The Strength of Many

by Jim Tanner

It isn’t often that I reflect on my college history courses, but I remember vividly learning how our founding fathers were influenced by Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. The simple yet powerful concept he espoused centered around the idea that each member of society doing what they do best would result in incredible growth and wealth for that nation’s citizens.

This concept is so fundamental that it surprises me how often in business we forget it; namely, multiple partners, each working to their strengths, will almost always produce a better result for the customer than a single company can on its own (no matter how dedicated or hard-working). To deliver value to your customer, often it comes down to a question of what you can do expertly, and what you should find a skilled partner to do for you.

When you find great complementary partners, together you can present a richer, deeper experience to your customers. And the resulting solution is often seen by the customer as greater than the partners. It’s the classic “1 + 1 = way more than 2.” The result is not only a satisfied customer, but a stronger bottom line for both partners.

Salesforce.com’s AppExchange is a great example of the sum being more than the parts. As part of its Service Cloud 2 initiative, the company is offering plug-in solutions from over a thousand vendors that extend the capabilities of Salesforce CRM. Salesforce.com is focused on delivering its greatest strength to its customers, while enabling a huge set of its partners to deliver their strengths to Salesforce.com’s customers. It’s a perfect example of Adam Smith’s philosophy in action.

My company has had positive experiences using this approach. We produce cloud-based software for call centers and are focused on call routing and agent optimization technologies. We’ve identified technology partners that excel in areas that complement our solutions, including hosted PBX vendors, implementation vendors and CRM companies. We work with our partners to deliver to our customers a pre-integrated solution, providing significantly higher value to our customers and extending our capabilities.

One of our Utah-based customers is a perfect example of what partnerships can bring. A couple of years ago, it built its call center from scratch in a scant three months. Rather than trying to build technology solutions on its own, the company found a number of vendors that could meet its technology needs, most of which were pre-integrated to work together. Working with the vendors and its in-house IT staff, Extra Space Storage built a solution that integrates the company’s point of sale, customer relationship management and telephony applications into a single interface. The company has since doubled its reservation rates, and its customers are happier and their needs are met much more quickly.
Ultimately, we’re all in business to provide the best product with the greatest level of service to customers. Often, in order to keep the service levels high and maintain a competitive advantage, the best solution is to partner rather than do it yourself.
So how do you get the ball rolling on setting up your own partner strategy? I recommend that you focus on your customers’ broader needs and then take a history lesson. Find others that are experts in the other areas important to your customers. Then work together to bring the completed solution to your customers. The right partners are out there — and the best part is, to paraphrase Adam Smith, focusing on our strengths makes everyone richer.

Jim Tanner is senior vice president of product at inContact, a Midvale-based company that provides call center services and network connectivity in the cloud. Learn more at www.inContact.com.