What are some of the pitfalls of adopting the newest technologies related to industry partnerships?
Partnerships in various industries adopt new technologies with aim of reducing complexities, costs, reduce risks, standardize operations, increasing agility, and improving quality. This is possible because advanced technologies enable running the affairs of firms from any location in the world. Delivery is not limited to the office. New technologies also enhance governance as transparency is improved.
However, adopting the technology faces a myriad of challenges that include change management issues from the old system to the new system that emphasize service delivery and the failure of organizations to rationalize the current state and the future. Besides, they fail to bridge between the two extremes thereby failing to get value for the money spent on acquiring the new technology (Ahlstrom & Sjostrom, 2005). Furthermore, lack of enough knowledge on quality, failure to manage change, lack of innovation, and poor standards of measuring success are other pitfalls that partnerships are faced with when adopting modern technologies.
Partnerships fail instantly when they start adapting to new technologies in their businesses. This is because they have problems in successfully changing to service delivery. This is the entrance point for change. The challenge stems from a misstep by the management of the partnerships to assess the requirements, design, and process implementation of the technology change. This leads to a failure in incorporating technology into the business (Cheung, Welford, and Hills, 2009).
Businesses do not rationalize their IT department. This includes evaluating and comparing costs between purchasing, hiring, and the value of ownership that could result from either of the two options. Partnerships cannot also integrate innovation into the organization’s working culture. Sometimes businesses apply wholesome changes thereby making it difficult to progress. However, they are supposed to apply a process that can initiate IT changes progressively. Partnerships fail to plan strategically to use IT in innovation. By applying that technology in itself can lead to positive changes, partnerships bring about efficiency and as such, they become complacent and fail to put in place a proper framework that could manage the process of technological change.
Most partnerships carry out technological changes to satisfy customers and base their performance appraisal on customer satisfaction (Snijders and Bosker, 1999). Although this is good, it is not enough. It can be used to set up standards of success. The metrics that are associated with it include efficiency, which is achieved by sticking to set targets, retaining tacit knowledge, and quality assessment based on the “staff, get it right in their first attempt”. The problem that partnerships in industries do not understand when using customer satisfaction is that customers have different standards of measuring service delivery.
Carrying analysis using the methods listed above by picking representative samples would be the right strategy. Most companies do not add quality to their IT systems (Cooper and Gardner, 1993). They install the new technology then sit back and relax waiting for efficient output. That is why most of them fail terribly. They overlook several practices that are recommended to be used in injecting quality in the IT systems and the process of improving the performance of the business.
The quality of performance has various scales of measurement. However, the external report such as reports from competitors, partners, suppliers, customers, and the government would be the most applicable to adopt. The least that partnerships should get from an investment especially technology that is aimed at improving efficiency in recovering the total costs. This is a challenge among many partnerships installing new technology. The problem here lies with the failure to get full information about the project and as a result, they engage in a process of change without understanding the gray areas. This includes a lack of a professional team to carry out the project.
How does distance influence industry partners’ ability to collaborate?
The distance that is also called proximity affects the way business partners collaborate. In most cases, it does not work in isolation. This is because it highly influences other factors. Distance, whether geographical, cognitive, institutional, organizational, or social influences collaboration. Geographical distance interferes with how the partners communicate and coordinate in projects of collaboration. If the distance is close, then it strengthens other related factors (Alter and Hage, 1993).
Long distances cut the sessions over which collaborators interact. Partners who are in collaboration must interact often. Collaborative projects call for regular consultations among the partners and as such, a long distance will be an impediment. Lack of cognitive proximity could deny the partners a chance to get what happens within the market.
The partners will not benefit from shared knowledge, competencies, experiences, and understandings. These issues are very crucial to the partners since they are working in collaboration (Battisti, 2009). The collaborating partners will have poor levels of communication and collaboration due to distance. The two are important elements in collaborative businesses. The process of collaboration will suffer from a lack of reinforcement. The partners as a result of the distance have constrained knowledge about each other and the business. Distance if not close leads to spatial dimensions of collaboration among partners. This state of affairs reduces the effectiveness in the way the partners work.
References
Ahlstrom, J. & Sjostrom, E. (2005). CSOs and Business Partnerships: Strategies for Interaction. Business Strategy and the Environment, 14, 230-40.
Alter, C., & Hage, J. (1993). Organizations Working Together. Newbury Park: SAGE Publications.
Battisti, M. (2009). Below the Surface: The Challenges of Cross-sector Partnerships. Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 95-108.
Cheung, K., Welford, J., & Hills, R. (2009). CSR and the Environment: Business Supply Chain Partnerships in Hong Kong and PRDR, China. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 16, 250-63.
Cooper, C., & Gardner, T. (1993). Building Good Business Relationships: More than Just Partnering or Strategic Alliances? International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 23(6), 14-26.
Snijders, T. & Bosker, J. (1999). Multilevel analysis: An introduction to basic and advanced multilevel modelling, London: Sage.