Benefit from collaboration with your competitors

In tough times, working collaboratively with your competitors could help your business to survive and even grow

Co-operating with the competition may not sound like the best idea to most business owners, but developing your own collaborative network could be a key part of the survival and success of your business.

Benefits of collaboration

There are a number of benefits of doing business collaboratively:

  • increased sales and profitability
  • access to services and resources that might otherwise be too expensive
  • it can help you both take on larger competition
  • reduced costs
  • networking
  • improvements in efficiency
  • skill sharing

Tips for working collaboratively

There are some steps you can take to give your collaboration the best chance of success:

  • before entering into a collaboration, agree on what you can offer each other – collaborative business relationships should be mutually beneficial
  • have a clear agreement – depending on the level of involvement you plan on having with the other company, you may need to draw up legal documents and service level agreements
  • make sure that all your company’s intellectual property rights are protected by the appropriate trademarks, patents and registered designs before you potentially share them with the competition
  • it should be a balanced relationship, but only give as much as you’re comfortable with
  • retain what makes your business unique – this may not be the product or price but more to do with the quality of your service or added value that you bring to customers
  • have an exit strategy – not all collaborations work out and you should know from the start what to do if either or both parties wish to end the relationship

Source: nibusinessinfo.co.uk

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