People-focused knowledge management

Implement Strategic Partnerships to Make the
Enterprise Stronger
Paul Foh, Stihlo Corporation’s vice president of marketing
and strategy, had the executive committee’s agreement to
expand strategic partnerships with universities, several suppli-
ers, and key customers. Stihlo provided financial analysis and
backroom processing services to institutions and maintained its
market position by being innovative, fast, and cost effective —
all key factors within its market niche. Recently, Stihlo’s 
competitors had been able to steal two of Stihlo’s customers 
by demonstrating that they provided equal performance at 
lower costs.
Stihlo’s management decided that they needed to improve on
several fronts. They needed to become more efficient in internal
operations to lower costs. That was necessary, but it would be
still more important to innovate by improving, even redesign-
ing, Stihlo’s products and services to provide greater value to its
Enterprise Situation-Handling
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customers. Hence, the concept was to expand strategic partner-
ships to obtain new ideas and potentially co-develop proprietary
solutions that would set them apart from competitors. Paul had
good ideas for new partnership candidates, which previously
had been limited to two suppliers and three customers.
Paul needed to delegate most of the strategic partnership
work to Helen Tracy, director of external relations, who was to
collaborate with Harry Thompson, the in-house analytical
genius. But Paul was concerned that the effort could fail unless
Harry, Helen, and their staff understood the underlying con-
cepts showing why the partnerships were strategically crucial,
which ideas for technologies and solutions might be considered
in the short term and specifically, and the priorities of customer
services and benefits that Paul thought should be pursued. These