Partner profiling to support the initiation of collaborative networks

Illuminating complexity and heterogeneity in today´s collaborative business networks, the importance of common standards and terminologies between partners of such networks becomes obvious. Still, there is a lack of adequate concepts and tools for ensuring effectiveness of integrating potential partners in collaborative networks. This paper presents a conceptual idea about partner profiling to support the initiation of collaborative networks in terms of standardisation, comparableness and consequently transparency of potential partners´ business performance concerning their products and processes. The innovation lies in the improvement of mapping collaborative business processes facilitated by a process perspective view on networks using a value chain reference model.