Strategic Alliance Magazine Q2 2017 - 35

mance? Are they breaking new ground with
innovation?" added Watenpaugh. "We also look
at how an alliance might have overcome challenges or adverse conditions, recognizing that
sometimes the sign of a healthy alliance isn't that
there are never any problems, but that the team
has the skills and expertise to overcome them."
A member of the awards committee since 2003,
Watenpaugh has seen the evolution of awards
applications, finalists, and winners over a nearly
15-year timeframe and says ASAP is looking for
alliances that easily clear the bar with their innovation and implementation of best practices.
"We've received nominations that were obviously
put together by the PR department. They are often all hype," she noted. "This year, in particular,
many of the nominations and key award winners
looked at alliances as going beyond simple company-to-company connections. They are networks of stakeholders, customers, industry colleagues, and other industry players. It has become
a very complex network of alliances, which is
how alliances are evolving. They are becoming
more ecosystem-centric."
Moderated by Anthony DeSpirito, CSAP, managing director, strategic accounts at Schneider
Electric, the session discussion took place among
representatives from the following winning
teams-Loonaangifteketen-UWV-CBS-Belastingdienst a.k.a. Netherlands tax board; NetApp;
Equifax; The Synergist-Sanofi. See if you can
identify in their comments all of the best practices, innovative procedures, and key qualifiers that
led to winning an award.

Left to right, Paul Vincken and Diantha Croese, Loonaangifteketen, and Menno Aardewijn, UWV

Diantha Croese, key alliance manager at Loonaangifteketen, on winning the Individual Alliance
Excellence Award:
The Loonaangifteketen alliance is comprised of three
government agencies in The Netherlands-Belastingdienst (Dutch tax authority), UWV (Dutch National
Social Security Administration), and CBS (Statistics
Netherlands). The government agencies were forced
into an alliance by politicians who wanted to make the
system easier for citizens in The Netherlands by creating one money flow.
They wanted to build it together to be more efficient,
but at the beginning, no one wanted to work together.
They didn't understand each other. It felt like they all
spoke different languages, there was missing data, and
the initial attempt failed. It was actually a disaster. We
are responsible for €165 billion in tax revenues, and
there were over 50 issues that needed addressing to get
the flow of money and data working again. But there
was no trust between the partners.
An alliance manager was brought in with the directive
to bring people together, and eventually people started
talking and building relationships and getting aligned
to each other, which stabilized us. We spent a lot of time
working on cultural backgrounds and relationships. We
needed to evolve and align at all levels, and we need to
see each other as colleagues. One thing we did was to
make an enormous map and ask people to stand on it. It
helped people get acquainted and understand what
each other did.
The collaboration is complex, and we continue to involve
more and more external partners to improve the system.
We look at new technical options. We send data around.
We give them authority and hope they will help evolve the
new ecosystem.
Q2 * 2017 | STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine Q2 2017