The focus of this book is on bringing more structure to partnerships and alliances to achieve success.  Of course, the goal of adding structure is to waste less time and resources and accomplish more.  It is the fundamental premise here that structure is frequently a missing ingredient in choosing the right partnerships and making them work to their full potential.   Structure can be a guardrail to help keep an existing partnership on track.  Structure works to assist in identifying the best partners in the first place and then successfully introducing a new partnership to the market. Many professionals in the partnership world have contributedto the development of this book.   Thankyou for your thoughts and suggestions about how to bring more structure topartnerships and help us all improve and achieve greater success.  Partnerships are becoming more important forcompanies.  They allow organizations togrow and deliver value to customers and stakeholders in today's changingbusiness landscape.  Having a process inplace to select, introduce and manage those partnerships makes a difference in maximizingresults.    A practical guide to creating and maintaining strategic partnerships that add value. Partnerships enable businesses to be more competitive and deliver what customers want. But if done poorly, partnerships can be a distraction. They can conflate different products or services that do not add value for either company - or customers. By adding more structure, the distraction factor can be eliminated. Structure lets Partnership Managers keep long term plans clearly in focus and maximize success. A partnership and alliance professional in the business services and technology market sectors, Ezra Schneier has developed this book to offer ideas to anyone with responsibility for developing new partnerships or managing existing ones.   There are thoughts and suggestions that can be of value for identifying new partners, rolling out partnerships and managing relationships that are already in place.    The goal is to bring an added level of structure or organization that can improve business results.