The Secret Sauce for Great Partnerships: 5 Key Ingredients

Every organization wants the “secret sauce” to success: the formula that accelerates business value and creates a market advantage. But like any great recipe, the magic isn’t in one ingredient — it’s the right blend of several key ingredients working together.

Some companies have created that unfair advantage by unlocking data’s hidden treasures, or by leveraging a powerful ecosystem, or by overcoming adversity, or through other great means like a unique company culture. Another great way is driving excellence in partner engagements to unlock value quicker than your competitors. So, what are the key ingredients for that particular recipe?

To explore this, I reached out to someone who shares my passion in helping enterprises build great data, analytics and AI strategies, Luciano TeKampe. Luciano is a member of Qlik’s Executive Advisory Board and has extensive expertise in global functional leadership and business transformation, and advises companies on their strategic initiatives.

"A great partnership relies on five key ingredients. Leave one out, and you may still have something good - but combine them all, and you create something exceptional, setting you apart in the market." Let’s dive in…

1. Trust

The first thing you need for a partnership to yield results is trust. This seems like an obvious one, but trust is at the heart of all good relationships. “As a data and analytics executive, I always had technology companies coming at me left and right; the ones that stuck are those who set out to be my trusted partner,” explained Luciano. As you establish these relationships, Luciano recommends looking for the following:

Clear feedback loop

To build a strong partnership, you need a clear and open feedback loop. “As a data and analytics executive, this means I am provided the opportunity, and then take it, to share my experiences and my team’s experiences on the product or service I am buying,” he explained. If your partner listens carefully and responds promptly, they demonstrate that they value your input and are dedicated to continuous improvement.

Proactive engagement

Proactive engagement is essential. Your partner should not wait for you to come to them with issues—they should reach out first. By staying in regular contact and understanding your evolving needs, they can address potential challenges before they arise. “Whether I am in a transformation phase or have specific requirements for advanced skills, acting on my needs based on where I am in my maturity cycle will build trust and solidify a true partnership.”

Understand my business

Understanding your business is fundamental to ensuring partners offer relevant solutions. The more they know about your industry, challenges, and goals, the better equipped they’ll be to provide value-driven recommendations. This approach ultimately requires both sides to make the time for these conversations, and provide all necessary access to key contacts and resources. This will help avoid situations where a partner sells a product rather than selling the value their product brings. “If your $50,000 product can drive $500,000 in value, the decision becomes much easier for me and my leadership team,” says Luciano.

Result: Better Business Outcomes

When both partners establish a relationship based on true understanding of each other’s business, and with proactive engagement and open and actionable feedback, this will drive better business outcomes for both parties.

2. End-to-End Thinking

Another key ingredient is about getting more out of relationships by applying what I like to call “end-to-end thinking”. In other words, it’s about ensuring you are tapping into the full scale and breadth of your partner’s portfolio. “Too often, technology partners assume we understand the full extent of what they offer, but in reality, we don’t always, leading to missed opportunities”, says Luciano. Look for these areas to help do this right:

Understand all your partner has to offer

As a leader, even when your current challenge can be addressed by just one part of your partner’s portfolio, you should stay curious and educated on all of their capabilities. That partner should also be proactive in positioning the breadth and depth of their portfolio to you, especially as the product evolves. This ensures that even if those solutions aren’t needed right now, there is clarity of how broader offerings can help as new opportunities or challenges emerge in the future. This will also help you see the full potential of that partnership, reducing the need to seek out other partners.

Break down siloed thinking

One of the key reasons you choose a solution is the added value it can bring. To maximize that value potential, it’s essential to understand why a chosen partner can do this better than anyone else. It’s on them to ensure they have clearly articulated why their product is the better alternative, but you can also help by ensuring you remain open to new partnerships as appropriate.

Unlock new use cases

With clear awareness on the full range of capabilities offered, that partnership can help unlock new use cases that you may not have considered before. “In my previous organization, the adoption of a solution from a different partner that allowed us to correct data anomalies and confirm their accuracy helped transform our approach to data governance, driving trust and accuracy,” explained Luciano.

Result: A One-Stop Shop

When you know how a partner’s portfolio can address a wide variety of needs, it can help reduce the number of partners you need to contract with, boosting operational efficiencies. “Modernizing my environment with the right end-to-end platform becomes a strategic move that pays for itself many times over,” Luciano concluded.

