Jari Välimäki, CGI's Vice President and Head of Major Client Business in Finland, Poland and Baltics, discusses the transformation from transactional client business model to partnerships in the manufacturing industry with Glaston's Vice President of ICT and Digitalization Janne Puhakka.

On how to create meaningful and valuable strategic partnerships, Janne has a clear point of view: “You need time to build trust. It’s also important that companies’ cultures match – not only on the ICT level, but on the business level. If that happens, we have a very good foundation to do something.”

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One team, one vision: Reimagining business collaboration

For a company with roots in manufacturing, Glaston’s mission is deliver quality products to their clients, with sustainability in mind. But for ICT, key business areas are services and customer life cycle management – and this has required transforming from previous business model with simple transactional vendor relationships towards closer partnerships.

In Janne Puhakka’s opinion, this requires a shift toward working as one team, sharing common objectives, defining metrics for success, and even a common investment pool. For example, “partnerships can get stronger if you can come out of big problems together”, he says. Rather than start calculating compensation, the first step needs to be figuring out a solution together. This requires trust, and a good understanding of operations on both sides of the partnership.

People and partnership fit drives success

Building a partnership in Glaston begins from finding the right fit – both in terms of size and services, but also business model and working practices.

“We are a mid-sized company, but where we matter, we expect to get the people we need. I’m buying people, not just technology”, Janne explains. “If you have a limited service portfolio that’s going to be challenging. The partner needs to provide sense from a business perspective.”

But when you find what works, it can really work. “You need to do the homework and understand the background. Get to know people on a personal level. When you see people are going the extra mile out of their role, you can see they are integrated as part of your team”, Janne explains, and says building and maintaining this level of trust requires a certain level of maturity for both companies.

“You need to understand both business drivers and outcomes, and what it means to put skin in the game”. Setting a clear understanding with parameters for success to be evaluated after a certain period of time can help achieve this.

From buzzwords to breakthrough

For a traditional industry like manufacturing, the wheels may seem to be turning slowly, but they are. “We need to build in services and automate machinery so we can remotely monitor, even drive them”, Janne describes the process within Glaston. Improving cooperation between the business side and IT is an ever-evolving process, but working together from both perspectives is key for success. Bottlenecks don’t often form because of IT, but in the business value chain.

“I urge to understand end-to-end processes for the wanted outcome to the future. If transformation is just a buzzword, it’s not expanding the business to a new business area or service area”, Janne advises. And with the right strategic partnerships, your company will be able to provide a more well-rounded package to the customer.

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