New Era of Agile E - Partner System for Business Partnering in Construction Industry

Abstract: Partnering is a set of actions, from Project Management, that help project teams improve their performance and thus, provide substantial benefits. Business partnering is "the development of successful, long term, strategic relationships between customers and suppliers, based on achieving best practice and sustainable competitive advantage"(Lendrum, 1997). Partnering attributes commitment, trust, mutual objectives & goals and developing long term relationship with all the stakeholders associated with the project. Stakeholders such as Architect & Designers, Consultants, Contractors & Sub- Contractors and Suppliers & Vendors collaboratively work together under same terms and conditions with similar organizational culture for achieving a successful project. This paper describes a web – based Partnering System with the principle of overcoming the various problems that are associated with the traditional or manual process to achieve complete transparency at every step and at every transaction. Thus, increasing competitiveness of companies/firms by taking advantage of mutually developed relations & opportunities and reducing risks . It is an attempt to bridge the gap between the Builder’s Organization and the various Stakeholders associated with a Project. Analysis and thus, System Development has been done with the objective of identifying a standard operating procedure for successful and strategic partnering relationships. Partnering strategy focuses on developing guidelines which include Partner Registration, Partner Selection & Approval based on qualification criteria, Partner Evaluation based on weighted grade point average, Automated Generation of Quotation and Negotiation, forming a Partnering Agreement & setting up mutual goals & objectives and Generating automated Purchase/Work/Service order along with Time & Payment Schedule. Basis for Project Partners is to adopt a “Win - Win” approach to solve problems and develop ‘Synergistic’ team work amongst them. Keywords: Business Partnering, Web - Based System, Stakeholders, Evaluation, Dashboard.