Part one of a two-part profile, read part two here.
Meet Patrick Corcoran, Alliance Partnerships Strategy & Planning Executive
- A seasoned technology professional
- A passionate relationship builder
- And a Hitachi champion
A year ago, I joined Hitachi with the key mission of building and leading our Advisor Relations practice. I have been working with industry analysts, management consultants, sourcing advisors and influencers to position Hitachi’s offering and differentiation from our competitors. My role is multi-functional; I also lead our Inside Sales practice which is a relatively new area for us – working with our sister organisations like GlobalLogic on the go-to market activity for our Digital Solutions portfolio.
Relationships Matter
Building and nurturing relationships are fundamental to my job and have been key in building our practice from scratch. Leveraging my colleagues from across the offerings and industries, enables me to better position our brand and positively impact our business. Since I joined, my focus has always been building relationships, traveling to meet in-person and being clear on what we offer. most importantly, why we’re different. Our Alliance Partnerships play such an important role, it’s clear cut for me why relationships are so key. It’s not a simple “here’s our catalogue”, but it’s the positioning of our story, our brand and who’s delivering at the vendors end. It enables our partners to make recommendations and lobby for what we do.
An Industry Expert and Champion
I’ve been in this industry for 10 years. I consider myself an ambassador, a champion for both my work and for Hitachi. LinkedIn has played a key role in this, from understanding who’s who and where people are located to shaping domains and influencing peers and clients.
Social media has paved the way for building connections; back in the day I’d be looking up who’s where and doing road trips across the US. But now every time I’m on the road or at an event I can find people easily, get connected, and share where I am and my point of view through social media.
I would advise anyone to leverage social media, to be an ambassador, share your experiences, it’s great for brand building – both personally and professionally. If you have an opportunity to write an article then go for it, do it right, use correct tagging, the right keywords and keep the message succinct as people’s attention span is very narrow these days. It’s a fun outlet that’s part of my job but something I also enjoy.
Relationships Matter
When you’ve been in an organisation and moved up, you are familiar with people, know their strengths, their styles. Being new to Hitachi and building our Advisor Relations practice, I’ve had to start from scratch. It’s a situation I’ve never been in, building a brand-new practice and team at the same time is a great experience, but also brings challenges with it.
It requires a certain type of leadership style. It’s important to know your audience (your team) and determine the way you want to lead. My personal strategy has always been “eyes on, hands off” as a broad stroke in terms of how I like to manage. It’s important that we have fun, there will always be the daily grind, but ultimately having a little bit of personal cut in terms of your relationship with the people you work with helps. Showing that this job is not just transactional brings motivation and confidence, it brings the human factor and that’s important to me as a leader.
Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn
