Implementing Business Relationship Management

The New Speed of Business

In the Harvard Business Review article, “The New Reality: Constant Disruption” (Hagel III, Brown, & Davison, 2009), the authors examine how the historical path of disruption followed by stabilization has gone the way of the paper airline ticket. Today businesses face situations where core technol­ogies and computing never stabilize. The viability of products, and even their business cases, is being questioned before the products are launched into the market.  The article makes the case that “because the underlying technologies don't stabilize, the social and business practices that coalesce into our new digital infrastructure aren't stabilizing either. Businesses and, more broadly, social, educational, and economic institutions, are left racing to catch up with the steadily improving performance of the foundational technologies.” If the equilibrium has been forever altered, then existing managerial styles and institutional practices must evolve at the same speed in order to keep up.  Even the most mature organizations, e.g., those with certified ITIL, CMMi, and ISO credentials will struggle to stay ahead. Factor the new norm into enterprises in which key departments are organizationally, geographically, and even culturally divided, then the need for interdepartmental groups to operate more effectively is magnified significantly.  Having robust business capabilities independently is not good enough to remain competitive.  Rather differentiation is achieved through the effective interactions of these business capabilities along the value chain.

A logical counter measure to the disruption is to mobilize resources and develop supporting processes in order to bring organizations closer and bridge the gaps that divide. This frequently involves embedding key individuals or teams within other organizations, cross-functional training, tools, and better visibility into existing business processes in order to better position an enterprise to meet the challenge of the new speed of business. Agility determines at what level the business will lead or lag in the marketplace.

“These complex relationships are only exacerbated by dynamic geographic and cross-channel coordination requirements, and multiple products and customer accounts. No industry is immune from these challenges. Companies that want to deliver the best experience to their stakeholders need to provide a complete picture of all parties in the relationship at the point of service. The ability to do this requires that organizations have a complete understanding of the complicated hierarchies and relationships that exist between them and their stakeholders.” (Moseley, 2013)

Definition

The Wikipedia definition for business relationship management is, “A formal approach to understanding, defining, and supporting a broad spectrum of inter-business activities related to providing and consuming knowledge and services.” (Wikipedia, 2009) More practically, the position is designed to develop a productive and professional relationship between Technology and internal IT customers. Business Relationship Management (BRM) identifies internal IT customer needs and ensures the service provider is able to meet these needs with an appropriate catalog of services. BRM is both an organizational role and a competency that has been formalized in IT service management discipline by multiple standards organizations, including the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) and the ISO/IEC 20000 standard for IT Service Management. BRM was added to ITIL 2011 as a Service Strategy process; whereby the purpose of BRM, as stated in the ITIL Service Strategy book, is “to provide the link between the service provider and customers at the strategic and tactical levels.” It is through BRM that the IT organization develops an understanding of the needs of the business and how IT organization communicates value of services to the business (Salo, 2014). The focus at many enterprises is to embed the BRM role closer to the business unit in order for Technology to become a pro-active driver of business strategy and change in a partnership with the business. The position will build and maintain “trusted advisor” technical relationships with senior business and IT executives (CIO’s, CTO’s, and VP’s.). The relationship manager will work with both business and IT peers through an ongoing BRM lifecycle that involves iterative process to aggregate demand for IT services, represents the resources requested — and their costs — to the business, and helps optimize the deployment of IT resources over time.

Bridging the Gaps

As suggested in the HBR article on constant disruption, enterprises are constantly evolving and when technology is the driver it happens at an accelerated pace. The introduction of a BRM function to bridge gaps and bring stability between organizations means the BRM function must be adaptable and evolve as well. In the Gartner report on “Relationship Management: Making it Work” (Dallas & Gomolski, 2001) the authors introduce the concept of a trust curve (see Figure 1) that defines a path of growth involving relationship building and earning trust over time, whereby as the BRM function progresses along the curve its value and contribution increases exponentially. The true benefit of BRM is realized when it moves beyond the level of order taker and communicator and into the level of an advisor and advocate. The goal of the BRM implementation at most enterprises should be to progress along the trust curve at a measureable and practical pace until it achieves the value contribution required and then sustain that level going forward.



