Building partnerships with other software houses. Is it a worthwhile endeavor or a waste of time?
Defining partnership building
It is a process of establishing and maintaining ties between people, organizations, or institutions that have a common interest or goal. Software companies can start building partnerships in various scenarios, including enterprises, non-profit groups, government agencies, and community initiatives. Mutual trust, effective communication, shared values and objectives, and a commitment to working collaboratively are crucial components for successful cooperation.
How to start?
This may sound odd to some, but the easiest way is to contact them and introduce yourself and your organization. Explain why you believe a collaboration would be advantageous to both parties. There are numerous solutions available that can provide you with an email to people from sales/marketing/operations (not to mention that some of these emails will be present on the website). So this will not be a problem.
The next step will be to understand the needs of the software company. Since you are working in such a company this should not be a problem. You already know that they will be looking for a partner to place their developers who are on the bench or to find developers for the project that their acquired but they don't have the manpower or the right technology to carry it out. When you will cache their attention and both parties agreed that you have the same problems and there is room for collaboration. The easiest way to maintain it is to just add them to your mailing list. Remember that you should ask them for their permission so after the meeting send them a request. Communicate with your partner on a regular basis to guarantee the partnership continues productive and effective.
Is it worth the effort?
Some large software houses have specialized teams that form collaborations with other software houses and use these partnerships to, for example, clean their bench or recruit developers for projects. This is the first reason to consider establishing a comparable cell within your company. The second reason is the low financial cost of building this channel. All you need is one person who will successively contact e.g. by email, a simple Excel file to hold information about partners, and systematic contact with acquired partners e.g. in the form of a newsletter.
The disadvantage of this channel is, unfortunately, the long time it takes to develop it. Generally, you must meet at least once to sub-sign the NDA, which takes time. Scalability is the second disadvantage. To fully utilize this channel, you will require a significant number of partners. Sure, you can think that you just need, say, 10 partners to have the same opportunities as 100 partners. But first, you need to find those 10 and that's not an easy task.
Summary
It is definitely not a channel that is sufficient to develop a company like a software house. Instead, it should be viewed as a channel to help other firm functions such as HR or Sales. Despite the fact that it is primarily a channel that supports other operations in the organization, it gives critical market knowledge and trends that you may learn from other people. If you're interested with partnership with Devopsbay, contact us, we're interested!
