Collaboration

With a large group the collective power in the community is magnified. Besides being able to achieve more together, you are able to build relationships and share the cost of business infrastructure.

For example a pilot study is about to commence that will establish a "cloud computing" server which can be used to store company data in a totally secure environment. The advantages of doing so are many such as; not having to worry about the security of your data, being able to access your records from anywhere, and being able to link your physical store to an ecommerce web site so they use the same inventory database. By developing rich internet applications (RIAs) you can efficiently control an internet based business model as though is was a desktop application. As an individual company this would be hugely expensive. As a group it becomes a shared resource and therefore cost effective. Just ask yourself one question. "What do I currently spend in time and resources to protect my data." Using shared resources you can do a better job at less cost. More on this later.

Other areas where collaboration is important is in group promotions and strategic partnerships. Ever wanted to bid for a project, but couldn't compete as you could not address all the requirements, or provide your expertise to a client project, only to have the overall project collapse at a later stage of implementation as the client had to source their own resources for the next phase which was totally outside your control? Collaboration is partnerships, and partnerships are what allow us to compete with the "big boys," and control our own reputations. The VHBA is the vehicle for partnerships.