Partners

I recently wrote about the importance of focus to a company’s success.  In that posting, I cited OSIsoft as a really great example of how focus can bring about fantastic business results.

Although the folks over at OSIsoft have worked wonders without extensive partnering, I believe that effective partnering is an ideal and sometimes necessary complement to the results that focus can bring. 

By way of analogy, if focus is the engine for company growth, then partnering is the infrastructure to allow that engine to run faster and faster.  Partnering lays a ready-made infrastructure for the distribution, implementation and even support of great software products that a company like PAS might produce.

But like everything else, partnerships are no guarantee of success…. There is no shortage of failed partnerships that litter the landscape in our industry either. Maybe it s the lure of growth by swallowing others that bring about these situations...

The right approach to partnering is not about getting to an acquisition or even short-term value.  Instead it’s all about finding long-term value for both parties independent of any exit strategy or acquisitional targeting.

Not that I’m against making acquisitions, of course.  It’s just that focus on what a company does best is generally a better and a stronger way to grow. Both for the company and for customers. 

But maybe its the past commitments to shareholders that necessitates a public company to shift management focus away from what’s best for the customer…. just one more advantage of being privately-held, then isn't it?

To recap:

>> Ideas = “fuel” for company growth

>> Focus = “efficiency” for best use that fuel

>> Partners = “infrastructure” to maximize the engine’s speed

Get them all right, and enormous business success is just around the corner. I just need to remember that some corners are bigger to turn than others.

Stay tuned…