The ISO 44001:2017 standard has been adopted in 2017 with the title Collaborative business relationship management systems – Requirements and framework related to business partnerships and collaborative forms of business, which are of great importance in modern business.

There are many formal and informal types of business partnerships and collaborative business models, and their management is becoming very complex for companies.

Many companies are still not aware of the importance of good planning and management of collaborative business relationships, although they may be, in addition to technological innovations, the main competitive factor of any company or organization. In case of new collaborative business models this is also strongly connected with innovation in services (e.g. in organizational, management and other service-based innovations). The accepted international standard is welcomed, since it officially gives a great importance to collaborative business forms for achieving competitive advantage.

The standard is useful in:

• all companies, all sectors and sizes at different stages of development and in all business areas. Depending on the purpose of the partnership (e.g. internationalisation, raw materials purchasing, subcontracting, sales network relationships, searching for funds, etc.), business partnerships are more or less complex and their management more or less demanding;
• the public sector of larger systems (e.g. railways), public-private partnership cases and in other cases;
• clusters, associations, business networks, cooperatives and other organizations where collaboration and partnership models are important for their growth.

At WOTRA we have been active in this field for many years where we have been monitoring the development of the standard from the very beginning (BSI 11000 – the national standard of the United Kingdom as the predecessor of the international standard ISO 44001). We are active at domestic and international conferences and through lectures and counseling in Slovenia and abroad. Contact the author for more information.