Today's global economy means businesses, more often than not, will find themselves working over geographical boundaries with colleagues, partners, suppliers or customers. Globalisation is far from a new phenomenon, but it's only now that companies are truly getting to grips with how to best exploit these long-distance relationships and deliver the best possible return.
The most successful collaborative business relationships are based on a strong foundation, with each company involved working to a well-defined role, playing to its particular strengths and sharing its knowledge with all others in the partnership. Achieving this can give a valuable source of competitive advantage, maximise the productivity of everyone involved in the partnership and reduce costs. Learning to work effectively from afar can also take steps to cut down business travel and therefore lower carbon footprints and the environmental impact of business.
But successful collaboration isn’t an easy task. Technology can now provide the means for remote parties to work together like never before, but there are many barriers to consider and overcome if a relationship is to succeed.
Cultural considerations
Any business relationship operating over a significant geographical distance must begin with due consideration of the many differences in how other countries operate. On a basic level, this begins with seemingly obvious but often underestimated factors such as different languages, different timezones and different national cultures. It’s not enough to just translate your normal business practices into another language; it’s about understanding how variations in culture affect how people work.
Even something as simple as an email can be interpreted in an entirely different manner to which it was intended if adequate care is not taken and differences aren’t understood. For example, short, brusque and to-the-point emails that are commonplace in the western world can be seen to lack tact and formality elsewhere.
Politics and history also play a major role. Take for example, India and China, two of the fastest-growing countries in the world where many UK businesses will already have experienced working with outsourcing partners. In India, during the days of the British Raj the education system was set up in English alongside other public services such as the judicial system. This historical adoption of the English language is one of the reasons for the country’s business success in recent times. In contrast, the Chinese government has retained a relatively stronger hold on its language, and since the state owns the 160 largest companies it is not uncommon for political representatives to get involved in business dealings. These factors will affect how long it takes to set-up the relationship so need to be considered in advance.
Away from national differences, successful collaboration also rests on every partner’s will to genuinely share knowledge and change how they work to further the relationship. There is no room for rivalry or suspicion in a collaborative relationship, and if companies refuse to give some leeway in their working procedures, or insist on trying to outperform the other partners, both time and money will be wasted.
To succeed stakeholders in the relationship must understand exactly what unique function or role they are intended to play, and trust the others to perform theirs. Lack of clear definition and accountability can cost a relationship dearly.
Global success
To overcome the challenges of working across large geographical distances, a number of techniques can be employed. First and foremost, companies need to remember that success will only come with time and effort – they need to be prepared to invest to make the relationship work, and to commit sufficient resources to establish the correct processes.
Technology arguably provides the best means with which to make collaboration work, by overcoming the physical distance between all parties involved in a project. It’s no longer enough when working with remote colleagues to review progress periodically – a policy that risks inefficiencies, misunderstandings or duplication of work being noticed only after it is too late. Instead, communication needs to be made in real-time, with the ultimate aim being one single view of a project’s current status and all relevant data for everyone involved.
Real-time collaboration can be enabled by video and web conferencing systems, which have evolved greatly over the last 10 years to allow instantaneous contact with almost anywhere in the world, crystal clear high-definition video and the ability to share resources on computers in either location.
Unified communications and presence awareness systems can also inform employees in one location exactly who in remote offices is online at any particular time, speeding communications and reducing the amount of time wasted chasing others. In addition, many companies are now adopting web 2.0 techniques such as blogs and wikis. Blogs can allow senior management to communicate with staff, partners and customers in other countries, while project-based wikis provide an interactive forum for all staff involved, no matter what level, to express their views.
However, technology alone cannot overcome the cultural barriers to working with companies in other countries. One way to achieve this is through training. Whenever we start working with clients or partners in a new country we run extensive cross-cultural workshops to fully educate all our staff about how the other country and how they like to work.
Another technique is to run regular employee exchange programmes, which exposes both workforces to the others’ working culture and also gives valuable face-to-face contact to encourage teamwork and ease the collaborative process.
The outsourcing example
The outsourcing industry is a good example of how collaborative relationships can prosper. For example, our own customers are spread throughout the world, and we ourselves operate throughout Europe, the US, India, China, South America, and across Asia. As a result effective collaboration between our delivery centres, local offices and clients is absolutely essential.
Our collaborative policy continues with what we call ‘two in a box’ – where we assign each client both a local and offshore manager to work alongside. This helps to minimise any difficulties that can arise when working with another country, and ensures the offshore work is completely aligned with the client’s objectives. Many earlier outsourcing projects, where work has simply been ‘thrown over the wall’ and left to the offshore team to complete with no real ongoing communication, have unsurprisingly failed.
Another factor in the outsourcing industry that lends itself to strong collaboration is the tendency for clients to hire several IT suppliers to handle different areas of the business. In this multi-sourcing situation clarifying exactly what each partner is responsible for is of the utmost importance, with a clear structure for governance and escalation to take account of any unforeseen developments.
It's clear that any company with global ambitions will need to learn sophisticated collaborative skills if it is to compete. As global partnerships increase, and with the continued growth of multi-sourcing arrangements, chances are we will all soon be working with more companies in more countries than ever before – and those without the ability to collaborate efficiently will pay the price. In many ways technology can make the world smaller, but it is still a diverse place. Cultural differences need to be observed if collaborative relationships are to succeed.