3. Open Ecosystem

The best partners will have other great partners: this creates a community for mutual benefit. By leveraging the expertise and resources from an open ecosystem, they can provide better support and accelerate your journey. More specifically:

Leverage an ecosystem of outside expertise

A partner ecosystem can significantly enhance your experience by adding specialized knowledge and valuable resources. Their insights can fill gaps and address specific technical or strategic challenges, enriching your journey and delivering greater value.

Foster collaboration with the ecosystem

It’s important for your technology providers to view their own partner ecosystem as an extension of their team, not competitors. By collaborating, rather than competing, with these companies, they can offer a more unified approach to solving your challenges. You can also play a role in fostering collaboration through open communication, and will reap the benefits from the combined strengths of your partner and their network, creating a more robust solution.

Provide a seamless experience

The experience should feel seamless for you —whether you are engaging directly with your partner or with their ecosystem. You should have access to the same resources and support, regardless of who they are working with.

Result: The Best Success Framework

By effectively leveraging a partner ecosystem, this creates the best possible framework for success. “This collaborative approach brings together the most expertise, bandwidth, and innovation, delivering faster, more impactful outcomes,” explained Luciano.

4. Innovation

As you embrace end-to-end thinking and benefit from the added expertise of an open ecosystem, you also need to ensure there is continued innovation from both sides so you can identify new opportunities and problems that can be addressed. This should include doing the following:

Sharing your respective roadmaps

Transparency is crucial in a trusted partnership. Partners should share their product roadmap to provide a clear view of what’s coming next, allowing you to plan and prepare for new features and capabilities that can address your evolving needs. You should also share your own future plans to enable your partners to understand how they can play a role in ensuring the success of these plans. When you demonstrate a shared commitment to continuous improvement and innovation, it’s a win-win for both parties.

Listening and acting on feedback

Actively listening to feedback and using it to guide product development ensures that needs and expectations will continue to be met. When you see that your input leads to tangible improvements, it strengthens trust in your partner’s solutions and fosters a positive, long-term relationship.

Uncovering new opportunities

“As an executive, when you go through a transformation journey, it is important that you not become so fixated on the pre-determined transformation path. You should take the necessary steps back to consider the new innovations available to you as the journey progresses,” explains Luciano. Partners should be there to help share how new capabilities could benefit your broader business objectives … and you should be open to that feedback.

Result: Enables Adoption of Best Solution

When a partnership combines proactive innovation, transparency, and responsiveness to feedback, it creates an environment that fosters the adoption of the best solutions. This ensures you realize the full potential of your partner’s evolving offering and, most importantly, derive maximum value from it.

5. Experience

The final key ingredient is about optimizing experience. “This is the one that brings it all together. It’s about meeting me where I am and providing me with the right experience at the right time”. Luciano recommends looking for the following signs:

Understand my level of maturity

To provide the right support, it’s crucial to understand where you are in your journey with a product. Your needs will vary depending on your level of maturity, whether you are in the early stages of adoption or advancing to more complex use cases. Knowing where you stand allows your partners to offer the appropriate solutions and resources at the right time.

Leverage the right services

A clear understanding of the maturity level enables a partner to provide services that truly meet your needs. For example, if you are transitioning from one platform to another or are focusing on cultural change, your partner should offer training, migration support, or change management services. Leveraging a recurring services program is a great way to ensure you receive the best care, year-round and gain trusted advisors who become an extension of your team. The right services at the right moment help ensure a smooth and effective transition.

Provide a personalized experience

Personalizing the experience means offering specific solutions based on a customer’s unique challenges, like addressing skills gaps or introducing advanced features once you are ready. By tailoring their approach, your partner shows you that they understand your business and are invested in your success, leading to greater trust and adoption.

Result: Reduces Friction and Saves Time and Cost

When experience is optimized, this reduces friction, saves you time, and ultimately lowers your costs. You can move forward with confidence, quickly realizing value.

Great partnerships don’t happen by chance—they’re built with intention. By making sure these five key ingredients are in place, you will help ensure your partners don’t just support your business—they help propel it forward. So, as you evaluate your partnerships, ask yourself: are they helping you gain an unfair advantage? If not, it may be time to fine-tune the recipe.