How do you scout out a good partner for your organization?

First you need to define what are your expectations from a partner in terms of technology, skills, reputation, etc. Then do a market research among those vendors who stands our in your area. Ask references to your network, not necessarily to the vendor directly as they will of course, direct you to the best ones. Shortlist a few, use a scorecard and assess financial risks, technical capabilities, cost & value, referrals, etc. Finally, you can do small MVPs or POCs to assess their competences and capabilitites.

Consider what the actual intent of the partnership is. You can't be a partner with everyone. One of the CIO’s key tasks is thinking about which partnerships to spend time on, which will be of value to you and what those mean. In some cases that's going to be with customers because you think that will help from a customer experience standpoint. When I've been a CIO the objective was to be able to actually provide a customer vantage point and alignment. I think that those relationships with those customers turned into partnerships—they were able to provide us with referenceability when we went to market and they were of value.

Ask yourself, what's your company trying to do, strategically? Which partnerships make sense? The answers to that change, so it’s about learning how to deliver those messages and have the tough conversations while you still need them.