Strategic Alliance Magazine Q2 2017 - 37

awareness and drive change to impact dengue fever, a
disease that isn't getting the attention it needs. The
disease impacts millions, yet there's not very good information on how it's being spread and treated. The
Synergist is a nonprofit that brings multi-alliances
together for a cause to meet and collaborate on common ground.

Left to right, Marc Tropet and Celine Schillinger, Sanofi,
and Aaron Hoyles, The Synergist

The project started out as an effort to drive awareness
and education about the impact of the disease, which
led to the realization that we need better surveillance.
Now we're working with partners on a cloud-based digital tool to make it easier to track dengue fever. So
partnerships, such as the one with Sanofi, have driven
the innovations and direction with this project.

Aaron Hoyles, program manager at The Synergist,
on winning the Alliance for Corporate Social
Responsibility Award with Sanofi:

In many areas where dengue is endemic, one of the
things we need to do is deploy resources and build good
science about the spread of the disease. So we developed
a tool, a guided chat, that is available on the "Break DenThe story of the "Break Dengue" alliance between Sague" website and as a mobile app. It asks questions to
nofi and The Synergist came out of a need to create
discern symptoms of dengue
fever, which are similar to
self-assessment and ask, "What kinds of things should we be working on as
those of the Zika virus.
we're going forward?"
Governance has been really imEquifax is a 110-year-old company with a rich history as a successful credit
portant. The alliance is like a
reporting business. In recent years, we've expanded our vision to become a
wheel with a hub in the middle,
global leader in information solutions to solve customer challenges. Our
which is The Synergist. It allows
company has always recognized the importance of working with third parus to provide more structure
ties, and we've always had resellers and other third party development and
when different members of the
distribution arrangements. Yet these relationships were often difficult, with
partnership don't agree because
time and energy devoted to conflict management instead of mutual benefit
the alliance is made up of very
and growth. So we needed to come up with ways to change the culture and
different parties, goals, and
develop the mindset and skillset to really change the game.
drives. There also was an inherent suspicion that the project
We didn't have the necessary competencies to get there without outside help,
was being driven by big pharso we engaged Vantage Partners, Alliancesphere, and The Rhythm of Busima, which we addressed with
ness as consultants and built a framework. Over the last five years, we've been
our governance structure and
systematically executing against that plan. Our enterprise alliances group
Sanofi addressed by changing
now has grown revenues to over $500 million, while contributing signifithe culture from one of just putcantly to the company's bottom line.
ting out a vaccine to educating
We focus on working with our alliances on joint opportunities rather than on
the public in new ways. n
dispute resolution. Alliances are no longer seen as a "last resort," but instead
as a significant lever that we use to execute on our corporate strategies to
For more information about
developing a new product or take a product to market. We are grateful to
the ASAP Alliance Excellence
Awards, go to http://www.
have benefitted from decades of ASAP alliance best practices that the memstrategic-alliances.org/default.
bership so generously shares.
asp?page=aea

37
Q2 * 2017 | STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE

http://www.strategic-alliances.org/default.asp?page=aea http://www.strategic-alliances.org/default.asp?page=aea http://www.strategic-alliances.org/default.asp?page=aea

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