The Need For Partnership As A Small Business

Partnership development takes time and resources, which many very small businesses do not have. And this is especially true of micro companies with fewer than ten employees that often lack the manpower and know how to assign such tasks as partnership development to employees.

In the web development and design world, the few resources available to a micro firm will be engaged in the various aspects of the website development and deployment lifecycle.

Because of this, services such as hosting or networking need to be outsourced - but negotiating a reasonable cost for the service and ensuring that the service and resources are reliable can be a time-consuming task.

For example, a website designed for a customer such as a museum is a key tool for that museum to attract potential visitors and must therefore have a host of interactive features and be highly functional. Websites, such as these featuring attractions, tend to attract millions of visitors.

The ability to design such as website is a core capability of web developers and designers at any web design agency, but a micro agency may struggle with the hosting of such a website, which can be time consuming in order to keep it up and running.

For a micro web design agency, a far better choice might be to outsource the task of hosting a demanding website to a partner. But how does it go about finding such a partner? That is something that has become a lot easier in the past year.

The WebsiteSpark programme from Microsoft, aimed micro web design agencies with fewer than ten employees, provides access to a network of potential partners through its Network Partner Catalogue in order to find partners who are qualified to help them.

This includes access to a directory of web professionals, and hosting and network partners. To be a hosting partner, the firm offering the service must have signed a Service Provider Licence Agreement with Microsoft and be a dedicated provider to the WebsiteSpark programme.