Relationship Development

Supporting the development of collaborative business relationships is a long-term 20+ year NIP commitment.

There is a collaborative working thread running through all of NIP's products and services. Our first product, the Information Partner - a networked solution, enabling information professionals to manage unstructured data - was launched in 1989.  We embraced Lotus Notes, the first collaborative development environment, throughout the 1990s, and our current web-based offerings - and our involvement in the current British Standard for Collaborative Business Relationships (BS 11000) - are a testament to our continuing commitment in the field of collaborative working.

Economically speaking, effective relationships are essential for engaging, mobilising and managing assets / resources (Williamson), whilst transformative metasystems supporting collaborative teams resolve the knowledge problem (Hayek) and reduce or eliminate transaction costs (Coase).

NIP's Relationship Development solutions are such lifecycle metasystems, and are designed to:

• Identify and make visible the important factors driving the day-to-day functioning of a relationship
• Focus attention on areas where problems can arise and to facilitate their resolution
• Provide access to context-sensitive best-practice and advice

In our working with the Waitrose supermarket group, we developed a systems framework for the identification, measurement and progression of the classes of relationship development issues that now underpins our current offerings.