Top five considerations for companies adopting intentional partner ecosystems
Discover how intentional partner ecosystems can drive resource sharing, AI innovation, cross-industry collaboration, performance accountability, and robust risk management. And learn how KPMG can help your organization derive value from these paradigm shifts.
While your organization may recognize the critical role of partnerships in driving innovation, you may not be effectively managing those alliances to achieve desired results. In a rapidly changing market environment, the most successful companies are transitioning from ad hoc accidental partnerships that address short-term capability gaps to intentional partner ecosystems that contribute to long-term strategic transformation and growth. Following are five important considerations for companies adopting this new approach to managing their partnership portfolios.
Realizing maximum value from ecosystems requires that partners share resources and expertise.
Partners can run the gamut from Big Tech and technology startups to distributors and manufacturers to financial services and marketing concerns to regulatory agencies and even customers – all of which can be integrated to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
How KPMG can help
KPMG helps organizations curate a portfolio of partners that are a good cultural fit in terms of values, ways of working, and alignment to organizational objectives. Our teams guide organizations in ensuring that even seemingly unrelated types of partners connect in a way that adds maximum value to all -- the organization and its partners alike. Value realized can include co-creation for mutual benefit, the introduction of new products and services, evolved business models and revenue streams, creative co-branding, and more.
AI partnerships are in high demand.
Many companies are prioritizing partnerships with AI-centric companies ahead of previously top-of-mind technologies such as cloud and software-as-a-service. Using partnerships to expand AI use cases will be a priority during the next one to three years, as cited by 69 percent of organizations responding to the recent KPMG Partner Ecosystem Survey, and AI capability is a top partner attribute according to 59 percent of respondents .1
How KPMG can help
KPMG provides organizations with a blueprint to integrate AI partners so they can streamline processes, transform internal functions, and, most important, introduce innovative new products and services. Our work with clients is based on our analysis of extensive datasets that offer deep insights into market dynamics, enabling informed decisions that are critical to organizations’ success.
Companies are increasingly open to cross-industry alliances and managed services partners.
Eighty percent of respondents to our ecosystem survey say they are willing to look outside of their sectors for innovative partnerships.1 Further, nearly half of the respondents to our recent transformation survey cited managed services providers as key partners for driving innovation and solving challenges associated with technical debt, optimizing data and processes, and overseeing platform management programs.
How KPMG can help
KPMG helps companies identify partners outside of their sector that can offer both financial value (such as revenue growth) and non-financial value (such as brand reputation). Our teams also help companies choose managed services partners that can play a pivotal role in helping them transition from IT-centric solutions to business-centric services, which are critical for driving growth and innovation.
Measuring, rewarding, and managing partner performance are consistent challenges.
Only a little over a third of companies consistently measure partner performance. There is inconsistency when it comes to reward models as well – 44 percent use performance-based sharing, 32 percent have adopted a percentage-based model, and only 22 percent plan to implement a gain-sharing incentive plan.1 Finally, although decentralized, function-led management of partner ecosystems can lead to disjointed efforts, 44 percent of respondents to our ecosystem survey use this approach. Fewer—only 34 percent—use centralized management tools, such as partner ecosystem platforms,1 even though these tools are better suited to streamlining and optimizing ecosystem operations.
How KPMG can help
KPMG helps clients create a roadmap to partner performance measurement that defines milestones, with mechanisms to monitor progress, evaluate partner actions, and enable accountability. Our teams also guide companies on how best to use outcome-based metrics and key performance indicators for tracking growth. In many cases, our teams recommend a mutually beneficial incentive structure (e.g., gain-sharing model) to drive greater outcomes. Finally, we help clients create a framework for managing partnerships that includes regular evaluation of partners for strategic and technical fit and a tiered partnership model that categorizes partners based on their strategic and technical focus.
The tremendous value of shared data in technology partnerships also opens up a higher level of third-party risk.
When entering into partnerships, organizations can “inherit” cybersecurity and data privacy risks through the partners’ technology systems and approach to risk management. Blending data with third parties can lead to exposing confidential client data or intellectual property to the broader public, making inaccurate or biased recommendations, running afoul of AI regulations, and more. It is critical to bear in mind that this is not just a technology issue, but a people issue as well (on both the company and partner sides).
How KPMG can help
KPMG assists companies in creating robust third-party risk management strategies for their partnerships with AI and other advanced technology providers. These strategies help organizations ensure that their partners’ practices for data management, privacy, cybersecurity, intellectual property protection, and regulatory compliance match the sophistication of their own and are up to the task of defending expanded risk vectors. Particular attention is paid to evaluating organizations’ methods and processes for sharing data across partnerships, as well as constructing AI model management, assessing for AI security threats, establishing security remediation strategies, and more.
Source: 1Accelerate growth and innovation with partner ecosystems, KPMG, 2025.
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