The problem with Amtrak and generally most public transportation is that they don’t really cater to their customers. The information alliances that they’ve built with partners are zero to none. For example, how often have you jumped on Amtrak, say from Sacramento, and got to your final destination in San Francisco, without missing some type of connection? An information alliance / business development effort with the San Francisco public transit system could solve this problem in a heartbeat.

I remember one day leaving San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf on Amtrak and arriving in Richmond, CA only to have missed my connecting BART service by 52 seconds. Yes, that’s how long it took to get from the Amtrak track to the BART track … down one set of stairs … up another. Again, an information alliance, an exchange of data … bits … would have helped me to make my connection.

The problem, I’ve been told, is that each transit authority is only responsible for their little fiefdom. Forget about customer service. Let’s just get our trains there on time … our time, that is. An information alliance with other transit authorities does not help individual company’s “on time” schedules, but it would help us, “the customer.”

I recently read an article about the slippage of Amtrak train ridership on the Capitol Corridor route. The story was written up in the Davis Enterprise. The article states that while ridership is down this year, on-time arrivals are at an all-time high. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to see how easy that is to accomplish … ridership DOWN … on-time arrivals UP?

Amtrak, like so many other public transportation systems should consider themselves as being in the “people moving business”, as Jeff Jarvis would say, NOT in the train business. By building information alliances with BART, the San Francisco Muni, AC Transit, CalTrain, and countless other transportation companies, we all might take public transportation more often. And, after all, isn’t that what we all want for a greener America?

Here’s another information alliance that can be exploited. What if when you arrived at your final destination a rented bike rack was waiting at your disposal? Or, what if a Zipcar or heaven forbid, even another public transit system that was timed to meet up with a “foreign” transit system?

There is no easy answer to this problem. But, there is no way out without an answer. In other words, we have the ability to build information alliances and data exchange. Someone has to start this business development effort in order to change the “drive my car” mentality in California.

It’s outrageous to hear companies like Amtrak boast about on-time arrivals when the real end-to-end experience for the customer is what’s really lacking. An information alliance / exchange of data and a tad bit of planning would really enhance the experience for the customer. It might even perhaps raise ridership because customers would feel confident in getting to their final destination hassle free and timely, if not “on time.”

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Joint ventures, of course, are referred to by many different names, not the least of which includes: partnerships, strategic alliances, alliances, etc. No matter what you call it, joint ventures are designed with the intent to create more value from two or more entities than you would have with only one alone.

In my first year at Oracle, I created a joint venture between several technology companies: Oracle, Novell, Intel, Synoptics, etc. We dubbed the joint venture, TIE for The Integrated Enterprise. At the time, integrating solutions from several different technology providers was a difficult task. On top of that, one had to figure out how to train and support customers and resellers. The goal of this joint venture was to reduce the complexities of implementing cross – company technologies.

At Hewlett Packard, we launched a joint venture between Oracle and Hewlett Packard. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software was blazingly hot and both companies desperately wanted to be in the space. A joint venture relationship was developed, a marketing plan was drafted, a team was assembled, revenue goals were quantified and an execution plan was launched. Both companies benefitted from this collaboration because each leveraged the others core strengths in hardware / professional services and software and support.

Another example of a joint venture in the music industry was when MySpace inked relationships with the big music labels. The result of this venture was to create a new MySpace Music entity where the labels gave streaming and downloading rights to this new entity. The goal of the joint venture is shared advertising revenue, which of course, with 100s of millions of users is an advertiser’s playground.

So, what does the new world of online marketing and profit systems look like? In this new era of Internet and mobile marketing, affiliates rule the playground. The affiliates and, even more so, the super affiliates are the power brokers. Joint ventures are common in this business and move at the speed of, well, the digital network. Those who understand how to work with affiliates will see a multiplicative effect of their marketing dollars.

Joint venture brokers are also gaining in popularity. These are “brokers” who can marry the super affiliates to companies who are looking to jump start their online businesses. This is no trivial pursuit, as it requires, just like in the “offline” world, a strong product, a huge market, a business plan and lots of diplomacy and tact.

Joint ventures can be a great way to accelerate sales, as well as to reduce the complexities of going it alone.

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There are many reasons to develop alliances with other companies. The net result of developing an alliance is to pool resources. This is especially critical if you’re a small company with monetary or geographic limitations. For example, for a small startup company in Silicon Valley, your workforce might be limited to a handful of people and you also might be on a very tight budget. But, your product line might hold great possibilities to be sold in an emerging country, such as Vietnam or Cambodia.

In this example, a company may decide to enter an emerging company by selecting an alliance company that has what they lack. For example, language and geographic presence are obvious reasons to create an alliance. Other reasons could include a large, well-trained work force and rolodex of clients in your prime target area.

