Alliances Best

Practices

April 2005
 Contents

• Section 1: Alliances Best Practices Discussion Document (pp. 3 -10)

• Section 2: Partner Input – Summary of Responses (pp. 11 – 17)

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Section 1: Alliances Best
Practices

Discussion Document
 Alliance Best Practices - Inventory

• Define criteria for alliance success

• Establish a relationship strategy and drive buy-in
• Structure the field relationships
• Drive action plans to make things happen
• Generate awareness and respond to practitioner needs from the field
• Define teaming constructs and joint solutions
• Establish proactive and systematic lead management practices
• Develop and use key agreements as a teaming enabler
• Measure progress and reward success
• Communicate regularly to key stakeholders

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 Alliance Best Practices - Descriptions
 Define criteria for alliance
success:
o Define our basis for success, then use this
for planning, prioritization and execution
o Understand the alliance partner’s basis
for success, including the metrics by which
they intend to judge the relationship
o Focus on making the pie bigger. Our
alliance partners get very frustrated when
we act as "ambulance chasers", waiting for
deals to be completed by them and then just
"piling on" to compete for the services.
They want us to help them create new
markets and new opportunities
o Where possible align our metrics for
success with our alliance partner metrics so
we are driving our relationship in the same
direction
5 o Expand the relationship to product development and
 Establish a relationship strategy and drive
buy-in:
o Establish a strategy of where we must go with this
relationship, including a clear vision, stretch goal targets,
and alignment with, and leverage of, Deloitte strategic
imperatives
o Leverage the synergies across Sell To, Sell With and Sell
Through
o Drive and nurture buy-in within Deloitte and alliance
partner. Make sure Deloitte senior leaderships buys in to
the business case for the alliance.
o Drive the relationship to a “CEO to CEO” connection.
o Define a clear compatibility story for both Deloitte and the
alliance partner. This is the story which shows clearly why
teaming is can be a win-win proposition in the marketplace
o Take a long-term view, not a transactional view
o Treat the alliance partner like a client.. Don’t confront the
partner and ask them “What have you done for me lately.”
o Introduce the broader Deloitte organization/ leadership.
We are unique in our MDP capabilities and strength of
industry knowledge. We can differentiate our firm in the
view of the alliance partner by educating them on our
breadth of services and breadth of marketplace
relationships
product marketing.
 Alliance Best Practices - Descriptions
• Structure the field relationships:
• While corporate relationships are valuable, our
successes are really driven in the field.
Developing a "relationship matrix" that aligns our
Partners, Directors, Sr. Managers and BDMs with
regional/local sales managers and account
executives ensures that appropriate relationship
coverage occurs
• Ensure that the alignment matrix includes both
geographic and industry components. Most
initiatives will have a heavy industry component.
• Include multiple service lines in the relationship
matrix such as EA, S&O, HC, ERS, Tax, etc. The
vendors are extremely interested in making
connections with our industry experts and our non-
technical practitioners.
• Relationships are king … Nurture, Entertain, Don’t
limit to individuals or service lines.
• Do your best to operate like a global firm. Our
largest alliance partners are global companies and
expect us to operate in the same manner. When we
operate with a one-firm approach, we enhance our
value to the alliance partner and, coincidentally,
stand a much better chance of winning the large
global deals
• Establish periodic reporting of relationship
contacts to confirm that relationship building
6 assignments are being performed according to plan
• Drive action plans to make things
happen:
• Define alliance core team resources, roles and
action plans (typically joint planning with the both
Deloitte and the alliance team)
• Alliance leadership
• DC Product Services resources
• Global region and country leads where feasible in
Europe and APAC.
• Deloitte “partner on point” in each focused
industry or solution
• Marketing support
• Stay focused on a short listing of things that matter.
Clive-ism: Focus on a few things that are jointly
agreed and execute flawlessly
• Follow-up every time. The alliance team must be
extremely responsive.
• Establish a problem escalation path within both
organizations
• Focus on making the vendor successful, even
when there's not a direct benefit to Deloitte - what
goes around, comes around.
 Alliance Best Practices - Descriptions

