ASAP Announces Winners of 2016 Alliance Excellence Awards
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (PRWEB) May 04, 2016 -- The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), the world’s leading professional association dedicated to the practice of alliance management, partnering, and collaborations, announced the winners of the annual Alliance Excellence Awards presented at the 2016 Global Alliance Summit, “Partnering Everywhere: Expert Leadership for the Ecosystem,” March 1–4 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Md. Nine finalists vied for the top spots in three categories: Alliance Program Excellence, Innovative Best Alliance Practice, and Individual Alliance Excellence Awards. In addition to presenting the annual Chapter Excellence Award, the association honored the New England Chapter and also unveiled three new awards to honor exemplary ASAP members who have provided extraordinary support to ASAP over the years: the ASAP Guiding Light Award and two ASAP Content Awards.
“The profession of partnering and alliance management is evolving and the future path needs to be determined—but there is no better time to be an alliance manager,” said Michael Leonetti, CSAP, president and CEO of ASAP, referring to the paradigm shift taking place as partnering expands across industries, sectors, and emerging business ecosystems. “When we share and highlight best practices and learn from each other, part of the success worth recognizing is great behavior,” Leonetti added during the awards ceremony on Wednesday, March 2.
Alliance Program Excellence Award
The Alliance Program Excellence Award is presented to “organizations that have instilled the capability to consistently implement and manage alliance portfolios and demonstrated consistent success of those alliances over time.” This year’s award went to Bayer for its Alliance Capability Enhancement Project, now in its fourth year. The project was lauded for its strong emphasis on collaborative capability and cultural development, deal-making and efficiency, new IT infrastructure, processes, and pilot programs. The focus of the Bayer program has been to move the culture to a partnering mindset. This is being accomplished through senior management engagement; creating awareness within the organization and recognition and value of the importance of partnership. Joseph Havrilla, senior vice president and global head of business development and licensing for Bayer Pharmaceuticals, received the award on behalf of Bayer.
Innovative Best Alliance Practice Award
National Instruments won the Innovative Best Alliance Practice Award, given to a company for “individual alliance management tools or processes that have made an immediate and powerful impact on the organization and/or the discipline of alliance management.” The company received the award for outstanding achievement of a best practice with its innovative partner directory that allows customer to search across the partnering ecosystem and access in-depth profiles of partner capabilities, certifications, ratings, and reviews from customers. Implementation included the creation of advanced search functions, markets, keywords, mapping, and other tools. As a result, the number of National Instruments partners grew from 600 to 1,000-plus over short time.
“On behalf of the Alliance Partner Network, we share this honor with our valued partners and NI sales and marketing teams. Without their hard work and commitment to success, we could not receive this recognition,” said Armando Valim, director, NI global partner program.
Individual Alliance Excellence Award
International SOS and Control Risks won this year’s Individual Alliance Excellence Award, which is presented for “excellence in planning, implementation, and results of a single alliance between two companies or multiple organizations.” Their nearly seamless alliance changed the way the market perceives support and assistance of business travelers and expatriates. The formation of a joint venture resulted in significant benefits for both companies and their clients in terms of crisis management during emergencies such as the Ebola crisis, Arab Spring, and an evacuation of a client’s 130-plus employees from Liberia.
"Our on-going success is because we take nothing for granted. People at all levels in both International SOS and Control Risks – from the chief executives to the people on the frontline – work hard to ensure our clients have the support, advice and expertise they require when they need it most,” said John Maltby, director, group strategy of alliances at Control Risks. We share a common passion for professional excellence and innovation as well as a total commitment to harness the extraordinary advances in digital technology that are now available.”
Tim Daniel, group executive vice president of International SOS, added, “We founded an alliance that was based on a clear market need. We then worked hard to ensure that the services of both companies were tightly aligned and that the service to our clients was completely seamless. We sit side-by-side to deliver medical and travel security expertise to our clients.”
New Awards Recognize Individual and Company Volunteers
The awards ceremony then turned to individuals and companies’ contributions as ASAP volunteers. Jan Twombly, CSAP, ASAP chairman of programming, and president of The Rhythm of Business, received a standing ovation by several hundred cheering attendees when presented with the new ASAP Guiding Light Award to for her exceptional, selfless commitment to ASAP, exemplary leadership, and hundreds of volunteer hours driving program development for the annual Summit and BioPharma conferences for the past four years.
Leonetti then announced the winners of the two new ASAP Content Awards, first to Eli Lilly and Company and David Thompson, CA-AM, chief alliance officer, for their dedication to ASAP from the earliest days of the association through workshops, extensive volunteer time, and Lilly’s consistent editorial content in, and support of, Strategic Alliance Magazine. The second Content Award recognized Xerox Worldwide and Russ Buchanan, head of corporate alliances and ASAP chairman emeritus, and Candido Arreche, global director of portfolio & management for their exceptional guidance, volunteer time, and dynamic workshops.
The annual ASAP Chapter Excellence Award was presented to the ASAP New England Chapter, and accepted by another ASAP luminary volunteer, Becky Lockwood, global board member and two-time president of the New England Chapter, for “going above and beyond alignment with ASAP’s vision,” said Leonetti.
The seven-member ASAP Alliance Excellence Awards committee is chaired by Annlouise Goodermuth, CSAP, of Sanofi.
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, Bayer, Capgemini, Cisco, Citrix, Covance, Dell, Eli Lilly and Company, HealthCore, Huawei, IBM, INC Research, Janssen—Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Mission Pharmacal, NetApp, Novartis, Plantronics, 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.
John DeWitt, JW DeWitt Business Communications, http://www.jwdewitt.com, +1 (978) 544-1866, [email protected]
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