Why and How I Partner 

Over the past few weeks since I announced that my company, IowaComputerGurus Inc. was going to be an exhibitor at OpenForce ’08 this November I have been asked a few questions by the community.  I feel that the answers to these questions are items that should be aired publicly; therefore I am posting this information here for all to see.  The two questions that have been coming up quite a bit recently are; Why are you sharing a booth with Seablick Consulting, and How do you choose your business partners.  I will start by addressing the second question, and returning to answer the first.

How do you choose your business partners?

I think this is a very important question to answer, however first of all I want to take a moment to answer another question.  “Why do you select business partners?”  I think an understanding of they why will help fully explain the processes behind the how.

As the owner of a small business I am faced with numerous challenges that I must overcome to be competitive with the larger organizations in the custom software ecosystem. These competitors offer a full range of solutions, from development to design to project management to support and more. I have a wide variety of experiences, but my skills are much more strongly focused in certain areas, selecting business partners allows me to offer a full range of services to my customers, while still focusing on my primary areas of expertise.

I am not going to send a customer away because I don’t do design or other work, therefore a need to establish partnerships is created. These partnerships allow me to provide my clients my services and I can bundle the services of my partners with them to provide a total package.

Now, how do I select these partners? Well this process is a bit lengthy but the short version of this is that I will only select business partners that I feel represent the same values and dedication that I do to my customers. Therefore I evaluate potential partners based on their services offered, communication methods, customer service standards, quality of work, and professionalism to name a few key elements.

I don’t take the partnership process lightly, and only recommend companies that I can truly feel confident in saying, yes, they are a great company to work with. I also want to be 100% confident that they will be able to deliver on my clients needs.

Why are you sharing a booth with Seablick Consulting?

Now that I have given a bit of an overview as to WHY I create business partnerships, I will explain why IowaComputerGurus Inc. and Seablick Consulting are sharing a booth at OpenForce ’08. Tom Kraak (of Seablick Consulting) and I have work together on numerous projects over the course of the last year and a half, all DNN related. As we have progressed with our partnership we have tackled projects of all sizes and most recently we have had a very clear split in the services offered by both of our companies.

IowaComputerGurus provides custom development and other technical services relating to module and database performance, whereas Seablick consulting focuses on DNN SEO, skin design, DNN ecommerce, and project management. Therefore we thought what a better way to showcase this partnership than to share a booth location at OpenForce, where we can connect with our existing customers and hopefully establish new customer relations in the process.

I hope this clears up a bit around who IowaComputerGurus Inc partners with, and WHY we make these partnerships public.

Share/Save This Article:      

Comments