• Generate awareness and respond to • Define teaming constructs and joint

practitioner needs in the field:
• Establish marketing lead who will assist in the
GTM alliance relationship
• Target the appropriate Service Area practices
(including specific targeted Service Lines),
Industry practices, and practitioners who care
• Support our client pursuit teams in evaluating
and executing teaming (typically just in time
on pursuits and projects):
solutions:
• Ensure Deloitte practitioners understand the menu of
options the alliance will offer, in both pre-sales and post-
sales modes
• Think creatively about defining and packaging alternative
teaming scenarios for various types of work and for
specific solutions
• Define joint solutions which can be taken aggressively to
market in a replicable way

• Provide quick overview of the relationship

• Help to explore the teaming potential and

use of joint solutions

• Highlight other similar client teaming

situations

• Get directly involved in the discussions

with the alliance and/or the client

• Develop quals which document our joint

client successes

• Participate and drive market eminence

building events such as user group
conferences and seminars and measure the
results of these efforts.

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 Alliance Best Practices - Descriptions

• Establish proactive and systematic lead
management practices:
• Map accounts in ours and the alliance company’s
client portfolio
• Drive bi-directional lead sharing, to the extent
feasible. Leverage a simple tool like eRoom to
facilitate version control
• Prioritize lead sources and specific leads, including
time allocation toward specific leads
• Tell the alliance partner when they don’t have a
chance to win a deal
• Establishment of “rules of the road” * which both
organizations can live with
• Develop and use key agreements as a
teaming enabler:
• Establish the appropriate NDA agreements
• Measure progress and reward success:
• Create scorecards to gauge our joint success
(establish annually and measure quarterly)
• Drive the alliance down to the lowest levels in the
Firms by incenting both teams appropriately
• Recognize field practitioners in both organizations
for our successes
• Communicate regularly to key
stakeholders:
• Celebrate joint wins
• Establish the appropriate targeted and broad based
communications for the both the Deloitte and
alliance partner organizations
• Communicate externally to clients and evaluators,
as appropriate

• Establish hardware and/or software channel

agreements (driven by DCPS)

• Establish Master Teaming Agreements and Master

Subcontract Agreements if appropriate

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 The Gartner Dataquest Alliance Value Ratio
The Gartner Dataquest Alliance Value Ratio

Alliance Results + Relationship

Value = Infrastructure Investment + Convenience Cost

Alliance Value =
 Results, primarily in the form of top line growth
 Relationship with trusted partners who have the capabilities, market position
and understanding to forge mutually beneficial, non competing alliances
 Solid alliance infrastructure, especially where relationship mgt, sales support
and technical support are concerned
 Minimal convenience cost in terms of the time, resource and financial costs
of working with partners who cannot deliver commensurate relationship and
infrastructure value

research
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January 2004 Source: Gartner Dataquest Alliance Best Practices 2001, 2002, 2003 Entire contents © 2004 G
 Potential Hurdles

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Section 2: Partner Input

Summary of Responses
 Summarized Responses

There were many thoughtful responses to the original email, with several common ideas:

• Establish Criteria to Measure Success. Create scorecards, goal sheets, etc, to identify
strengths and correct weaknesses within all aspects of the Alliance, including revenue
generation, relationship management, sales team success (BDMs), and pipeline / opportunity
management.
• Recognize & Reward Based on Established Criteria. Ensure that metrics are taken
seriously by creating appropriate incentives based on individual success. This is especially
important in the sales area.
• Leverage Our Capabilities. Act global where necessary. Bring in our different functions &
services to differentiate ourselves from the competition.

– Please review the following pages for detailed replies.

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 Individual Responses

• Scorecard Measurement. Run the alliance from a jointly agreed executive scorecard that is
established annually and reviewed quarterly. The scorecard should track quantitative and
qualitative items with an obvious focus on revenues driven by the alliance for BOTH partners
• Create and Utilize Incentives. Drive the Alliance down to the lowest levels in the Firms by
incenting both teams appropriately. This is especially true for sales/pipeline pursuits. Only
this action will change behavior and deliver results
• Focus, focus, focus. An Alliance cannot be all things to all people. Focus on a few things
that are jointly agreed and execute flawlessly

