A lot of people do not have clear knowledge about what do alliance managers do and why is their job important. While some job descriptions and roles are easy to understand, others are a lot more complex and require much effort and knowledge to understand them. An alliance manager’s job is one of them! After reading this article you will have a clear understanding of who is an alliance manager, what is their job description, and why their job is so important for modern organizations.
Who Is An Alliance Manager?
Different people will tell you different definitions of who an alliance manager actually is. Some might tell you that an alliance manager is responsible for reselling your products, while others would tell you that the job of an alliance manager is to develop a joint project with a partner.
Generally speaking, an alliance manager helps the business owner or the organization to achieve something that they cannot do alone. They add value to the company by creating a partnership between two organizations or parties that need each other’s support. They even play an important role in maintaining the internal relationships in the organization. Thus, the job of an alliance manager can be anything such as reselling the products or developing a joint project. It all depends upon the structure of the company and what do they need an alliance manager for. Sometimes they have to work in the sales department while other times they may be required to work in Research and Development as well.
An alliance manager does not need to be the full-time employee of the organization nor does he need to be formally designated for this purpose. While everyone involved in the partnership plays their required role for the success of the partnership, an alliance manager plays an important role in leading all these efforts.
What Are The Requirements To Be An Alliance Manager?
Although it may look easier from the outside, an alliance manager’s job is not at all easy. It requires a lot of efforts and skills to be a successful alliance manager in the industry. Apart from this, certain requirements need to be fulfilled to be an alliance manager:
- An Alliance Manager Must Be Educated And Experienced
Being an alliance manager is not a piece of cake. There are a lot of things that a company requires from an alliance manager. Education and experience are one such thing. Even though a bachelor’s degree would do just as fine for being an alliance manager, most of the companies require an alliance manager to have an MBA degree along with five to ten years of experience of working in the field.
- An Alliance Manager Must Have Knowledge And Skills
Apart from being educated and experienced, an alliance manager must have the necessary skills and knowledge of the field as well. He or she should know in details about sales, communication skills, and technology. Good communication skills are very important as it will be a major part of his job. People that don’t usually get along well with other people or don’t know how to listen well are not a good fit for this role. Apart from this, he or she must have the skills of building relationships and maintaining them. They must also know how to tackle different people to build good relationships with them.
- An Alliance Manager Must Be Open To Traveling
Although the alliance managers usually work from an office that is given to them by the companies that they are working for, traveling should not be excluded from the list. An alliance manager might be required to travel occasionally for the organization he is working for. They might need to attend meetings with the company partners now and then. This is why they should be open to international traveling, which sometimes might be very long, as well.
What Does An Alliance Manager Do And Why Is It So Important?
An alliance manager plays a critical role in developing an alliance or partnership between two organizations and maintaining relationships inside an organization as well. Without the help of an alliance manager, a company might not be able to maintain its commercial partnerships with other organizations.
A lot of people in the organization do not fully appreciate the job and importance of an alliance manager. But, they need to realize that an alliance manager plays some very important duties in forming a partnership without which the company would not be able to grow. Let’s take a look at the duties of an alliance manager below.
- Manages Partnership Contracts
Managing the partnership contracts of a company is a very important duty that is only given to trusted people. This is handled by an alliance manager. An alliance manager is responsible for managing the different contracts of the company. Whether it involves legal obligations, creating partnerships with other companies, negotiation between the two sides, or dealing with the payment, an alliance manager manages all of them.
- Tracks Progress Of The Partnership
In addition to managing the partnership contracts of a company, an alliance manager is also responsible for tracking the progress of the alliance between the two organizations. There are various duties involved in tracking the progress that an alliance manager fulfills such as conducting healthy communication checks, checking and reporting key performance indicators, and defining the coordination.
- Maintains The Image Of The Company
Another important part of the job of an alliance manager is to maintain the image and brand of the organization in front of its partners. And this is indeed a very important aspect of their job because how a partner perceives the organization can play a huge role in defining their future relationships, and future relationships with other partners in the market. Apart from this, an alliance manager is also responsible for creating a positive image of the organization among its employees and how they perceive this partnership.
- Identifies Drivers And Risks
An alliance manager is also responsible for identifying the important drivers and major risks involved in pursuing a partnership. This does not mean that they will discourage the people involved in the partnership to step back by identifying the possible risks. Rather, the alliance manager will encourage them by telling them all the information beforehand so that the parties involved do not lose focus in the middle of the partnership.
- Ensures Everything Goes Smoothly
An alliance manager will process all the work related to the partnership themselves so that everything goes smoothly and no problem occurs in any of the operations. They collaborate with both the teams involved in establishing ground rules such as where to conduct meetings, what will be the protocol of the meetings, how to make joint decisions, how to exchange data, and many other things. Deciding these things beforehand will ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible in later operations and the chances of conflicts remain as less as possible.
- Plays An Important Role In Relationship Building
Since an alliance manager is responsible for the occurrence of a partnership between two organizations or the parties, it is their job to build a positive relationship between them as well. These parties did not know each other before. Thus, how an alliance manager portrays both the parties in front of each other plays an important role in building positive relationships among both of them. In a reality where even tiny add-ons can accumulate to massive momentum and massive results (negative or positive), the importance of having a pro dealing with the organization’s relationships is crucial.
- Deals With And Manages Unexpected Situations
Contingencies are a part of every business. Unexpected or unanticipated situations may arise in any circumstances during the ongoing partnership. But, an alliance manager is there to deal with all such problems. The alliance manager would discuss the situation with the parties and would come up with a solution on what needs to be done to deal with such a situation and move forward.
Challenges Faced By An Alliance Manager
While an alliance manager is responsible for the major revenue of the company, they have to face many challenges and setbacks as well while performing their duty. Let’s take a look at some challenges faced by an alliance manager below.
- Most of the time the efforts of the alliance manager remain completely invisible. Every team gets its due credit when the deal turns out to be successful, but the efforts of an alliance manager are neglected.
- As an alliance manager can be placed in any department of the organization, so they lose control over the other. As a result, it becomes a challenge to bring together all the departments to produce maximum results.
- While an alliance manager does all the background work of initiating the partnership, they are not made a part of the execution team of the project. This aspect can be very frustrating when facing the unfortunate situation of an overly competitive manager.
- Since they are not given due recognition in the successful deals they were a part of, it gets really difficult for them to get the funding for their new initiatives.
Without any doubt, an alliance manager plays a crucial role in initiating a partnership for the organization to execute its important projects. While every department is given their due credits when the deal or project turns out to be successful, the efforts of an alliance partner are overlooked and ignored sometimes; although some of them do need to better learn how to sell themselves. This is why we need to understand how important their job is in making an organization successful and start giving them their due credit, as you can even see them as the ‘secret sauce’ or the ‘bass line’ of an organization’s success.
