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Sage advice on partners
Fri, 1st Sep 2006
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Keeping up-to-date with constant changes in technology and fully understanding every capability of a system can be time consuming and complex. This year will be no exception, especially with many products such as 2007 MS Office and Vista being introduced to the market. Products like these will provide so much more integration capability that it will be a challenge for everyone to fully appreciate the whole host of features. Gaining this knowledge could become increasingly difficult and expensive for mid tier companies in particular. Partnering with recognised specialists will add credibility and allow organisations to remain focused, while still being able to compete with larger companies. When one of our clients comes to us for a CRM solution, a new phone system is often an essential part of the complete integrated solution. We don’t sell phone systems, but with the web and online manuals perhaps we could learn everything in a week? But what if this is the only one we sell or we get out of our depth – we could lose the customer or the new phone system could be supplied by a competitor. Now is the time to partner. We find it far better to call in the experts for this aspect of a project, leaving us to focus on what we do best – integrated CRM applications. Partnering with complimentary companies has huge benefits but does require time and effort in order to build these relationships.  Ensuring that you are working towards common goals is imperative.  Because the entry cost is lower we need to work harder at these relationships. Over time the two organisations involved could become one virtual organisation as seen by the customer.