Partnerships are a delicate thing. We learn early on in life that cooperation is important and that working together allows us to achieve bigger and better things. But the more people involved in something, the greater the variety of vested interests, motivations, and end goals there are. Partnerships rarely work well when some of the partners’ view of the relationship differs from the rest.
IT field service management is complex and reliant on partnerships with a wide array of entities. Whether you’re an organization that is outsourcing some of your field service operations to third-parties or a dedicated IT company working both with partners to extend your capabilities and for end clients, surrounding yourself with the right partners is of vital importance.
Working with partners can add new layers of risk, however—the risk that is attached to not having a direct line-of-sight with the results your partners are delivering and how they’re being provided. Most commonly, this means it’s difficult to directly address problems in project execution or alignment in procedures and goals. In the worst case, an unreliable partner may take advantage of what you’ve built with them and move on to bigger things, leaving your field services back at square one or close to it.
We all want to avoid getting burned by a bad partnership. Fortunately, with a little legwork, it’s easy to avoid investing in a toxic business relationship before you’ve committed time and money to one. Just keep these four principles in mind while searching for and forging new relationships with IT partners.
Vetting candidates is a significant part of getting started with a contingent IT workforce. Naturally, a thorough qualification process should also apply when finding field service partners. No matter what the role of a prospective partner in your IT operations or where they’re located, a combination of detailed interviews and investigative work will help separate the potential good fits from those that could be troublesome.
Ask specific questions when evaluating prospective partners. Of course, they are naturally going to sell their best qualities to you, so drill down into scenarios and outcomes—how would they handle certain situations or what would they do to deliver the specific results your organization needs? After you fact-find, reach out to previous clients and partners of theirs. Are they forthcoming with positive references, and can they provide examples of this prospect’s value? Put all this together to feel confident in the quality of a new partnership.
The beginning of a partnership presents an important opportunity to set the tone for it. Partnerships between organizations of any size require both parties to get on the same page from the outset. Both sides must value transparency to avoid miscommunication and misalignment.
Set the precedent in the interview process first by asking about details of their processes, methodology, and reporting. When a partnership begins, set standards for knowledge sharing, project monitoring, and regular evaluations of the work accomplished together.
And don’t forget that it’s a two-way street. Keep your organization’s goals, values, strategy, and concerns open and accessible to your partner so that any disconnection in alignment can be addressed in the moment instead of festering and eroding your trust in one another.
Field service partnerships can be thrown out of balance by a feeling—real or perceived—of disproportionate ownership of the outcomes you want to achieve and the solutions you use to achieve them.
Transparency applies here as well. If using a field service management platform, the partners should jointly address the ultimate goals and ownership of the platform early on. The work involved in platform development is a tangible extension of that transparency and cooperation.
Your field service partner should tailor the platform to excel at the elements where your organization needs its assistance the most, be that technician sourcing, project management, IT infrastructure oversight, or anything else. When your partner builds a customized suite for your needs, follow through after joint development to ensure that the platform is both your organization’s own in capability and ownership.
The previous point can be summed up in one word: Balance. Field service management and platform partnerships require a balance that comes from communication and procedural trust. Set a structure and delineate a clear hierarchy of responsibilities. Establish timelines for review and procedures for clarifying any issues that might arise. Maintaining a balanced, true partnership stems from putting in the work side-by-side to build real trust.
Perhaps above all else, create a strategy together for the future of your partnership. One major reason it can dissolve acrimoniously is when one party feels like they have gotten all that they can from the relationship.
A good IT partnership allows both to grow together. Keep your field service partner’s goals in mind and fold them into the roadmap you’ve charted for your own organization’s IT. When what you’ve accomplished pales in comparison compared to what you’re about to do together, you have a partnership worth building upon long into the future.