems, managing clients, holding others accountable, delegation, leadership, decision making, having productive discussions and working with each other’s strengths rather than pointing out their weaknesses.

Result

With a variance reduction goal motivating the owners and the opportunity to clear up many of the systemic problems that have frustrated everyone, the future seems brighter. The company is able to hold more productive meetings resolving issues face to face that would in the past, have resulted in project problems that cause the variances.