Unleash B2B Collaboration: Could You Be Doing More with Your Partners?

Business today is more specialized than ever. Companies in every industry must focus on their core strengths and outsource non-core functions to partners who can deliver more value for less. For example, providers of insurance products are enlisting broker networks to bring their products to market. Manufacturing companies are hiring suppliers to deliver specialized parts. Media producers pull together an ensemble of production partners to create a new film.

And if you’re like most companies (76%) you’re investing in partner or customer portals to connect your extended enterprise, boost partner engagement, lower barriers to collaboration, and share information quickly.

The great news is that these digital interactions are aided by a flurry of best-in-breed SaaS products-- yet another great example of outsourcing. Use Salesforce or Sugar CRM to manage your sales team, hire Litmos or Cornerstone OnDemand to train your franchisees, share files quickly and securely with Dropbox or Box-- there really is an app for everything.

Sometimes an off-the-shelf option won’t get you where you need to go. Fortunately, the cost of building new applications continues to plummet making it attractive for enterprises to create their own collaboration tools for specialized use cases.

But despite the powerful tools available to help you bring your partners closer, the harsh reality is that most of these engagements are not achieving their full potential, in large part due to hurdles related to user identity and access.

We partnered with IDG to study the identity-related challenges facing B2B collaboration and how cloud identity can come to the rescue.

Check out this infographic to see our results.