Business-to-business relationships

Building trust across organisational boundaries is essential for all business-to-business relationship. A low-trust relationship is usually bound by a legalistic and mechanistic framework (the contract) that seriously limits the joint potential and the long term success of the joint enterprise and the reputation of individual partners.

Working at the top of an organisation we help businesses and the Boards that run them evaluate their need to collaborate and move from inward-looking, self-protecting behaviours to an understanding of the areas of interdependence between organisations and the potential for additional value that this can create.

Traditional techniques for building business-to-business relationships have often focused on open book accounting and ‘cost transparency’. But all too often this approach can lead to conversations which lead to large customers taking cost out from their smaller suppliers and increasing the imbalance of power in the relationship. We focus on building understanding of the risk and the opportunity inherent in the relationship, and identifying the potential future value (or cost savings) that can be created by all parties working more closely together. Our clients in this area include partners working in supply chains, consortia and joint ventures in sectors as diverse as; Oil exploration, FMCG, Pharmaceuticals and Financial services.

Clients who have benefited from our business to business relationship support include those shown on the right.