Good IT collaboration between organizations is frequently essential to their business success. Establishing that collaboration is critical, and not obvious. The Relationship Spectrum is a methodology to realize successful customer/supplier collaboration. It is based on differentiation of supplier or customer relationships. Choose and implement out of 7 alternative relationship types the one that fits the nature of required services. Not every relationship is destined to be a partnership. With most customer / supplier relationships required
preconditions for partnerships are not there. Then it’s better to choose a different type of collaboration. The Relationship Spectrum provides the criteria and analyses to make the right choice, and the prescription for implementation. Example: the IT department of a public transport company chooses to follow the market and use standard consumer IT-devices. A supplier relationship as with a retail shop will be sufficient. However, for a few business critical applications the company requires very close and intimate “house mate” relationships.
