As businesses prepare for change, it is becoming evident that raising the impact of collaborative efforts is even more important. Companies now, more than before, need to look beyond their individual enterprises and find ways to ensure the supply chain can add value to their trading partnerships.

At a tactical level, there is an urgent need to make every ‘joint initiative’ deliver.

‘Raising the Impact of your Collaboration' will provide you with the latest in international best practice on how businesses are improving their collaborative efforts.

The report is an update on our earlier work on ‘Building Supply Chain Engagement Capability’ (2009) and aims to provide you with new insight and guidelines on how you can build the vision to improve your supply chain engagement; identify the building blocks you need to derive more value from the investment in this area, and assess the practical steps you need to take to move from ‘thought to action’.

Presented as a three part report, this first part on ‘Assessing where you are’ will help you understand:

• Why do you need to collaborate and why now?
• What are the fundamental steps needed so that the supply chain can add value to your trading partnerships?
• How are businesses building their vision, focus and action to support their collaborative efforts?
• What are the synergies you can look for with your supply chain partner so that the total is ‘more’ than the sum of individual parts?
• How are businesses learning from their trading partners so that they can ‘maximise’ the benefits of collaboration?