Advantage Group: Better together
When it comes to succeeding, cooperation outperforms competition when done right, says Iain Mayhew, Client Service Director UK, Advantage Group International
From ‘two heads are better than one’ to ‘many hands make light work’ or even ‘teamwork makes the dreamwork’, there are countless frequently repeated phrases that reaffirm that working in partnership rather than isolation leads to far superior outcomes.
For Advantage Group International (AGI), this belief lies at the very core of its business. As the global leader in partnership measurement and improvement, AGI helps retailers, wholesalers and suppliers to build stronger partnerships that drive better outcomes, while also providing the insights organisations need to strengthen collaboration, improve execution and, crucially, accelerate growth.
“For more than three decades, we’ve helped organisations understand how their trading partners experience working with them, identifying where alignment is strongest, where friction creates risk and which actions will have the greatest commercial impact,” says Mayhew.
AGI’s Benchmark Research is the foundation of that work, while Advantage LiveLens builds on it to deliver a continuous ‘always on’ view of partnership performance. This helps organisations to quickly identify emerging gaps and make better decisions, respond faster to changing priorities and act with greater confidence.
“Today, we work with more than 1,100 supplier clients and 1,400 retail clients across more than 45 countries, gathering upwards of 88,000 survey responses each year,” explains Mayhew.
“This scale provides organisations with something assumptions can’t: an independent, comparable view of how their partnerships actually perform, and a clear path to strengthen partnerships, improve execution and deliver better business outcomes across the value chain.”
PARTNERSHIP
So why is partnership so important? “Sustainable business performance depends on more than products, pricing, or contracts,” he says. “It depends on the strength of the partnerships that enable organisations to plan together, solve problems together and respond to change together.
“Strong partnerships create trust, transparency and shared accountability. They enable faster decision-making, better alignment, and more consistent execution across the value chain.”
As supply chains become more interconnected and markets more unpredictable, those businesses that invest in stronger partnerships are better positioned to adapt, innovate and grow. Strong partnerships aren’t a soft skill; they’re a commercial capability that directly influences business performance.
Mayhew continues: “No organisation succeeds in isolation. The biggest opportunities – and the biggest risks – now sit across organisational boundaries: improving supply chain execution, bringing innovation to market, growing retail media or responding to disruption. Success increasingly depends on how effectively trading partners work together.”
So what are the benefits of effective collaboration? In short, successful collaboration creates shared visibility, aligns priorities and enables organisations to make better decisions earlier, reducing uncertainty across the partnership rather than shifting the risk from one organisation to another.
“The strongest organisations don’t view collaboration as agreeing on everything,” admits Mayhew. “They recognise that partnerships are built on transparency, trust, and mutual accountability, which are the foundations for making better commercial decisions together. When partners collaborate effectively, everyone performs better.”
BEST IN CLASS
“Leading collaboration practices go beyond regular meetings or information-sharing, becoming instead a core part of how two organisations operate together,” explains Mayhew. “Across the thousands of partnerships we benchmark each year, the highest-performing organisations consistently demonstrate six characteristics:
- Shared business objectives and agreed measures of success
- Open, transparent communication built on trust
- Early information-sharing and joint planning
- Clear accountability supported by timely decision-making
- A commitment to solving problems together rather than optimising individual outcomes
- Continuous measurement, feedback and improvement.
“Our benchmarking consistently shows that the strongest partnerships are not those without challenges; but those that address challenges openly, learn continuously and improve together.
“At AGI, we believe better partnerships create better business outcomes. Everything we do is designed to help organisations understand, strengthen and continuously improve the partnerships that matter most, creating lasting commercial advantage in an increasingly connected world.”
WHOLESALE FOCUS
“Within the wholesale channel, it’s more important than ever that suppliers and their customers engage with each other to identify and create compelling propositions for consumers,” says Mayhew. “By working closely together, you have shared priorities, faster decisions and fewer surprises to navigate.”
Each year, AGI runs fieldwork with convenience retailers and wholesalers during June and July to gather a representative cross-section of the channel. In addition to satisfaction levels about partnerships, the fieldwork also captures how they are feeling about current conditions, including challenges such as cost pressures and inflation, technology and innovation, legislation and regulation, competition and loyalty, and how optimistic they feel about the future.
In November, the Advantage Report is published, sharing outcomes, key themes, strengths and weaknesses from both supplier and wholesale perspectives. This highlights what is working well, alongside points of friction and areas that need attention to improve performance.
“Both sides want partnership, clarity and growth,” says Mayhew. “We know that suppliers want access, insight and ROI, while wholesalers want commitment, relevance and follow-through. Where these overlap, relationships thrive and everyone wins.”
To learn more about Advantage Group’s research into retailer-supplier partnerships visit www.advantagegroup.com
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