Best Practices

Those organizations adopting BRM as a formal discipline within their company have found a discrete set of characteristics of the function that when applied contribute to a successful implementation. The following BRM Best Practices were highlighted in the 2001 Gartner article on BRM.

• Select individuals with the right experience and mix of skills
  
• Create dual reporting relationships
  
• Establish credibility with executive sponsorship
  
• Place relationship managers on the senior leadership team they support
  
• Demonstrate the value and business alignment of IT
  
• Develop the role of relationship manager to make it aspirational
  
• Make relationship management part of the executive career path

Organizations adopting these best practices have discovered their BRM function, and specifically the relationship managers, are able to move further up the trust curve and increase their value and contribution to the enterprise. Successful BRM implementations generally result from relationship managers who are better able to integrate into the environment and move comfortably between the commercial and technical organizations.

The Relationship Manager is often an experienced senior IT professional who brings a broad back­ground in various areas of product, systems integration, operations, and application development.  These individuals are mature IT professionals and are from the onset capable of leading strategy and problem solving of IT activities, but the key aspect is they bring a new perspective. Their knowledge base and close proximity to the internal customers allows them to be proactive and influential IT advocate.

Career Path

Experienced relationship managers typically have a background with both IT and business acumen, many of which become influential leaders and senior executives within the enterprise. BRM is trending to become a career advancement job that provides diverse hands-on training and positions the relationship manager well for senior executive roles. Per Gartner, “Some enterprises require individuals looking to progress to senior roles with the IT organization to do a stint as a relationship manager, and many relationship manager do go on to become CIOs or key players in the business unit.”

As the BRM department head is sometimes designed to be a rotational assignment, consideration must be given to ensuring there is a seamless transition between assignments and meaningful opportunities for the new managers to come up to speed at a reasonable pace.  One way to facilitate the transition between assignments is to lay the groundwork for a common foundation around BRM and the expectations of the function. Having standardized training and a certification process as a requisite of the job will contribute significantly toward providing a solid foundation regarding the position. Consider that ITIL now embraces BRM and the recognition and credibility of the position increases substantially.

The Business Relationship Management Institute (BRMI, 2013) is a leading professional development organization that serves the BRM professional community and corporations. BRMI was incorporated as a 501(c)(6) corporation in March, 2013 and it provides quality education, training, and certification programs for both aspiring and seasoned relationship mangers. Developed by expert BRM practitioners and trainers, BRMI offers professional certification, which is similar in concept to the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification sanctioned by the Project Management Institute. According to BRMI, holders of the Business Relationship Management Professional™ (BRMP™) credentials are able to demonstrate:

·       Understanding of the characteristics of the BRM role.

·       Understanding of what it means to perform as a trusted advisor, contributing to business strategy formulation and shaping business demand for the provider’s services.

·       Understanding of how Portfolio Management disciplines and techniques are used to maximize realized business value.

·       Understanding of Organizational Change Management and the conditions for successful change programs.

·       Understanding of their role in Service Management, as defined by ITIL, and how to align services and service levels with business needs.

·       Ability to communicate effectively and persuasively.

Engagement Guidelines

Often the BRM team is by design as a small organization with limited resources, which can easily become over extended when engaged for improper reasons. To maximize its contribution to the enterprise, BRM should be involved in planning exercises that are strategic in nature, such as annual budget planning and prioritization, and it will be less involved in ‘blocking & tackling’ exercises. On the other hand, the group will engage in the most significant problem solving activity, such as when an issue impacts a product over a long period of time or an entire portfolio is at risk do a single instance. Figure 2 serves as a high level guideline on when BRM should be engaged relative to problem solving and planning activities.

 

Caution Indicators

A key challenge in developing the BRM function will be to ensure that it provides significant value to the enterprise, while at the same time it should avoid disrupting existing business functions that are working as required. It will take extensive coordination, communication, and sponsorship at the ‘C’ level in order to introduce a new layer of management between critical organizations that does not become counterproductive. Signs to look for when BRM is off target:

Figure 3 - Bypass

Figure 4 - Ignored by Technology

Figure 3    If BRM is ineffective in its relationship with IT customers and it merely becomes a bureaucratic layer added to the existing relationship, then customers will naturally bypass BRM altogether and go directly to the source.

