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As markets and industries continue to be subjected to disruption, change and innovation, businesses of every background are looking for more ways to effectively lay the foundations for strong and sustained growth.
Forming strategic partnerships is an effective way of gaining a competitive advantage in the market while presenting an opportunity to access a broader range of resources and expertise. Strategic partnerships can take multiple forms, from a more general partnership between two companies to accelerator schemes, incubators, and strategic acquisition. The importance of finding the right companies to partner with is critical. Therefore it should be approached with as much knowledge and information as possible to truly understand all of the options, their differences and the potential synergies from a strategic partnership.
Why Freshminds?
The Freshminds Strategic Partnerships offering grew organically out of concentrated demand for strategic partnerships projects. Freshminds finds itself in quite a unique position due to the quality and quantity of talent and information within the Freshminds network. By putting together bespoke teams of consultants and analysts Freshminds is able to gain insights into typically complex industries and find information where others may have struggled. In order to develop these insights we run market research and conduct analysis in order to inform business decisions.
We have now completed strategic partnership projects in all emerging market geo-scopes, presenting how the 26 different language capabilities within the network set us apart from others offering a similar service. Apart from that, in a similar vein to the rest of Freshminds, the sheer quality of consultants and analysts is one of our strongest points that can be utilised throughout projects.
What kind of companies do we work with?
The Strategic Partnerships’ offering has the most project experience in tech, finance and professional services space. Here we have the best insight into critical variables which may affect the scope of a project. However, due to our ever-expanding network, we can conduct research across the majority of industries.
A typical project?
Typically clients demand two main projects to be offered: deal origination and ecosystem analysis. These include partner search, where we find our most demand and where we spend time understanding which criteria may be relevant and important for a particular client.
On the other hand, the team runs ecosystem analysis projects which can contain elements of usual strategic projects such as; market sizing, entry market strategy, competitor analysis, consumer survey analysis, supply chain analysis, the route to market, product development and customer segmentation. These are in line with Freshminds’ nature due to the quality of research that our network can produce using multiple research techniques. Examples include insights into competitor research and their market, demand in the industry and we develop recommendations to improve business.
What is the process?
First and foremost it’s important to understand the background of a client, their history, what they are looking for in their new strategic partnership and why they are looking to form a strategic partnership. This will affect the scope of the project including the geo scope, the industry as well as more specific criteria such as company revenue, employees, company services and skill sets.
Once these have been set and agreed typically there is alignment on technical definitions, project design and templates making sure that the project is structured correctly to allow speed and scalability. A unique methodology will then be agreed with the weighting of certain criteria allowing a tailored approach to the search. The project will then be kicked off, research will commence with regular updates and reviews, continuously making sure that all is aligned and the scope of the project hasn’t changed. The project will then be delivered after specific pre-arranged conditions have been met, such as the number of leads, primary/secondary research, analysis and evaluation in a shortlist of companies. Final delivery can then be presented to senior stakeholders with key insights and final recommendations.
