Measuring the Value of Partnering: How to Use Metrics to Plan, Develop, and Implement Successful Alliances by Larraine Segil

Product Description

How does one accurately measure an alliance? With all the factors involved -- productivity, decision making, team performance, the number of new customers, and damage control -- getting a precise measurement can be a complex and daunting task. Knowing which measurement to use, and at what stage of the alliance life cycle, is critical.

Measuring the Value of Partnering gives readers a system for measuring a relationship's contribution at every stage of the alliance, from creation to implementation to termination. This essential book features case studies drawn from interviews with key players at companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks, Staples, and Hyundai. Weaving these and other real-life examples together, Author Larraine Segil helps readers develop the appropriate metrics and then shows how and when to use them accurately and intelligently to achieve the greatest impact.

Timely and practical, Measuring the Value of Partnering provides the tools for making any alliance is work to maximum organizational advantage.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #368170 in Books
Published on: 2004-01-27
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
256 pages
Editorial Reviews

Book Info
Text reveals the inside secrets behind successful corporate alliances. Case studies based on the author's experience at exceptional organizations provide a system for measuring each partnership at every step of the alliance life cycle. Includes index. DLC: Strategic alliances (Business)--Evaluation.

About the Author

Larraine Segil (Los Angeles, CA) is the cofounder of The Lared Group, an international management consulting firm specializing in business relationships. She has written and edited numerous books on the subject, including Intelligent Business Alliances and Partnering (0-8144-0757-9).
Customer Reviews

Jargon, puffery and false pretenses
This book is not at all what its title and blurb suggest. It purports to help you to assess strategic alliances by using "metrics", which are defined as "that which should be measured" (at xi). Unfortunately, the author has a distinctly inadequate approach to this concept: she will tell you that you should use something as a "metric", but she does NOT tell you (i) how to measure it, or (ii) how to weight it against other "metrics" that are qualitatively different. If you are expecting the book to provide even a single template or checklist that will enable you to accumulate a bunch of metrics and compare them -- in fact, if you're expecting anything quantitative at all -- yours is a vain hope.

Moreover, the metrics she proposes are often quite vague. For example, she proposes "strategic alignment" and "strategy fit" as two separate metrics during the development of an alliance (at 43-49). The distinction between them is never made clear, although for the latter she includes a kind of flow diagram with 12 boxes filled with terminology like "Misson/Vison/Values", "SWOT", "Product Lines" etc., and other chestnuts from undergraduate business textbooks. Here are some other examples of metrics, verbatim (at 214): "Define expectations and success continually", "Educate the customer about [your company's] value," "Negotiation - change the conversation from how much to how good". Maybe these are good bits of advice in some contexts, but the use of the word "metric" for each of them is quite misleading.

The "case studies" that make up most of the book are no more illuminating about the nuts and bolts of implementing a measurement process. They consist mainly of the authors's big-company clients patting themselves on the back while describing the things that were important to them in various deals, without describing any process for scoring or comparing these factors.

The author does take great pains, however, to remind us that, e.g., she once did some research at Cal Tech, that her current firm (into which her old firm merged) is "considered the world experts in Negotiation and Relationship Management processes" (at 57), and that she wrote another book (which you are encouraged to buy and read). This constant huckstering is tiresome. So is the prose style. It's an endless permutation of empty business-speak like "leadership", hand-off," competency" and "critical", e.g., "leadership is critical at this stage" (as if it isn't at other stages?), or the non sequitur: "The operationalization metrics, a cumbersome term, relates [sic] to the multitude of activities that put flesh around the skeleton of the alliance. This is also the moment of alliance hand-off from those who developed and negotiated the alliance to those who must implement it [at 63]."

If you can tolerate soporific prose about alliances, you would be much better off reading Mark De Rond's "Strategic Alliances as Social Facts". In addition to critiquing the "life cycle" model of alliances on which Segil relies, it offers a great deal of substance -- including a convincing argument that the success or failure of alliances often is based on factors the parties didn't initially expect to measure.

A must-read for anyone who is in a business relationship
Segil's expertise shines through in this book about the role metrics play in creating successful business relationships. Segil's use of real-world examples shows how the unpredictable, complicated realities of alliances can be overcome and managed by applying the right metrics. With her keen insights and first-hand experiences, readers finish the book armed with the tools and direction they need to use alliances to their advantage. A great book!