Figure 4    If the BRM function only serves as a ‘funnel’ to channel problems into Technology, then they will just ignore BRM and become non-responsive.

These scenarios are in line with Gartner’s explanation of why many BRM implementations fail.  Gartner indicates that either the relationship manager is unable to win the respect of the business unit or in other cases the relationship manager is unable to progress adequately beyond the most basic tasks (e.g., Level 1) associated with the roles. To properly monitor the progress and effect­iveness of BRM there should be periodic assessments in order to gauge if it is achieving the established objectives. Monitoring will involve both performance and customer satisfaction surveys given to key stakeholders that are affiliated with BRM.

Goals & Objective

BRM is a crucial role that bridges a service provider and the business that depends upon that provider’s services. The most common BRM function supports an Information Technology (IT) organization, but BRMs can also serve Human Resources, Finance, Legal, Facilities and other shared services functions. (BRMI, 2013) The following list contains high-level objectives based on best practices.

• Improve communication and advanced information sharing
• Proactive demand-capacity planning
• Improved transparency in decision making
• More efficient and effective prioritization
• Stimulates, surfaces, and shapes business demand for a provider’s products and services and ensures that the potential business value from those products and services is captured, optimized and recognized
• Resists order taking, striving to be a valued strategic partner with their business customers and with the organizations that supply services
• Is a valued member of both the business and the supply organization’s leadership teams.
• Seamlessly handles many roles and brokers capabilities to help translate business demand into services and business solutions
• Is passionate about lifelong learning and proud to demonstrate an unwavering commitment to excellence through professional training and certification

Summary

Establishing BRM is as often said more of a journey than a final destination.  This is particularly relevant in light of what businesses are experiencing regarding the new speed of business.  In fact what might be considered a final destination is almost impossible to define, since as soon as plans are printed they become outdated.  However, for those items that are generally known, such as company vision, commercial and market goals, and the IT strategy, then with these key objectives in mind the Relationship Manager understands he or she must:

1. Earn the trust of internal customers and stakeholders
   
2. Understand the business needs
   
3. Be knowledgeable in technical capabilities

The objectives for establishing BRM are ultimately to position a liaison between two divisions, whereby the liaison will function in an advisory role facilitating critical demand and capacity planning while progressing along the trust curve to become an advocate for Technology’s capabilities and services.  Just as the technical landscape is changing underneath our feet, the BRM position must be flexible and evolving to keep up with the dynamics defining today’s business environment. The full potential of the BRM function may not be entirely recognized until all the supporting processes and training are adequately established.  If implemented properly, BRM can become a key contributor to Technology’s overall success and a key part in the career development of technology leaders.

Works Cited

  

BRMI. (2013). About BRMI. Retrieved 08 28, 2013, from Business Relationship Management Institute: http://brminstitute.org/about/

Dallas, S., & Gomolski, B. (2001). Relationship Management: Making It Work. Gartner, 4.

Hagel III, J., Brown, J. S., & Davison, L. (2009, Jan. 17). The New Reality: Constant Disruption. (H. B. Review, Producer) Retrieved Aug. 21, 2013, from HBR Blog Network: lhttp://blogs.hbr.org/bigshift/2009/01/the-new-reality-constant-disru.html

Landry, S., & Lapkin, A. (2009). The Re-Emergence of the Business Relationship Manager. Gartner, 1-7.

Moseley, M. (2013, 08 05). Technology as the Relationship Doctor for Business: Understanding Business Relationships Within an Organizational Hierarchy Framework. Retrieved 08 05, 2013, from ISACA: http://www.isaca.org/Journal/Past-Issues/2007/Volume-6/Pages/Technology-as-the-Relationship-Doctor-for-Business-Understanding-Business-Relationships-Within-an-Or1.aspx

Salo, T. (2014, Feb). ITIL®’s BRM: How Business Relationship Management Shows the Love. Retrieved June 20, 2014, from G2G3: http://americas.g2g3.com/blog/bid/99697/ITIL-s-BRM-How-Business-Relationship-Management-Shows-the-Love

Wikipedia. (2009). Business relationship management. Retrieved Aug. 27, 2013, from Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_relationship_management