The societal challenges we face today are too complex to solve within a single organisation, department, or team. Think of accelerating the energy transition, managing asylum inflows, delivering on housing needs, or combating organised crime.
These challenges require collective effort: governments (national and regional, policy and execution), market players, and social organisations must join forces. This applies not only to collaboration between businesses, but also to value chains on a smaller scale within a single organisation, where departments and teams need to connect processes and information to make the whole work.
In practice, this proves difficult. Conflicting interests, fragmented governance, unclear responsibilities, and poor information-sharing often stand in the way of effective collaboration. Yet, chain collaboration is not a project or a policy ambition – it is a prerequisite for delivering on shared challenges and realising (societal) value.
From our projects at the intersection of processes, organisations, data, and technology, we see that chain collaboration often makes it onto the agenda, but too often stalls at good intentions, non-committal meetings, or agreements on paper. In this article, we explore the promise of chain collaboration, why it often fails – and most importantly: what does work.
The promise of chain collaboration – and what it truly delivers
Chain collaboration is not an end, but well organised, it creates tangible results:
- Better service delivery through coherence and customisation
Partners who collaborate effectively can deliver faster and better – and provide tailored solutions when needed for citizens or customers. - Agility in crises and change
With shared goals, governance, and information, chains can quickly adapt when the context shifts – whether in response to a refugee crisis or a policy change. - Cost and capacity savings by avoiding duplication
Without coordination, processes are needlessly repeated, and data is requested and stored multiple times. This leads to wasted time, resources, and money. - Greater innovation capacity by changing together
Value chains with a shared change agenda foster mutual learning and develop valuable – often innovative – solutions more quickly.
The reality: why collaboration often stalls
Truly effective chain collaboration rarely emerges on its own. Not because of unwillingness (though that can play a role), but because of structural barriers:
- Lack of shared urgency among partners
- Without a common sense of urgency, parties continue reasoning from their own mandate or domain. The result is fragmentation, working in silos, and ultimately suboptimal outcomes.
- Unclear roles, responsibilities, and lack of ownership
- If it’s unclear who is responsible, who decides, who pays – and no one takes ownership – collaboration stalls. Governance without leadership results in indecision; leadership without structure results in chaos.
- No shared steering information
- Without shared definitions, data exchange, and mutual trust, there is no common picture of reality. And without that shared view, you cannot steer effectively. In those cases, it remains at talking about data instead of steering with data.
What does work: three success factors for effective chain collaboration
In our projects, we see the turning point arise when partners move beyond talking and start steering toward shared results. Organisations that succeed in this have three success factors in common:
- Commitment to the shared challenge
- A clearly defined, jointly supported challenge – with clear objectives – prevents suboptimisation and provides a compass for decision-making, priorities, and investments. This applies to daily operations as well as long-term transformation.
- Clear governance and leadership
- Effective chains require clear agreements on governance, roles, and funding. Robust governance – with a shared financing structure – prevents non-commitment and enables steering toward chain-wide results. But structure alone is not enough. Leadership is crucial: people who take responsibility, show ownership, and drive movement.
- One version of the truth in data
- Collaboration means steering on a shared picture of reality. This requires uniform definitions, reliable data, technical interoperability, and strong data governance. Besides, privacy, security, and ownership must be well arranged.
Our vision: value chains that truly work
We help organisations turn chain collaboration into reality – not with abstract models, but together with partners, from the boardroom to the shop floor. Tomorrow’s winners won’t be the largest or the fastest, but those who collaborate best Chain collaboration is not a temporary intervention, but a lasting capability. That’s where we make the difference – together with our clients.
Interested? We’d be happy to explore how we can help advance chain collaboration in your context – drawing on lessons from both the private and public sectors. Please reach out to Bosse Zwerink at [email protected].
