Area of expertise

Realizing the potential of industrial partnerships

Even the biggest players on the market need to enter into partnerships to succeed in creating something truly ground-breaking. Partnerships enable rapid growth through access to new markets and expanded customer offerings. Through cooperation and collaboration, one's own operations can be strengthened with new and complementary skills. Economies of scale can be achieved in both product development and production.

But many partnerships fail. Differences between companies, which at first appeared to be a good match, become apparent in connection with a merger and the desired synergies do not materialize. It could be that the processes differ greatly and are difficult to harmonize, that the organizations are not compatible with regard to roles and powers, that there are no technical solutions to be able to exchange information with each other in an efficient and quality-assured way, or that the data architecture cannot be translated – something that makes collaboration at all levels difficult.

Conditions for effective cooperation
To enable effective collaboration, common processes and a well-functioning organization for the collaboration are needed. It also requires IT solutions that ensure a quality-assured exchange of information. Specific governance principles need to be in place, for example for goal setting and decision-making (in the image referred to as Collaboration Governance). But, to succeed in a partnership, qualitative values also need to be in place. It is, for example, about mutual trust, openness, availability, well-functioning communication, clear expectations and a striving towards common goals.

How we at Ekan help companies with partnerships
We at Ekan work in all the areas above to help our customers shorten the lead times in collaborative projects and achieve the desired synergies. We have many years of experience in extensive integration and carve out projects, as well as partnerships (external collaboration, joint venture) with large customers and we have a wide range of skills with specialists in a number of areas. We can help our customers in all phases of the partnership or make more targeted efforts in a specific phase.

At Ekan Management there is a large team of management consultants. Some have extensive experience in industrial product development, and others have the latest research straight from school. Together, we solve a wide range of our customers' operational and management challenges.