ASAP Announces 2015 Alliance Excellence Award Winners
CANTON, Mass. (PRWEB) May 13, 2015 -- The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), the world’s leading professional association dedicated to the practice of alliance management, today announced the winners of the ASAP 2015 Alliance Excellence Awards. An article on the awards including a Q&A with the recipients also will be published in the forthcoming Q2 2015 issue of Strategic Alliance Magazine.
ASAP recognized and presented awards to exceptional winners and two honorable mentions at the 2015 ASAP Global Alliance Summit held March 2-5 at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Florida, USA. The awards were presented to: National Grid/Earth Networks for Individual Alliance Excellence; The Dow Chemical Company/The Nature Conservancy for Alliance for Corporate Social Responsibility; Philips for Innovative Best Alliance Practice with honorable mention to Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson; Takeda Pharmaceuticals for Alliance Program Excellence with honorable mention to Bayer HealthCare.
The awards are given for “executing alliances in a new and innovative fashion,” said Michael Leonetti, CSAP and president & CEO of ASAP, while announcing the winners. “They highlight some of the very best achievements in the industry and require hundreds of hours of work to qualify. It’s a great way for businesses to highlight innovative accomplishments.”
“There were more applicants this year than ever before,” observed co-presenter Annlouise Goodermuth, CSAP and director of alliance management, strategy, science policy, and external innovation at Sanofi. “There were more innovative approaches, first-time submissions, and even resubmissions from eight years ago.”
The Individual Alliance Excellence Award is given to a company that has excelled in planning, implementation, and results for a single alliance. The alliance may be between two companies or multiple organizations in the category of small-to-midsize company alliance and/or emerging alliance. Utilities aren’t known for partnering, but National Grid broke away from the pack, winning the award for procuring and donating 55 weather stations to schools and first responder sites in a partnership with Earth Network’s weather monitoring equipment distributor WeatherBug. The project provides free, accessible, local weather information to communities while improving storm response and power restoration, which saves local businesses and customers millions of dollars.
The Alliance for Corporate Social Responsibility Award is for partnerships that make a profound, measurable, and positive social impact. The principal objective of the alliance is social impact, not profit—although profit, especially if used to fund program expansion, is not discouraged. The Dow Chemical Company and The Nature Conservancy received the award for a partnership that factors the value of nature into business decisions—a crucial step forward in fostering sustainability. It created an environmental protection framework with a methodology for identifying and measuring (or valuing) tangible benefits of ecosystem services to integrate into corporate decision-making processes. The unusual alliance resulted in a viable plan for significant change in corporate practice that can be a sustainable model for other corporations.
The Innovative Best Alliance Practice Award is presented to a company using new, individual alliance management tools or processes that have an immediate and powerful impact on the organization and/or discipline of alliance management. These tools or processes are not comprehensive alliance programs but additions to existing alliance practice that address specific elements of alliance management such as measurement, training, conflict resolution, general communication across-the-partner ecosystem, or similar facets of the discipline. Philips won the award for its innovative, two-step approach to create a joint brand identity for an alliance. It involved designing a framework and methodology that defines the most appropriate co-branding to prevent conflict, enhance effective communication between partners, and support an equal and well-grounded relationship. This is the second ASAP award for Philips.
Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson received honorable mention for its globally accessible alliance scorecard and assessment tool, which can be used by one or multiple alliances to capture key strategic, operational, financial, and relationship metrics in a single assessment program, allowing participants to monitor progress individually or across the portfolio.
The Alliance Program Excellence Award is given to organizations that exceed expectations by consistently implementing and managing alliance portfolios and demonstrating consistent success of those alliances over time. Winners build programs on creativity, efficiency, an integrated suite of processes, tools, professional development/alliance professional certification, and other elements.
Takeda Pharmaceuticals received the award for the creation of its progressive Center of Excellence (COE) to reach more broadly across functions and geographies, including emerging markets in China, South Korea, and Russia. Members can now extensively share best practices and tools for training, management, research, enhanced communication, and an on-line portal.
Bayer HealthCare received honorable mention for its significant investment into an Alliance Capability Enhancement Project to drive a partnering mindset and alliance best practices deep into the organization.
Taking home the ASAP Chapter Excellence award was the new Research Triangle Park (RTP) Chapter leader Path Amin, CSAP and director of strategic alliances at Omnicell and former chapter vice chair. The RTP Chapter built a strong chapter community through the recruitment of high-quality speakers and consistently high-quality programming under the leadership of Rob von Alten, CSAP, senior director of alliance management at Quintiles. The RTP Chapter also won a chapter award for Chapter Excellence in Overall Operations in 2013 under von Alten’s leadership.
About ASAP
The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) is the only professional association dedicated to elevating and promoting the profession of alliance management and partnerships. Founded in 1998, the organization provides professional development, networking and resources for cultivating the skills and toolsets needed to manage successful business partnerships. ASAP’s professional certifications include the Certificate of Achievement-Alliance Management (CA-AM) and Certified Strategic Alliance Professional (CSAP). Active global members include AbbVie, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Capgemini, Cisco, Citrix, Covance, Dell, Eli Lilly and Company, Huawei, IBM, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, KPMG, Merck, Mission Pharmacal, NetApp, Novartis, Sanofi, SAS, Schneider Electric, Takeda, Verizon, VMware, The Warren Company, and Xerox. A complete list of global members is available at http://www.strategic-alliances.org.
Michelle Duga or John DeWitt, JW DeWitt Business Communications, http://www.rhythmofbusiness.com, +1 (978) 544-1866, [email protected]
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