ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a consultancy engagement in which best practice alliance formation and management techniques were applied to securing value-added relationships with suppliers in the field of Information Technology (IT). The organisation approached Alliance Best Practice for help in developing a supplier-independent strategic alliance process based on best practice partnership principles. The chapter presents a list of some organisations that have applied the smart sourcing approach, and shows some of the ongoing results achieves. It suggests that smart sourcing is useful in looking at shared core functions. The smart sourcing approach can be applied to a number of functional areas, including manufacturing, distribution, logistics, IT systems, procurement, human resources, accounting and finance. Smart sourcing provides a value-added solution to how to achieve more with the same or fewer resources because, in essence, both parties are borrowing the elements they do not currently have from each other, such as expertise, distribution outlets, products or deployment capabilities.
