Contact Realm Digital to learn more.<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n1. Shared burden<\/h3>\n
In challenging times, unity makes sense. South African retail brands, for example, are fighting incredible local and global forces: some under their control and some beyond it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen being buffeted hard,\u201d explains Chris Deeks, Exclusive Books GM: Online, \u201cstrong brands need to stand together where there\u2019s opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
For instance, Exclusive Books partnered with Uber Eats in the early weeks of the pandemic in South Africa, to deliver bestsellers to those at home. Their message? \u201cFeed your boredom and order now from your door-to-door bookstore.\u201d<\/p>\n
This time-sensitive local colab is reflective of a greater global trend. (Consider the alliance between food delivery app Deliveroo and board game company Winning Moves Australia, to provide board games to consumers who were stuck at home during lockdown in Melbourne.)<\/p>\n
2. Like-mindedness<\/h3>\n
Collaborating with another brand works particularly well if you have similar goals.<\/p>\n
Exclusive Books is a rewards partner of Discovery Card \u2013 both market-leading brands and category winners. According to Deeks, \u201cIt\u2019s important to partner with those who share your values. Not only when it comes to the customer or consumer overlap, which is more obvious, but also in terms of your intrinsic priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Discovery is known for out-of-the-box thinking in terms of rewards tied to healthier living and holistic wellness, and this philosophy lends itself to books. After all, who is a well-rounded and healthy human being? Often, one who reads.<\/p>\n
Deeks affirms, \u201cThe titles that move the most at the moment tend to be those dealing with self-development, resilience, up-skilling, and mental health. This reinforces the value, at least for us, in partnering with brands that value constant improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Agility, prioritised<\/h3>\n
E-commerce sales for many retailers have nearly tripled, according to the Forbes Technology Council (2020), leaving many struggling to meet demand. So how do retailers and their partners maintain a collaborative, win-win relationship?<\/p>\n
Well, for a start, when partnership is not strategic, but tactical or situational, it\u2019s important to pause, and look into whether the partner is sufficiently agile.<\/p>\n
Consider, for instance, an event like Black Friday. If you\u2019re the tech partner, like Realm Digital is for Exclusive Books, and things start to go wrong, you must be able to drop everything and fix it. If there\u2019s a massive spike in demand for customer support, you must implement a new support channel \u2013 pronto. \u201cPartnerships are forged in times of war, not in times of peace,\u201d explains Simon Bestbier, our CEO.<\/p>\n
He adds, \u201cYou can\u2019t say, Well, this is the way we\u2019ve always done things.\u201d The new normal is over and we\u2019re in Normal 2.0, which can yield entirely new problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t just be a tech partner \u2013 you have to think more like the business and the business must think more like you, a tech partner. The meeting of minds is where the magic happens,\u201d says Bestbier, \u201cand you need to be aggressive in implementing solutions. Build the Minimum Viable Product, and then iterate as you go.\u201d<\/p>\n
4. Stitch \u2018em together<\/h3>\n
Bear in mind that Normal 2.0 necessitates a new way to look at enterprise resource planning (ERP). At Realm, we\u2019ve realised that plugging in an enterprise solution, when a client\u2019s business isn\u2019t ready for it, can cause more harm than good.<\/p>\n
Previously, you might have a single deployment with one implementation partner. But today, when you start looking at different models of tech ownership, what you\u2019re looking for is being able to stitch together lots of different bits of tech from those who are the best. Deeks elaborates that \u201cthe best\u201d isn\u2019t best-of-breed; it\u2019s best-fit.<\/p>\n
5. The ability to guide<\/h3>\n
Exclusive Books looks for guidance from its tech partner. Yes, the tech pieces must connect \u2013 obviously \u2013 but leadership is also required. \u201cIt\u2019s important,\u201d says Deeks, \u201cto have partners who\u2019ll walk a path with you and who have a breadth of experience in similar and other industries, where they\u2019ve tripped over the same stones before.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Realm we understand businesses and we know that they want to see bottom-line impact, not gimmicks. So it\u2019s important to have business conversations and decide on the tech to fit, in that specific order, rather than to start with tech conversations.<\/p>\n
6. Bigger picture<\/h3>\n
Whether an innovative response to an unexpected external challenge, like a global pandemic, or part of a longer-term and more established strategy for business growth, all partnerships take time and money to integrate.<\/p>\n
Whether you have an internal ops and tech development team or an outside partner handling those all-important elements for you, there\u2019s real value in asking, upfront: \u201cHow long is the road here? Are we in this for the long haul? Or are we throwing stuff against a wall for the moment, and seeing what sticks?\u201d advises Deeks.<\/p>\n
For example, Exclusive Books is one of the early merchants of VodaPay, the Vodacom \u201csuper-app\u201d that will offer a range of shopping and payment services. The partnership hinges on Exclusive Books\u2019s interest in gaining long-term access to new markets and achieving minimal friction in trade, via \u201cone click buy\u201d.<\/p>\n
The bottom line?<\/h3>\n
According to Deloitte, 80% of surveyed C-Suite respondents not only introduced new pandemic-era partnerships, but also see these as key to business in Normal 2.0.<\/p>\n
Into the future, success isn’t to be found only in going it alone. We\u2019re seeing this daily in our beneficial partnership with Exclusive Books, and in its engagements with its other partners. Perhaps that\u2019s why they say, \u201cIf you want to go far, go together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Contact Realm Digital to learn more.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the interesting trends to emerge from the recent period of market volatility has been an obvious re-think \u2013 by both local and global brands \u2013 when it comes to partnership and collaboration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":532912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[14823],"class_list":["post-532908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-realm-digital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532908"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532920,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532908\/revisions\/532920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}