Strategic collaboration as an impact organization: here’s how

Taking the next step in growth as a company by strategically partnering with other smart organizations: how do you shape that process when you want to be impact-driven rather than commercial? Voys embarked on a quest to color this process. In our experience, growth is accelerated primarily by openly sharing knowledge and learning from each other.

Curious how we did that? We’d love to take you through our journey to strategic collaboration as an impact organization.

(In this blog series, we discuss the challenges you will encounter if you have big growth plans for your company. From international business to taxes and privacy, discover the main pitfalls and how to avoid them. This is part 3 of the series, in part 1 you read all about privacy laws if you exchange data with companies outside Europe. In part 2 we told you more about taxes when setting up a second branch in the Netherlands or abroad.)

Growing faster through collaboration

You are well on your way and have experienced fine growth as an organization in recent years, in addition to impact. Ready for the next acceleration, you are thinking out the next steps on a strategic level. That next step in organizational growth requires more than just that familiar environment and smart people around you. Are there people who can make your company better or develop it further? Then how do you envision a collaboration with an external company? Working together and growing faster as a result might lead you into the wonderful world of mergers and acquisitions.

Acquisition is not an end in itself for us

As a business, you grow, for example, because you are very good at something or because there is a great need for your solution. The origin of your company’s growth can often be traced back to certain principles on which your growth is based. By growing further, you strengthen the foundation of your business. New markets can be entered or specialised knowledge can be attracted to enable growth. Part of that growth strategy may then include an acquisition or strategic partnership.

We at Voys have also grown significantly in recent years, so strategic partnerships came into the picture as a way to accelerate and strengthen our growth.

But when we were drawing up our growth strategy, we quickly concluded: an acquisition is never the goal in itself, working with a fine strategic partner is. That is why we named the team that deals with these collaborations ‘expansion’. Our main goal is to strive for optimal external strategic collaborations. Based on experiments in recent years, we have shaped our expansion strategy.

Why do you want to collaborate strategically? 

Shaping your growth by getting knowledge and expertise in the form of an already existing legal form at your disposal at once in exchange for some euros. Simple right?

This simple description does not correspond to the daily reality within many companies. Starting with the question: why? Because what is the purpose of that potential partnership or acquisition? Does it help in sharpening your proposition and thereby accelerate your growth? Or do you buy competition from the market or a team of new colleagues?

We have spent a long time searching for exactly what fits our company. What do we want to add to someone else’s company, and how do they add value to our organization? The question of what such a partnership can look like and what it is based on has occupied us from various angles.

Ideally, we want to grow by accomplishing more together in order to increase impact. This made draughting the right expansion strategy easily take a year.

And then finally,’real’thing’. Our first strategic partnership set up by the expansion team was with an American party, followed shortly after by a local telecom provider in the Netherlands. I learnt a lot that first time, but didn’t succeed. The second time was successful, and now this party is a good cooperation partner.

Partners that fit our values 

How do we proceed from our expansion strategy?

We have drawn up a so-called target list. A list that lists the types of companies that fit commercially, culturally, and socially (or a combination of these) with our organization and the course we are pursuing. Not to strike our blow right away, but to form a picture in advance of where the common denominator is. Here we also weigh the core values of our organization. The values and foundations on which your own organization is built are often significant, if not essential, in determining a suitable discussion partner.

The way we make ourselves known as an interested party is important. That other view of the matter: namely making joint impact in a good combination of planet, people,and profit (and also in this order), is important in the way we enter into discussion with parties.

We find interesting cooperation partners by highlighting and discussing the social impact component in the first phase of exploratory talks. This sometimes leads to a good conversation, but also regularly to a no deal. Yet we see that the essential point of ‘why’ and ‘what’ you add exactly lays the foundation for successful collaborations. Exactly having those conversations now forms our foundation. Something that, incidentally, takes up more time in preparation and has a place within the experiment.

Experimenting with collaboration

To find out what an external collaboration partner adds to your business, we tried to apply what we also practice internally at Voys: experimentation and testing. Maybe this sounds crazy, but testing out an external collaboration by simply starting to work together yields fantastic insights. We have noticed that ‘getting used to each other’, each other’s culture and activities, gives a very nice picture of the mutual differences and where you complement each other. And precisely that mutual complement is so important to dissect for a successful collaboration in the possibly longer term.

To arrive at such an experiment to test out the cooperation, it is important to make clear agreements about it in advance. It is also important not to let a possible acquisition or equity deal lead the experiment: after all, an acquisition is never the goal in itself. The goal is to accelerate together and make impact together; the form in which that takes place is something you will explore during the mutual experiment.

In the experiments we went through recently, we regularly drew a parallel with a future colleague joining us. There is always a trial day first. If after that day we are both still enthusiastic, only then do we proceed with the follow-up. To a certain extent, this situation also applies in a project in which cooperation is being considered. Not just a fixed team of people decides whether something feels right, but ultimately the input from both organizations that have to make the collaboration a success is very valuable. Therefore, secure this phase during your experiment.

Here’s how to tackle an experiment with a new collaboration partner

Framing such an experiment will obviously vary from organization to organization. However, we will name some of our own findings that have struck us.

Attention

The focus on personal relationships is crux. You can put an experiment on paper and both agree on it, but after that, everything has to happen. Choose and select roles or functions in both organizations that provide each other with information. Think of it as a cross role that actively seeks collaboration, and builds the relationship, and mutually monitors the principles and expectations of the experiment.

