Transparency In Collaboration

Transparency of intent, direction and objectives is required to ensure the full participation of the collaborative partnership to develop a strong and cohesive partnership that supports the needs of each of the partners.  Transparency is required to build trust across the partnerships by providing a foundation of open and honest communications among the partners.  Transparency is also especially important to the customers of the partners to encourage the customers to also return again for purchase, interaction and support from the partners.  Transparency is one of the key foundational building blocks for successful partnerships.  This is also and easy concept to fall by the wayside either through not paying attention or by limiting the transparency to areas that one of the other partners feels is not pertinent to the partnership.

It is difficult to determine what information or practice is pertinent to a topic or activity because of the many different interactions and priorities. It is also important that privacy requirements, confidentiality and also trade secrets are protected from malicious intent. In these times it is especially difficult to maintain a clear understanding of privacy requirements as it pertains to personal information as well as national and international privacy rules and regulations.  All of these factors result in limitations and controls in both the type and manner of transparency.  This is also one of the reasons why you must guard against loss of transparency with your partners, it is too easy to limit the information based on the above concerns and as a result impact the trust and also capabilities of the partners and customers in the partnerships.

As you can imagine or have probably already experienced personally and professionally that it is extremely difficult to determine what information is appropriate to share.  As a result of these concerns it is also very difficult to built and then maintain a relationship trust when you must be  so careful in how and what you share.  You can maintain the transparency though by starting with evaluation activities with partners that focus on the types of information and developing agreements on the types of information that is appropriate to share and when it is appropriate to share.  These initial activities build the foundation for transparency through up front discussions and agreement on the types of appropriate information to be shared.  This type of up front agreement provides the foundation for trust that can be built upon through the development of the relationships.

I honestly do not know that specific types of information are important to share to provide transparency and build trust.  I do believe though that up front discussions regarding the types of information and the times this information is appropriate to share will build the trust and provide transparency.  Transparency and trust are built on defining intent and then delivering on those definitions and agreements.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Continuous Improvement For Customers

It is much more difficult to encourage and then maintain participation in a collaborative partnership with the customers of the partner businesses.  This is where the continuous monitoring and improvement program enters into the equation to provide a framework to generate the continued interest and participation of the customers in the collaborative partnership.  Customers require encouragement and clear demonstration and then delivery of benefits to their participation in the collaborative partnership.  Since there is no formal agreement or contract with customers to participate in your collaborative partnership your customers require a continuous stream of interaction and demonstrated benefits that will result from their participation in the partnership.    

A continuous stream of interaction can be very difficult at first and requires dedication and stamina to produce content that both attracts customers and also encourages interaction and contribution from customers.  The content entirely depends on your customer base however you must not make assumptions on your customer base and interests because this will surely either miss a the mark on interest or overlook a segment of your customer and most likely it will cause both issues.  Interaction with your customers will allow you to learn from them as well as sell to them.  In many ways this is the basis and foundation for collaboration; the interaction and learning from each other that allows and encourages both sides to develop a relationship.

Collaboration with your customer is not just producing and maintaining a web site and it is not just sending broadcast email messages to your customers.  Collaboration is interaction and communication between yourself and your customers, it is a relationship a great deal beyond the one way broadcast of information or encouraging sales in multiple channels.  Collaboration with your customers is difficult because you must determine how to interact with your customers and different customers are comfortable with different types of interaction.  Collaboration requires a range of communication and interaction to meet the different types demanded by customers.  There is no set method of developing the collaboration relationship and that is why the continuous improvement process of plan, do, check, act is so important to developing and maintaining the customer collaborative relationship.

Continuous improvement methods provide a very flexible engine to developing and maintaining the customer relationship and provides a basis for maintaining the relationship.  This can be challenging at first because of a lack of participation from the customer and will require frequent changes in order to tune the model to align with your customer demands and comfort in communication.  Your customers will also be adjusting and changing their preconceptions on interactions and reactions to your collaboration trials so what may not work today may be a perfect fit later in the relationship as it grows and matures.  This requires constant maintenance and review in order to maintain the customer interest and this must be taken into account.  This is a long term investment that may not produce great results in the short term and you must take this into account.

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?

Collaboration And Continuous Improvement

A robust continuous improvement program that includes all external collaboration partners will support the growth and maintenance of your collaborative partnerships.  The collaboration framework provides a guide to encourage participation and the continuous analysis of methods to improve the collaboration across business partners and especially external customers.  The continuous improvement methodology encourages methods and processes that can be streamlined and focused on the collaboration network and provide a structured means means to monitor progress, identify improvements, implement those improvements and then monitor the results to identify additional improvements.  

A strong collaboration network requires a method to monitor the collaboration network and the objectives of the collaboration partners to identify improvements that will provide additional value to the partners and maintain the interest of the partners.  The collaborative network requires a process and a method to delivery improvements to the network in order to maintain and grow the interest of the collaboration partners.  The continuous monitoring and improvement process provides a clear roadmap for the partners to follow that will maximize the satisfaction and the success of the collaborative partnership.  

Without a strong process to monitor and then broadcast the results of the collaborative improvements the partners will tend to lose interest in the partnerships.  All of the partners must understand the direction and objectives of the partnership and the continuous monitoring and improvement process supports the communication required to encourage their participation in the partnership.  Clear and concise communication among partners is a very important ingredient to the continued success of the partnership.  

In addition to the delivery and the communication of objectives the continuous monitoring and improvement process provides a method to refine both objectives and delivery methods for the objectives based on actual results.  Partners will begin the relationship based on the promise of improvements however they will require delivery of the objectives along with the benefits from those objectives in order to maintain and grow the collaborative partnership.  This cannot be achieved without a robust continuous monitoring and improvement program.  

The continuous improvement methodology of monitoring, identification of improvements and then implementation of the improvements provides the best method to support and maintain collaborative partnerships.  The partners will not stand still to progress and will quickly lose interest in the partnerships that do not produce a continuous stream of benefits to the partners that will maintain interest and encourage participation in the partnership.  There are too many distractions for businesses from day to day requirements and problems to assume that the the partners will continue participation in the collaborative partnership without a means to encourage the participation.  This process supports a method to clearly promote and demonstrate the benefits of participation while providing a means to delivery new improvements.      

And now for the audience participation portion of the show…

ECommerce will have wide ranging impacts on both the retail and manufacturing sectors.  How can you focus these abilities to improve the consumer's experience?  Improving the consumer’s experience will require a re-evaluation of the sales channels, the manufacturing channels and practices and the supply chain channels and practices from the raw materials to the consumers’ homes.  In order to ensure and maintain success in this new reality you must harness the tools and capabilities in many new areas.  How can you support these continuously changing requirements?