Motivations for Supply Chain Partnerships

The second motivator for partnerships, and a deeper strategic one, is the need to focus on core competencies. That is, We do what we do best partners do the rest. Assumptions about core competency underlie many decisions about partnerships. A decision to perform or not perform an activity or produce or not produce some component of a good or service is a strategic determination. It entails deciding which capabilities to retain and cultivate and finding the right partner to do the things that we will not do. Decisions in this area also affect the type of supply chain needed... 

The motivation for suppliers to form coalitions in supply chains can be strategic or operational. IBM teamed up with Siebel to provide hosted CRM software service that customers can deploy at the click of a button (Qiakravarty and Zhang 2007). Boulton (2003) describes this collaboration arrangement as the latest fruit of a partnership in which a leading applications provider and leading infrastructure provider teamed up to reach more customers, as neither makes what the other specializes in . 

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