Just as importantly, though, is whether the alliance partner can train and support the clients in this geographic region. In fact, this is probably the most important aspect which needs to be addressed up front. While working for Oracle in Asia Pacific, I was tasked to find the build the right alliances in the multiple countries which we served. The upshot of finding strong alliance partners with both training and support expertise is that we spent less time supporting them directly, which translates into less direct costs.

A small company benefits from working with a larger company by leveraging the brand and market reach of the larger company. Using the same example above, Oracle developed alliances with hundreds, if not thousands of small companies, often in the area of systems integration work. The small systems integration company benefitted through association with a brand name like Oracle and the marketing prowess for which Oracle was known.

Strategic alliances are also very important to the success of a small company. Back in early 2000, I was at a hot, but small mobile startup company, called Everypath. At the time we only had 20 employees. Who would want to work with such a puny company? As VP of Biz Dev, I was tasked with signing up strategic partners. Strategic was the key word. Which companies out there would find our technology so compelling that they would build a business practice around our technology.

We proceeded to sign up some of the most prestigious companies, including Accenture, Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett Packard. Not only did these alliances align strategically with us, we also received $20 million in venture capital and financing. This influx of strategic partners was the impetus to drive our company to next level of fund raising to the tune of $100 million. These same alliance partners also worked to drive market awareness and clients for this little 20 person company.

As you can see, alliances can be the catalyst that jumpstarts a company’s market awareness and revenue, if positioned strategically.

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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 …

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I’ve had a decent run in my high tech career, working for global brand companies like Hewlett Packard and Oracle and a high flying mobile startup, Everypath. These companies forced me to adapt and learn new skills … quickly. Back then, there was also an undercurrent of contempt by the sales organization if you were in business development, alliances or marketing. The hypothesis was that the sales organization brought in the money and everyone else was simply an expense item.

The Internet and, increasingly, mobile technology, has switched this dynamic. Compounding this role reversal is our lousy economy and the fact that nobody’s buying … everybody’s selling. At least, you would think so, if you look through your old dusty lenses of the past.

A sea change is afoot. Some will miss the opportunity; others will catch the wave and ride it. Business development is the new sales. Marketing is the new sales. Alliances are the new sales. The Internet and “digital everything” has opened up new market opportunities across the globe.

Ponder this. At 1:01pm PST, a writer in San Francisco publishes a book online and at 1:02pm PST someone in the Philippines can buy it. A singer in Shanghai, China performs at an outdoor concert, while bar goers in London, England, students in their dorm rooms and couch potatoes at home tune in at lunchtime LIVE … over their broadband connections. Or, a nutrition company launches a new health bar and instantly it has over 10,000 new affiliates pushing its product across the globe.

This is the new business development model. In order to capitalize on this wave, you need to view the world through different lenses. It’s now about analyzing demographics and buying behaviors of the people on the Internet … MARKETING. It’s about building ALLINACES with companies that have products and services. And, it’s about developing new ways to connect and work with teams from around the globe … BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.

There will be many who will bemoan the fact that the world has changed … that jobs are increasingly being shipped overseas … that they can’t adapt. But, there will also be a lucky few who take the leap and reap the benefits.

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The 3rd party services provided a lot of value to the host companies. They allowed the host companies to reduce their costs, while increasing their sales, marketing and business development capacity.

However, back in “the day”, in order to have a successful partner program, the host company needed to spend a lot of time on “set up”. Business development involved a lot of “heavy lifting” in the form of recruitment, training, sales tools, technical support and oftentimes co-selling!

My experience in early day business development came from high tech software and hardware companies. The products that we sold were physical products of software applications, servers, peripherals and other related products.

Fast forward to the digital economy … the value chain of manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, support and training has been significantly compressed or dis-intermediated. The Internet, broadband speeds and global sourcing, among other things, have created huge opportunities for business development in practically every industry imaginable.

For example, let’s examine the high tech software industry. In the 90s software was an “on premise” solution. This means that people paid LOTs of money to install a company’s software on their premise, i.e. at their office. The whole company was involved from the sales organization to the consulting group to the support team, etc. Sometimes, a partner was involved to augment the services of the host company.

Today, that same software application is not an on premise solution but now managed at some other facility. The host company’s sales person may have sold you the solution or perhaps a partner telemarketer out of India or the Philippines. And, the support could be coming from yet another third party organization.

Business development then logically evolves into a different kind of animal. Instead of building a huge organization to drive new products and services, companies can source and diversify their team across geography, industry and even niches.

New terms have also evolved to describe the actions and responsibilities of the new online business development frontier. For example, what was once known as a reseller in the offline market is now called an “affiliate”. When an affiliate advertises your product online, it’s often called PPC or Pay per Click campaign. In the old days, it was simply called advertising.

Whatever terms you want to use, the online business development model is the digital wave of TODAY and it is accelerating across all industries. If you’re stuck in web 1.0 and static web pages, be prepared to be “leap-frogged” by the new nimble, fleet-footed Online Marketers.

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