It takes a brave management team to actively seek out potentially competitor companies and strike up a relationship. However the results can be surprisingly positive, we have noticed an increasing trend in collaboration amongst our clients over the last 6 months.
Very few companies are identical, few have the same technical strengths, the same scale and geography of operation. Likewise rarely does one supplier have the perfect solution to its customer’s requirements.
Back in the “good old days” when credit was easy, collaboration was achieved in part through acquisition. Now more imaginative means of achieving economies of scale and broadening product offering must be sought.
Collaboration at its simplest level may simply involve referring business in a different geography to another supplier or partnering with a services provider who can fill a skills gap in your own offering.
In its more complex form collaboration may result in a full blown merger, where economies of scale can be achieved. We haven’t seen too many of these yet, but we expect to see more over the next 12 months.
We have certainly been encouraging our client base to accelerate their collaborative activities and to identify complementary product and service providers.  If nothing else it has increased our client’s market awareness.