Dealing with the alignment of strategies within the collaborative networked partners

Abstract

Over the last years, enterprises awareness towards establishing collaborative processes has significantly grown due to the benefits obtained when participating in a collaborative network (CN). This paper is a continuation of the work developed by Andres and Poler [1] in which a set of collaborative processes are identified. This paper particularly focuses on the strategies alignment (SA) process, highlighting its influence on the success of a CN. A preliminary framework is outlined to address the collaborative process of SA, consisting of a model, a method and a methodology. Highlighting the importance of the use of cloud-based systems to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to deal with the SA process. The implementation of the proposed framework allows identifying what are the strategies that are aligned and how its activation increases the network performance, resulting in more stable and sustainable collaborative relationships, and assuring the proper operation of the CNs.