June 2024

Building Bridges: Best Practices in Cross-Industry Collaboration and Technology Alliances

From Inventures' experience, we have found that technology alliances and consortiums provide an excellent vehicle for facilitating cross-industry collaborations. However, creating these collaborations is not a simple task. So how do you go about building a bridge for collaboration between interested companies?

Employee Spotlight: Shellie Smith

Shellie Smith discusses her role as Business Operational Services (BOS) Membership Coordinator and Program Manager for the Mobile Satellite Services Association. and the keys to excellent customer care.

Key Performance Indicators: Measuring Alliance Success

Alliances are not only collaborative communities, but they are also businesses that benefit from practices that have made some of the most successful companies in the world. Many organizations have benefited from using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as a method of reaching short and long-term goals of success.

Client News: MSSA to Advance Global Connectivity for Direct-to-Direct and IoT Services

It was recently announced that Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA) has launched to promote Direct-to-Device (D2D) satellite connectivity for mobile phones and other devices.

Building Bridges: Best Practices in Cross-Industry Collaboration and Technology Alliances

The Harvard Business Review stated it well, "In an increasingly digital and connected environment, leaders of established companies frequently find themselves facing opportunities that they—or even their industries—cannot seize alone." This is because many of these opportunities require an ecosystem of multiple companies to realize an end-to-end solution. From Inventures' experience, we have found that technology alliances and consortiums provide an excellent vehicle for facilitating these cross-industry collaborations. However, creating these cross-industry collaborations is not a simple task. So how do you go about building a bridge for collaboration between interested companies? There are several steps in the process that we have refined during Inventures' 30 years of existence.

1. Gather Stakeholders. Identify and recruit the key companies from the different sectors of the ecosystem to ensure that all aspects are represented.
2. Define Goals. To ensure that all participants are in sync with the direction of the organization, the challenge or issue to be addressed, the objectives, and the planned output of the collaboration, must be agreed upon.
3. Establish the Rules of Play. An important part of the process is establishing and communicating the "rules" associated with intellectual property, which creates a well-defined and understood playing field so that collaboration with reduced risk can occur. Additionally,
4. Incent & Motivate Participants. In addition to the initial stakeholders, gaining additional participants for the collaboration adds credibility to the initiative and provides resources for the collaboration.
5. Launch the Collaboration "Platform." The collaboration platform - i.e., membership, financial, workgroup, marketing communications, and the organizational structure itself must be established, and then "launched."
6. Execute! To produce the planned deliverables and other outputs of the collaboration, the collaboration can maximize the time needed from member volunteers to create value for the members of the collaboration by outsourcing the administrative and operations tasks to Inventures to leverage best practices in alliance management.

The steps in this process may look rather straightforward, but our experience has taught us that no two collaboration formations are the same and that each one has needs and constraints that must be addressed specifically for the desired collaboration. Inventures' knowledgebase of best practices for technology collaborations enables interested companies to leverage that intelligence and experience to avoid pitfalls and optimize the collaboration for their requirements.

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Employee Spotlight: Shellie Smith

What is your role at Inventures?

I am a Business Operational Services (BOS) Membership Coordinator and Program Manager for the Mobile Satellite Services Association.

What does your job entail and what does a typical day look like?

As a Membership Coordinator, my responsibilities vary significantly depending on the client, covering a broad range of tasks. With hundreds of members and thousands of active users, a typical day involves addressing numerous membership and billing inquiries, generating reports, tracking agreements, and responding to basic technical questions. For some clients, I also manage payroll and taxes, onboard new employees, handle benefits and annual enrollment, conduct performance evaluations, and update the employee handbook and other employment policies. Additionally, I frequently answer questions about a client's specific technology standards and provide information about the organization and its industry role.

In my role as a Program Manager, I work with various committees to coordinate meetings, track deliverables, and other action items, and maintain the work groups.

What's the key to excellent customer care?

Listening to the question and not assuming you already know what is about to be asked. Or, reading a message twice to be sure you know what the request is before replying.

And always delivering a legendary experience.

If you could do another job for just one day, what would it be?

I would be a published author on a book tour.

What is your favorite vacation destination?

