If you’re considering a joint venture, take a look at how your company can begin the process of forming a long-term, sustainable relationship.

Entering into a joint venture is a smart way to grow your company’s influence, diversify its products and reach new markets. But without a structured plan, starting your joint venture could be quite difficult and your joint venture aspirations could fall flat. Here’s how to identify the best partner for your business, create clear goals and stay on track with ongoing communication.

Finding the right partner

There are a number of considerations to make when identifying the best partner for starting your joint venture. For a sustainable joint venture, look out for a company with a similar target market, shared values and beliefs, a blended skill set and a commitment to success.

Depending on what your business wants to achieve with a joint venture, it may be seeking a partner with specialized knowledge and expertise, or perhaps a joint venture company that can offer financial support to develop a new product or service.

Consider the size of your business compared to your potential partner and how each organization would benefit. While a small company can gain expertise by partnering with a large company, two small companies could also see success by joining forces against wider competition in the market.

You may have a set idea of the size and type of business you want to engage, but sometimes it can be difficult to land your perfect match – even with a network of contacts to help you. This is where technology and big data come in. Through online databases and big data algorithms, companies can find top matches based on the needs of each business. The Powerlinx online platform, for example, helps companies find their next partner, supplier or distributor by matching them based on mutual needs.

Define goals when starting your joint venture

Once you’ve found the right partner, create a business proposal that outlines an agreement on shared costs, expenses and returns for the joint venture.

When starting your joint venture, each party is responsible for the profits, losses and costs associated with it, so partners should also have a clear understanding of their set responsibilities to make it work. From here, you can work on goals and objectives with your partner that will reap tangible results.

You may be starting your joint venture to gain new customers, develop new products or services, or to move into interstate and overseas markets. Sit down with your partner and draw up a list of what you bring to the joint venture and how that can contribute to your goals. When defining goals, consider looking at similar businesses that have entered into joint ventures and what they achieved as a result.

Once you have a clear set of goals, establish key performance indicators so you can measure how projects are tracking along the way and make any adjustments before problems arise.

Communicate often

Once all partners are on board and your business has set goals and objectives, develop an ongoing meeting schedule so everyone is kept in the loop about the joint venture. When starting your joint venture, ensure meetings have a clear purpose and send out an agenda beforehand so each partner can come prepared.

While not everyone may reside in the same state or even the same country, partners can still keep up to date through videoconferencing tools like Skype.

To prevent conflict down the track, ensure you also discuss with your partner the future of the joint venture. You may decide to eventually absorb it into your business or your partner’s, continue it as a joint entity for a set period of time or perhaps sell it off to a separate party.

If you are winding down a joint venture, work together on how you will un-bundle intellectual property and protect confidential information.

To begin the process of starting your joint venture on firm foundations, leverage the power of the Powerlinx platform and find the perfect partner for you.