By Sarah Ruggless, Flexion
Introduction
With a constant flow of projects coming your way, partnering with other companies can help you get the job done. At Flexion, forming teams with outside partners is a smart business move that can create a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Here’s some hard-won advice that may help you find a reliable teaming partner for your upcoming projects, but first, let’s define the term.
What is a teaming partner?
A teaming partner is another company that contracts with your company to collaborate on a specific project.
What advantages does partnering bring?
Teaming with a great partner, whether in the prime or sub-contractor position, allows your company to:
1. Mitigate project delivery risk
Any new project brings project delivery risk, especially when you must quickly expand your capabilities and capacity. Taking on a project partner can balance out some of these risks because they can share parts of the burden of hiring or reassigning staff to the new project. They may also contribute additional tools, technology, or infrastructure as required. Sharing project delivery risk helps reduce the subsequent financial risk that comes from not being able to meet client requirements.
2. Expand your capabilities
Sometimes, contracts require job skills that are unique to that project. Rather than hiring temporary personnel with those skills, look to other companies with niche expertise your company doesn’t have. That also allows you to focus on your key capabilities and strengths.
Flexion example: We were working on a large government project and needed to round out our team’s capabilities to do focused research in the healthcare space and data modernization and management of complex analytics. We partnered with two companies we’d worked with that specialize in these skills to augment our teams. These existing partnerships allowed us to onboard new project staff quickly. We also could only permanently increase our headcount once we knew what skills we needed and better understood the long-term project needs.
3. Meet project staffing requirements
Finding the right team members to join a project at the right time can sometimes be challenging. Leveraging teaming partners to complete project staffing requirements can enable companies to ramp up the project team more quickly to total planned capacity.
Flexion example: We are working with a state agency to modernize the process for applying for and receiving a critical public benefit. The state agency we work with has funding requirements dictating a specific compressed timeline. We used a teaming partner to help quickly fill project team positions and keep the project fully staffed. Being able to quickly onboard team members so the team can work at full strength (and remain there) is critical to the success of this project.
Flexion example: We are working with a financial technology company to modernize their flagship fintech product. By leveraging a teaming partner, we were able to not only expand the capabilities of the team and bring in diverse perspectives to the architecture and design of the modernized product, but we were also able to increase the size of the team, resulting in some quick wins and establishing a baseline product that the team could incrementally build and move forward.
4. Innovate
Working with people from other companies can help demonstrate the saying, “Two heads are better than one.” New team members add their different points of view and can help diversify your problem-solving options.
Flexion example: Diversity in thinking is core to how we work at Flexion because it helps to increase optionality in problem-solving and empowers our team members to be their most creative. Our first fundamental, one of twelve sociotechnical principles we use to guide us daily, says, “Embrace diversity.” This fundamental demonstrates our commitment to an inclusive workplace where everyone can freely speak their minds and add creative ideas.
5. Broaden your connections
Nothing creates strategic professional relationships like partnering with another company. With new connections, not only do you learn and grow from the opportunities to work with another company, but you can also expand the industry’s awareness of your company and how it works.
Flexion example: We were able to create a positive impression and grow goodwill with the staff of a high-profile subcontractor. When employees of this company joined our Flexion team, they were treated as equal team members and were empowered to speak their minds and contribute their unique skills to the project. Our approach built goodwill towards Flexion, which helped broaden our reputation throughout the industry.
Conclusion
Creating partnerships with other companies is smart when you want to mitigate risks, meet deadlines, increase your capacity, and expand your capabilities for new or existing projects.
Flexion’s track record and unique collaborative principles-based approach can add value to your projects. Let’s explore a partnership today if you’re looking for an experienced partner with a track record of successful project outcomes, including cost savings, innovation, and other tangible benefits.
If you’d like to discuss a partnership with Flexion, please contact us.
For the past 20 years, Sarah Ruggless has enjoyed building teams and fostering a company culture based on the contributions of diverse, intelligent people. For the past ten years at Flexion, she’s been working to create strong teams to help achieve better outcomes for Flexion clients as we work to improve lives and save tax dollars.