Goals and data

Set clear goals. When has the experiment succeeded, and what are the expectations? Putting this clearly on paper at the beginning helps to keep a sense of objectivity throughout the process and to be able to conclude later, after the experiment is over, whether the experiment was successful or not.

What supports this is to make things measurable and insightful. For example, at the time of the experiment, build a joint dashboard to track progress or use a collaboration tool such as Notion or Asana to monitor projects. Providing such open information to each other and having it continuously available in real time makes the journey transparent for both parties. In addition, it is the perfect way to reflect and evaluate the collaboration after your experiment is over.

Outcomes 

The outcome that feels most ideal is that you have strengthened each other and want to continue the experiment together. However, not finding a match after research or experimentation can also be an outcome. After all, entering into the experiment does not have as its goal an acquisition or integration of companies. If something does not work out after the experiment, you have often still learnt a lot from each other and gained new insights. Even without collaboration, you take all these learnings into your follow-up.

Transition and expansion

If your experiment is successful, you can follow it up. This can be a new experiment, or you can go back to the agreements you made together at the beginning. For example, how do you both see strategic cooperation, exchanging or buying shares, or other agreements made.

Evaluate how and whether you want to work together in the future

As mentioned, after the end of your experiment, you evaluate the cooperation with each other and see if you want to continue based on the predefined objectives. If you have described to each other that a successful collaboration could possibly lead to a share transaction, then work this out in more detail. Also agree clearly on how you envision a cooperation apart from all the euros that are being discussed or negotiated.

Everyone has a connection with their accumulated business, and individuality is therefore very important. Often there is still the fear: we will take you over and kill your proposition. We believe in letting a successful initiative flourish out of the gate. Staying at a distance, but being involved and sharing. In this way, you stimulate entrepreneurship and preserve the creativity of the initiative.

To get things moving in the right direction, you might consider both hiring legal counsel (though with business acumen) and also an easily switchable notary is a plus.

Judicial

On the legal side, it is obviously wise to arrange agreements well. You could agree in advance on an NDA/non-disclosure agreement that sets out how you will deal with each other’s confidential information. If you share personal data within the experiment, this should also be part of the scope, especially with regard to the AVG. For example, if you are building a new service or product together, then privacy by design applies.

Before embarking on the (orientation to) a strategic collaboration or other form of partnership or acquisition, ask yourself what effects this will have on your current customers. In the event of a partnership or acquisition, they should be informed of this cooperation with a third party. You could, for example, have a contractual check or scan of your general terms and conditions to see whether such matters are safeguarded in them and what the exact consequences are.

Financially 

Financially, different valuations are interesting. How is your company valued, and what tool do you use to determine it? In addition, by collaborating within an experiment, you often add extra value. It is therefore recommended to think in advance about which valuations you want to apply. This is in order to take the next step in a successful experiment.

If there is a (partial) share transaction or other type of cooperation, at what amounts will the transaction be valued afterwards? You can, for example, choose to fix this exact amount in advance. You then know, if the experiment succeeds, for which company you can (reciprocally) buy shares, or in the case of a cooperation, what, e.g. purchase rates will be.

The more you discuss with each other in advance, the more open the conversation about this can be later on. This, of course, also applies when the cooperation ends: agree on the rates you wish to settle on both sides.

Learning points when engaging in strategic collaborations

What does this teach us? 

• Shares, a merger, whatever you call it: we prefer to talk about successfully building a meaningful, strategic collaboration.
• An experiment is the foundation in any collaboration: frame a time period and sniff out each other, the subject matter, and each other’s organizations.
• Share the collaboration openly with both organizations involved.
• Make someone responsible for mutual coordination. This can be at the operational level for your experiment, but also at the tactical/strategic level to understand and learn from each other.
• Don’t cast everything in concrete. An NDA is conceivable when dealing with sensitive information, but trust still comes on foot and goes on horseback.
• Share information flows and data openly within collaborating organizations. At least with the teams closely involved in sculpting the smoothest possible collaboration.
• Set clear goals: when is the experiment successful for both parties? When is it not? And at what indicator does the experiment continue, and what do we wish to add and achieve together then?
• Involve each other’s expertise from the start: do you have a finance professional in house? Sit down and share. 

Other points to pay attention to during strategic collaboration: 

• Work data-driven: for example, build a joint (data) dashboard showing your mutual results.
• Work in a collaboration tool to monitor your project with each other and secure progress.
• Pay attention to the personal relationships between the company and collaboration partners: these lead to success.
• Find, formulate, and evaluate the shared vision and purpose in your experiment.
• Trust each other’s good intentions and regularly evaluate what you both noticed and what you learnt.

How do you look at strategic partnerships?

We hope to have taken you through a bird’s eye view of strategic collaborations, also known as mergers and acquisitions. Growth is done by sharing. It can lead to acquiring a share or collaboration of companies. However, the knowledge you gain by mutually opening up and exploring a match based on your organization’s values is the most important learning you will hopefully take away from this.

Coming back to that sharing for a moment. With this article, we’ve shared our approach with you. But do you also have interesting ideas about this, or do you know entrepreneurs we should definitely meet? Feel free to schedule a coffee with Steven. We are always looking for new opportunities and collaborations to expand our network!