Business Development – Art or Science

Business development used to be one of those “Huh? What kind job is that?” jobs. Most people understand sales, marketing and finance. But, for some companies, business development is hard to quantify. There are companies which consider Alliances or partnerships as business development. Others consider business development as a group that raises venture or financing money. It’s also been described as a role for mergers and acquisition. And, in some cases, business development has also connoted a sales function.

It’s no wonder that many companies have a hard time quantifying business development results. My definition of business development includes aspects of art and science. In addition, it’s probably one of the most strategic functions within a company, large or small. If utilized correctly, business development can result in raising significant venture money and financing, build an ecosystem of partners who will increase your presence and drive sales to the “nth” degree.

I was privileged to have worked for Oracle back in the 90s. Those were heady days during which the enterprise software market boomed. Database companies competed for market share and application software companies grew by leaps and bounds. This was also the time that Alliances and partnerships were built to create an ecosystem around the core products. Oracle emerged the leader in its space due to a large part its incredibly strong Alliance program.

At Everypath business development was both a strategic and functional role. In the year 2000 with zero revenue, a cool mobile idea and only a handful of people, how does one raise money to further expansion? The answer was we built strategic alliances with companies such as Accenture, Sun, HP and others. Our premise was that the technology was integral to the businesses of each of the aforementioned companies. In addition, these companies would be able to develop product and service lines around mobility.

In this capacity at Everypath, my challenge was to figure out what the mobility “software stack” looked like. How could customers use our technology and what software, hardware and services company would complement our products. My team created the stack and complementary partners and was responsible for raising $20 million in venture funding and financing as a result of our effort. In addition, we had the most comprehensive partner ecosystem in the then young, but growing mobility space.

The above are just two examples of how business development was implemented in the past. The science of business development was to figure out which players to engage with and art was to create a convincing story for collaboration. Of course, there is a follow up to that phase, which is the science of following up on the execution of the partnership / alliance.

The new world of online marketing and profit systems has its own unique challenges and business development. It requires a much improved way of thinking about alliances, partnerships, employees, etc. In fact, it’s almost antithetical to how the business was thought of in the past. In this new world, less is more. To be continued …

Business Development – Art or Science

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