Benefit from collaboration with your competitors
In tough times, working collaboratively with your competitors could help your business to survive and even grow
Co-operating with the competition may not sound like the best idea to most business owners, but developing your own collaborative network could be a key part of the survival and success of your business.
Benefits of collaboration
There are a number of benefits of doing business collaboratively:
- increased sales and profitability
- access to services and resources that might otherwise be too expensive
- it can help you both take on larger competition
- reduced costs
- networking
- improvements in efficiency
- skill sharing
Tips for working collaboratively
There are some steps you can take to give your collaboration the best chance of success:
- before entering into a collaboration, agree on what you can offer each other – collaborative business relationships should be mutually beneficial
- have a clear agreement – depending on the level of involvement you plan on having with the other company, you may need to draw up legal documents and service level agreements
- make sure that all your company’s intellectual property rights are protected by the appropriate trademarks, patents and registered designs before you potentially share them with the competition
- it should be a balanced relationship, but only give as much as you’re comfortable with
- retain what makes your business unique – this may not be the product or price but more to do with the quality of your service or added value that you bring to customers
- have an exit strategy – not all collaborations work out and you should know from the start what to do if either or both parties wish to end the relationship
Source: nibusinessinfo.co.uk
