eStomi had had agreed to be vendors to one of our customers to provide niche consultancy on a technology that it had decided not to work on. However, after few discussions, the team realized that the technology which our customer was requesting consultancy on, has become niche. Hence, we decided to consider offering consultancy in that domain too. The challenge was to identify expert/leader who would help us to deliver it without compromising on our quality/reputation. We learnt that one of the organization (let's call it as XYZ) had approached our customer to fulfil the same needs. However, our customer wasn't convinced about their capabilities and had rejected their proposal.

Incidentally, we identified to partner with the same organization (XYZ) since they had core expertise but not a strong delivery mechanism or good operational support. I met with their leader to explore the possibilities of partnering for a mutually successful model where in we can leverage their core expertise and provide consultancy to our customer. In the beginning, he had expressed concerns and had doubts whether we would be able to work together as we may be competing for the same customer. After assuring that we would never breach each others' their trust, the leader agreed to work with us. He also realized that he stood a very little chance to get an order from our customer on his own. In the event, he also realized that the dependency is mutual and they would have to rely on us for ITSM/ITIL consultancy. I slightly differ on what Mark Zucerkberg said. I think the trick is to add the stuff, not take away. Today, we have an agreement signed between us to work collectively to grow together.

It was a win-win scenario for all the three parties as our customer was very keen to have B2B model. I think that this is the beauty of being small orgs wherein, you talk to the decision makers straight away, express the thoughts, work out a mutually beneficial solution and close the matter.

Benjamin Franklin very aptly said what I intended to share in the entire blog, in one line- "We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.".