Anywhere tropical or exotic I love to visit grocery stores and cemeteries in other countries. Vietnam is at the top of my list.

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Key Performance Indicators: Measuring Alliance Success

Alliances are not only collaborative communities, but they are also businesses that benefit from practices that have made some of the most successful companies in the world. Clearly understanding the direction and progress of your organization involves a vision of what success looks like, and effective organizations turn visions of success into quantifiable metrics of effectiveness. Many organizations have benefited from using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as a method of reaching short and long-term goals of success.

What are KPIs?

KPIs are quantifiable measurements of an organization's progress toward reaching its strategic goals. They divide a strategy into actionable targets that can indicate progress toward a goal in a way that can be monitored over time. KPIs give business leaders data points upon which decisions can be taken to improve the overall performance of the organization.

How do KPIs Benefit an Alliance?

KPIs can benefit an alliance in several ways:

• Top-Down/Bottom-Up Alignment: Organizations often suffer from non-alignment between leadership and members or staff. KPIs identify what is important and promote alignment from all parts of the organization, keeping everyone focused on what truly matters.
• Improved Performance and Decision-Making: Companies with KPIs produce data over time that helps an organization determine its performance. Analyzing that data often shows trends and informs decisions that lead to success.
• Better Collaboration and Communication: KPIs improve collaboration among teams as they strive for common outcomes. This leads to more transparent communication that enables a better understanding of where an organization's priorities lie.

Selecting the Right KPIs

The most important path to effectively implementing KPIs is choosing the right measurement. Below are a few thoughts to help you do so:

• Strategic Goal Alignment: KPIs should relate to your organization's business goals. They measure progress made towards a specific strategic objective.
• Audience Relevance: KPIs and the data they produce should inform a particular audience. Ask yourself, "Who will review the information, and what is most valuable to them?"
• Ease of Measurement: Measuring KPIs should not introduce additional burden. Unclear or subjective KPIs may lead to more harm than good. Be as specific as possible in what metrics are used and how they can be easily collected.
• Actionable Insights: Information derived from KPIs is designed to facilitate decision-making. KPIs that fail to provide actionable insights may hinder the organization's advancement.

Producing KPIs

Follow these steps to develop a set of KPIs that result in the advancement of your organization:

1. Start with Strategic Goals: Define your organization's strategic goals. What does success look like in a particular timeframe? Annual goals are a great place to start.
2. Identify Initiatives: Divide strategic goals into actionable programs that are likely to lead to progress toward or fulfillment of the goals.
3. Identify Critical Success Factors: For each program, identify the critical factors that determine their success. What does success look like for those programs?
4. Set Metrics: For each success factor, set one or more metrics that can be easily measured, analyzed, and reported. These metrics become the KPIs.
5. Establish Targets and Milestones: Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) targets for each KPI. Make sure each target has a time-boxed milestone that the organization will strive toward.
6. Measure and Report: KPIs must be visited on a regular cadence, analyzed, and reported to be useful. Reporting regularly may help uncover trends, show progress, and facilitate decisions that adjust programs.

Start Now

A good set of KPIs and the goals that inform them can be of great benefit to an alliance. If done well, the organization can benefit from better alignment, data-driven decision making, and mid-stream corrective actions on key programs.

The best time to start using KPIs is now and learning by doing is the best approach. The greater success of your organization can be found at the finish line of an effective rollout of good KPIs.

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Client News: MSSA to Advance Global Connectivity for Direct-to-Direct and IoT Services

It was recently announced that Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA) has launched to promote Direct-to-Device (D2D) satellite connectivity for mobile phones and other devices.

MSSA, which includes major satellite operators such as Viasat, Inc., Terrestar Solutions, Ligado Networks, Omnispace, and Al Yah Satellite Communications Company PJSC (Yahsat), aims to leverage existing satellite networks and spectrum to expand mobile coverage globally. The organization states that its technology will complement existing terrestrial networks and offer advantages like immediate Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) services and more affordable 5G. The association is looking to collaborate with a wide range of partners to create a global D2D ecosystem.

Read more about this exciting advancement here. For more information about the Mobile Satellite Services Association, visit their website.

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