Alliances that have made a profound, measurable, and positive social impact. The principal objective of the alliance should be social impact, not profit - although profit, especially if used to fund program expansion, is not discouraged.
Organizations that have instilled the capability to consistently implement and manage alliance portfolios and demonstrated consistent success of those alliances over time. Winners will have programs built on an integrated suite of processes, tools, professional development/alliance professional certification, and other elements.
Excellence in planning, implementation, and results of a single alliance. The alliance may be between two companies or multiple organizations. Typically the Awards Committee will select Individual Alliance Excellence winners from the following sub-categories:
Well-positioned and executed alliances by companies with less than $500 million in revenues. This category recognizes the smaller companies that have developed high-impact alliances without the resources commonly at the disposal of very large organizations.
Relatively new (typically 1-2 year) alliances that have already impacted corporate value and performance, yet do not have the track record of the long-established alliance.
Partnerships that have sustained excellence over the course of five or more years. Typically these alliances will have overcome one or more challenges in which each partner had to adapt to evolving conditions.
New individual alliance management tools or processes that have made an immediate and powerful impact on the organization and/or the discipline of alliance management. These tools or processes are not comprehensive alliance programs, but additions to existing portfolios that address specific elements of alliance management such as measurement, training, conflict resolution, general communication across the partner ecosystem, or similar facet of the discipline. For example, a recent winner, HP, developed its RIPE metric to better capture the quality of alliance sales engagements.