1. How has the approach of companies to partnerships evolved over the years, and what are the main trends taking place?

Over the past few years, the role of technology software and hardware vendors has been greatly redefined. In the past, technology vendors were ranked on par with other suppliers in the landscape of relationships managed by our clients. Today, however, vendors have become strategic players and have dimensions that place them among the world's largest companies. They sit at the tables of institutions to define national strategies, have capital and financial power that identify them as primary and key players. Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and other big players daily chart the high road in the path of digitizing the world around us.

The ability to manage the relationship with these players becomes a key asset. Engineering has invested substantially in recent years to create a team specialized in managing the relationship with technology vendors. We speak their language, understand their strategy and express their value in a business language that our customers understand. Partners today support us, seek us out, and recognize our role as advisors without which their technologies could not reach our customers so easily. 

A side effect of this evolution is that players are progressively moving away from individual local markets, entrusting companies like ours with a crucial role in declining the technological value of our partners in the different verticals we preside over on a daily basis.

3. How to manage collaboration among partners to make the most of the latest technologies and implement innovative solutions with great impact in different markets?

I remember when people used to talk about market sectors being more computerized and others lagging behind the digital transformation path. Today, there may perhaps still be sectors that are less impacted than others, but what they all have in common is the realization that the game of any economic operator is played on digital, whether it is a large company or an SME or a public administration or a hospital.  

Working with our partners on a daily basis, I cannot find a single area that cannot be addressed, transformed, enhanced. The challenge is the ability to stay abreast of galloping technological evolution and the need to apply technology to an extremely heterogeneous set of domains.

In the Partnerships & Alliances team, we have 13 professionals mapping partner solutions across the different markets Engineering presides over. This is unique in the consulting company market. We wanted to mirror organization with respect to the 6 Technology Business Lines of the Group's Digital Technologies organization. We have Alliance Managers specialized in the Cloud area, others in the Data and AI area, others in the Security, Augmented Enterprise Platform, Application Modernization and Digital Experience areas. 

With major vendors we have signed privileged agreements that only a select few players can boast. I am talking about AWS (Strategic Collaboration Agreement), Oracle (Framework Agreement in OCI area), Microsoft (AI Lab membership and DatacenterAlliance) just to name a few. 

5. In your opinion, what skills are now essential for an alliance manager to successfully manage relationships among all stakeholders and develop shared value projects?

In a very competitive and demanding market scenario, I am increasingly seeing a tendency to take certain behaviors to extremes. The technology vendor or supplier tends to have a very commercial approach to the market, limiting itself to selling without focusing on how far the technology sold will be adopted by the customer. It risks suffering from limited or no use of its solution (so-called “shelfware”). It tends to work with boutique partners who are hyper-specialized on their own solution, but who have no real dialogue relationship with the customer. 

On the opposite side, the consulting company has a more cautious approach to innovation. It maximizes the status quo and limits the uncertainty that might result from the introduction of a new technology. It supports the client by tending to exclude the technology provider from the relationship and tries to minimize acquisition costs. Being agnostic, the company usually does not specialize and waits for guidelines provided by the customer.

Engineering has understood this market dynamic and has invested in a team of Alliance Managers who solve the complexity of the relationship between the Group and its partners. Our Alliance Managers understand the positions and needs of fellow consultants and the priorities of our partners. By being able to interface with both, they facilitate communication and maximize the opportunity for collaboration. 

Being able to understand the needs and goals of natively different realities, mitigate conflicts, and maximize joint business are the true skills of an Alliance professional.