Powerful Partnerships

Here's how the Wharton School has leveraged IT vendor collaboration to reap unexpected rewards.

By Deirdre Woods

December 13, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Partnerships are a fact of life in today's world. Strong IT partnerships have the power to vitalize and even transform a business, provided you follow a clear strategy and manage them carefully.
At the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, we've developed partnerships that not only serve our IT needs but also contribute to the overall mission of the university. The strategy we follow is straightforward enough to work for any IT organization: First, serve the customer -- in our case, that's faculty and students - and second, build the brand.
I rely on four basic techniques to maintain and leverage partnerships. And while it's true that businesses come in different shapes and sizes, any company can apply these concepts to create opportunities for growth.
1. Insure the Essentials
The most crucial collaborations are what I call "insurance policies." These are the must-have partnerships that support infrastructure and critical services. Although they're the most obvious kinds of partnerships, they're not necessarily the easiest to nail down. It can take time to find the right fit.
At Wharton, our relationship with IBM fits into this category, because when it comes to our infrastructure, we know the company will be there when we need it.
One of the tough lessons I've learned is that many vendors may not be able to deliver what you need. A few years ago, we temporarily lost our entire application environment, which was running on another vendor's servers. When we really needed top-notch support, it was clear that our old vendor's best just wasn't good enough.


Wharton School CIO Deirdre Woods Image Credit: Scott Nibauer

Our partnership with IBM works because the company understands our operation and has the resources to deliver on its commitments. This provides us with the stability and confidence to extend our reach beyond the basics.
2. Promote the Brand
An insurance-policy partnership gives you the freedom to explore other opportunities, like partnerships that can build your brand. An example of this at Wharton is Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS), our financial research tool.
When we first developed WRDS, we were simply responding to the needs of students and faculty, who wanted a comprehensive research tool for financial data. We formed partnerships with Standard & Poor's Compustat unit and the Center for Research in Securities Prices at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business to secure the necessary data, and we developed a unified, Web-based interface to these and other data sets in 1996.
Not long after the launch of WRDS, one of

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