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 Individual Responses

• Treat the alliance partner like a client - Avoid challenging or confrontative comments or
statements such as "What have you done for Deloitte lately?" "We don't need you, we're
bigger than you are." I've actually seen our partners make these kinds of statements to
partners as a way to try to establish control in a meeting. These always backfire and
demonstrate a mind-set that the alliance partner is merely another vendor.
– Recognize that the alliance partner is an outstanding lead developer for us. We've
received many leads from partners. Our partners have thousands of sales reps out
there beating the streets. They know about a lot of deals that are occurring often
times right under our noses when we're at a client.
• Relationships are king, Entertain, Entertain, Entertain - Obviously , the more senior our
relationships the better. We do however, need to balance this against having "happy talk,
content free meetings with senior executives from the alliance partner organization. We don't
want to get to a level where the senior executive feels that a meeting with us was a waste of
his/her time. It's better to work our way up, establish credibility, have a good story to tell and
then have meaningful sessions.
– If we're not entertaining the alliance partner, our competitors are. Our competitors
have a large number of business development people or sales partners who
understand the value of relationships up and down the alliance partner's organization.
Go to alliance partner events, and be the last one out the door. We also try to get
ourselves invited to internal events that other partners are not invited to as a subject
matter expert or dinner host. Sponsoring sales meetings is a relatively cheap way to
get some air-time in front of the entire sales organization to tell the Deloitte story.
Over the past several years, I've been able to present at one meeting with 1,500
14 Oracle sales reps and another meeting with the entire JD Edwards sales force.
 Individual Responses

• "What Have You Done For Me Tomorrow" - Remember that’s the only thing the vendors
care about. Everything that was done before, positions us with a vendor, but doesn't do
anything to help them achieve their sales targets for this quarter. In today's economy where
the bottom 10% to 20% is let go every year, sales executives are under incredible pressure
to meet their numbers each and every quarter. Their mortgages and children's college
educations depend on it. It we're not helping them now, someone else is.
• Follow up every time - Nothing infuriates an alliance partner more than lack of follow-up.
This one's obvious, but I still see it more than I should.
• Tell the partner when they don’t have a chance at a deal. If we know for sure that they're
ultimately going to lose a deal, they'd rather know about it sooner than later. This one's tricky
due to confidentiality, but can usually be worked done in an ethical, professional manner.
• Be insightful - This should be fairly obvious so I won't dwell on it. We need to continue with
new ideas such as Tax Advantaged ERP, EVM, ValuePrint, and IndustryPrint. Our clients
and alliance partners expect us to be the best and have the best intellectual capital. We
need to continue to invest in these tools and approaches. It's the only way to maintain and
justify our billing rate structure.

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 Individual Responses

• Focus on making the pie bigger - Our alliance partners get very frustrated when we act as
"ambulance chasers", waiting for deals to be completed by them and then just "piling on" to
compete for the services. They want us to help them create new markets and new
opportunities.
• Expand the relationship to Product Development and Product Marketing - Following on
to the above, we have had great success in building relationships early in the product life
cycle and helping shape their product design, go-to-market strategies and market
messaging. In doing so, we can effectively block our competitors from the mix or at least
significantly disadvantage them.
• Introduce the broader Deloitte organization/leadership - We are unique in our MDP
capabilities and strength of industry knowledge. We can differentiate our firm in the view of
the alliance partner by educating them on our breadth of services and breadth of
marketplace relationships.
• Focus on making the vendor successful, even when there's not a direct benefit to Deloitte
- What goes around, comes around. Good example would be helping the vendor with a
restricted entity client.
• Take a long-term view, not a transaction view - The sales organization at the vendor is
often very transactional in their thinking. There is a risk that we let them take us down that
path and reciprocate the behavior. We are better served when we take the high road and
look at the relationship over time versus getting focused on whether a single transaction
shapes up exactly as we might want.

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 Individual Responses

• Define our "practice" to include all the participants - The alliance partner does not care
about our "departments" any more than our clients do. Alliance management is responsible
for the success of our alliance across EA, HC, AERS, Tax, etc.

• Operate like a global firm - Our largest alliance partners are global companies and expect
us to operate in the same manner. When we operate with a one-firm approach, we enhance
our value to the alliance partner and, coincidentally, stand a much better chance of winning
the large global deals. (There is a whole set of behaviors required to make this work.)

• Structure the field relationships - While corporate relationships are valuable, our
successes are really driven in the field. Developing a "relationship matrix" that aligns our
Partners, Directors, Sr. Managers and BDMs with regional/local sales managers and account
executives ensures that appropriate relationship coverage occurs. This can be further
enhanced by periodic reporting of relationship contacts to confirm that relationship building
assignments are being performed according to plan. (This is also an excellent way to train
our senior managers in network building behaviors that will help them be successful
partner/directors.)

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