All partners have different types of shareholders , ranging from stock-listed companies like NTT Docomo to private investors as in the Middle East to familyowned businesses as in France . The size of the companies varies as well : Getronics and Compucom are large companies , while in Spain , China and France the partners have just over 1000 employees . Each of the seven alliance partners have different field service partners in their region , together covering 35 countries and 80 % of the global economy .
The alliance is structured with one contract , and there is no legal entity . The CEOs of the partner companies meet twice a year to discuss strategic issues , while a more operational steering committee meets every two months . Every partner dedicates some employees to the alliance , which adds up to around ten sales persons and one marketeer . In addition , in July 2009 Ivan Vogels was appointed as alliance director , responsible for the further growth and promotion of the alliance .
Ivan explains : “ One of the first tasks was to position the alliance as a separate entity and as an alternative for our large competitors . Apart from the ongoing business wins , one of our first successes was that the alliance was mentioned in the Magic Quadrant of Gartner . This is one of the leading market intelligence agencies in our industry . Furthermore , some basic things had to be arranged such as a website and marketing materials .”
Whereas Getronics has a customer intimacy strategy , the alliance has more of a product leadership strategy . Ivan : “ We strongly focus on providing IT workspace solutions , otherwise our attention gets scattered . There are not many companies with a worldwide offering like ours , and this enables us to offer unique functionality .”
In a commercial process there is always a prime contractor , and that is the partner in whose area the head office of the client is located . There are a few pricing principles to prevent uncompetitive as result of the partnership structure . These are :
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There is no margin stacking , every partner only makes a profit on his own contribution ; Every party bears all risks associated with his scope of work , these risks are not forwarded to the prime contractor . The only exception is when turnover for a subcontractor is very low . Only the prime contractor can include costs for overall project management , for the rest he only takes profit on his own activities and own risks .
The prime contractor will conclude an outsourcing agreement with the client . Between the partners there is a reciprocal general service partner agreement , supplemented with further client-specific agreements .
As Getronics holds minority shares in all the partners , it has an inherent interest to do business with these companies . This does not apply the other way around , but here the exclusivity of the partnership is arranged through the alliance agreement . Ivan Vogels : “ Equity swaps could be an interesting tool , especially with new partners , but it currently does not have the highest priority . My first aim is to let the smaller partners grow to a more substantial size , so that the alliance is more balanced .”
The various partners particularly need to be stimulated to focus their sales efforts on international rather than local business . This needs to be achieved by incentive schemes . At the moment these schemes are based on the turnover in the respective countries
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