Joint Ventures And What You Should Know About It

Joint ventures are important in business. Getting into one is a way for most companies to make the most of their resources without having to risk much and raise a lot of capital. This is especially true for young companies who are just starting their operations and are still testing the waters.

But as much as it is one viable idea for businesses, it is not always beneficial. In fact, out of the many who attempt to get into a joint venture, only a few manages to really survive the first five years. This is not because of the “joint venture” per se but because the partners or the partner companies are incompatible.

That is actually the first rule that you should know when opting for a joint venture. Just because a company fits your needs-criteria, it does not mean that it is already a perfect fit to you or your company for a joint venture. You see, a company may provide the service, the product or the technology that you need for a project but if they are not a company that you trust, partnering with them may mean suicide for you. There are a lot of smaller companies who have gotten eaten up by big companies because they made the mistake of getting into joint ventures with those industrial sharks.

Choose your partner well. preferably it should be someone or a company that is similar to you in stature or if ever slightly smaller or bigger. Partnering with a big company may give you instant access but it can be a problem for you in the long run. The partner should also trustworthy and whose work ethic coincides with how you do business. If you find a company who is comfortable in testing the laws and you can’t, it will be a disaster. It is better to not start the partnership at all than to bail out of an agreement.

Another important consideration is to make sure that everything is made into writing. That way, you can be sure that everybody will be doing their part. It is not impossible for people to slack off especially when they know that another partner can take over their responsibilities for them. This can be a huge problem and may create discord among in the group.

Another vital thing that you have to look into is the profit sharing and the contribution of each of the partners to the enterprise. This is perhaps the most important aspect of the joint venture because this is after all what all these companies are after. Although the partners are primarily giving something to the joint venture, some will have more contributions than others. It is important that you check all these and make sure that you have the profits and the compensation distributed to the partners fairly.

Take note, the word is fairly and not equally. This means that distributing the profits equally to all partners is not the way to go. It should be distributed to the partners according to their contributions to the joint venture.

The Cons Of A Joint Venture

No doubt, more people want to go into a joint venture than go off to a business on their own. And who can really blame them? A joint venture gives you benefits that you will not get from having a single proprietorship business. With a joint venture, the risk is less, the work is less and of course, the number of ideas that you can come up with are doubled, tripled… depending on the number of partners that you have in the business.

But as most people who have gone to business with other people have realized, a joint venture is not all sweetness and light. It can turn into a nightmare if you do not take care it. Here are some of the downsides of getting into a joint venture and how to avoid or prevent it:

1. Slow management of business

Decision-making will be slower because the opinions of the other partners are needed before one can make a decision. This can slow down the operations and may result to lost opportunity. If all the opinions are not sought, discord among the partners can start.

How to solve: One can avoid this by making sure that one or two member of the company will be given the power of attorney to make decisions for the group. That way, the company can keep up with suppliers and the operations. Only the big decisions that can affect the company long term will be consulted with each partner.

2. Too many ideas, no agreement

Although it is good to have more than one thinking heads, it can also be a problem when no agreements are reached. Just imagine having a lot of ideas on the table but nothing concrete to work on. Too many people who want to get their voices heard can create problems within the company.

How to solve: The best thing to do about this is to devise a system wherein partners will have limit on the number of ideas that they will come up with and to have a deadline for narrowing down the ideas into something that everyone can work on and deal with.

3. Inequality with the brunt of work

Knowing that there are partners who can take over for them, some people slack off and do not do the job. They pass their responsibilities to their partners and just give a variety of excuse. Also, in any kind of group, there will be people who will be doing most of the work while others will just be sitting on the sidelines. It’s natural for a group to have inequality of workload even when there is a clear division of labor.

How to solve: To make sure that at the very least you will have more or less the same workload, you need to define the job of each one and to make it clear from the start that slacking off is not to be tolerated and if they don’t take care of their end of the business, they can lose some percentage in the final profit sharing.