Trust. It’s hard to get and easy to lose, but few things are more important.

Creating trust with our clients – and helping them create trust with their clients – is central to everything we do here at Avanade. When embarking on any technology journey, whether it’s a simple, single-solution implementation or a years-long digital transformation, you need a trusted partner that’s going to be with you for the long haul. With so much disruption in the market, being able to talk through challenges, explore opportunities and quickly change course when necessary is critical to a successful outcome. Often, it’s those challenges that create the tightest bonds.

So, how do we build trust? First and foremost, it’s about creating human connections. By embedding our experts within our client teams, relationships are formed, ideas are tossed back and forth, and a shared history is created. We hear all the time from our clients that what they value most from their engagement with Avanade is that we function as one team. Peek in on an implementation in progress and you might have a difficult time knowing who works for Avanade and who works for the client. We all work together.

Another key factor is transparency. To build a trusted partnership, you have to be honest with each other. Being transparent about what can and can’t be done and proposing alternate solutions where needed helps avoid broken promises.

Let me share an example of a client with whom we’ve created a strong, trusted partnership: Ariel Investments.

Ariel Investments is a global asset management firm headquartered in Chicago with offices in New York, San Francisco and Sydney. For 40 years, the firm has aimed to provide white-glove service to its institutional and individual investors. As a result, top-tier technology is needed to provide expedient, high-touch client service and protect confidential information. When leadership was looking to transform how they run their business by moving infrastructure onto the Microsoft Azure cloud, they knew they needed a trusted partner to make it happen. Here’s where the relationship-building comes into play: Frank Jones, Ariel Investments’ chief technology and information security officer, was a former Avanade client and gave us a call.

“I called Avanade because they earned my trust during an earlier engagement with another organization and I had the confidence that they could deliver technology that meets not only the needs of our business, but the needs of our clients. It made sense to partner with them again,” says Jones.

We first hit the ground running on a workplace transformation that leverages the capabilities of the Microsoft platform, including implementing Microsoft Teams for enhanced collaboration.

Of course, for organizations in the financial services industry like Ariel Investments, trust is paramount, and security is top of mind. “Our clients are the most important thing to us,” continues Jones. “In this ever-changing world of increasing security threats, I chose a partner like Avanade to ensure there isn’t a break in that client trust.”

We’re ensuring that the organization’s move to the cloud is secure to protect sensitive employee and client data and mitigate cyber risks.

Many of you reading this will know how hard it is to get a client and how hard it is to keep a client. But when you build a solid foundation of trust, those relationships can be lifelong and extend beyond the scope of any given project. At Avanade, we pride ourselves in doing what matters, and we’re happy to have trusted partnerships with organizations that feel the same.

How has your organization developed trust with your clients and suppliers?