A collaborative worldwide relationship – Fortus (UK) marks first year of membership success

Fortus, one of Morison Global’s members in the UK joined the association on 1 April 2020 – just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the globe. Here’s what Andy Minifie, Chairman of Fortus had to say on the firm’s first year of membership…

On the same day we joined Morison Global to connect with the world, COVID hit and the world went into lockdown! Certainly, not the most auspicious way of starting a new collaborative worldwide relationship!

We’d created a shortlist of eligible associations based on their geographic spread and member experience to fit with what we thought we might need; and in the end we selected Morison Global as it was obvious they had a culture and enthusiasm amongst the executive team that reflected our own.

Having been members of other associations in the past, we knew that you had to invest time in getting to know other member firms before you’d develop the confidence in referring work to them. This has traditionally been done face to face. So, naturally, we had plans of attending conferences and making specific trips to meet other members in key locations.

The question now was how were we to make the most of the opportunities and to ensure we were happy with referring our clients to people that we had not met, and that we might not be able to meet for some time?

Memoria and her team quickly helped us identify key firms in regions and introduced us so that we could hold introductory meetings. Being somewhat ‘old school’ I know only too well that nothing beats face to face meetings for developing relationships, but Zoom and Teams played an important role in filling the void.

During our first 12 months we’ve reached out on behalf of clients on over 30 occasions to other member firms, and have enjoyed 20 leads for inbound referral work. In addition to this we’ve collaborated with other MKSi, UK firms, we’ve worked within and contributed to several CIG’s, and have participated in numerous online member events

In the same way we’ve seen our clients react to lockdown, we’ve seen the Morison Global Community react the same way. Moving swiftly from “What’s happening?” to “How can we change?” and “What can we deliver?”. Over the last year we’ve seen the association improve, launch a revised website, a member portal, and referral database and we’ve been honoured to have had a small amount of input into these projects. This has meant Morison Global and the executive team have delivered on everything they talked about before we joined; and we’re confident that through energetically collaborating, we’ve done the same.

Certainly, if 12 months ago someone had said Morison Global would have made this much impact on our business, without us meeting anyone face to face, we’d never have believed them.