The role of the Council at BRMI conferences

Below is a copy of my article for the BRMI newsletter, the original article can be found here.

Welcome to this edition of the BRM Council Corner! This month, we will discuss the role of the Council at BRMI conferences. There has been only one conference to date, but what a conference it was! To see just how amazing it was click here.

BRMConnect 2015 was held in Portland, Oregon, and the Council was honored to perform the role of owner and facilitator at the conference. Our responsibilities included helping to welcome the delegates to the venue, putting them at ease, and answering any questions that arose. Additionally, we managed breakout groups to evoke participation and creativity, which was particularly rewarding when we solved some key issues people were facing in their work. Most importantly, however, it was a pleasure to join in and ensure that everyone was having fun and getting as much BRM value as possible.

This was a highly rewarding role for the Council, between our assistance with bringing everything together to seeing the value transferred from the conference delivery to the delegates. One session I particularly enjoyed was the simulation in which we put the theory and advice into action in a simulated, “real-life” situation. This was kept light-hearted and fun, while also highlighting the issues and techniques needed to overcome them in an organizational environment—the beer and pizza provided was the icing on the cake.

In 2016, we now have the exciting prospect of not one, but four BRMConnect conferences spread throughout the year and across the globe—so despite four times the work, there will also be four times the reward (and of course, four times the fun!). This year, the Council members are thrilled to have the opportunity to take on more responsibilities within the conferences by becoming more involved in the planning stages, as well as the ownership and facilitation of the conferences.
Among these increased responsibilities, members of the Council will be able to join planning groups in charge of tasks such as helping to choose venues, working out logistics, and finding local events that can complement the conference. Members will also now be able to review the conference content and decide what information may be more relevant in specific parts of the world. For example, I’m working on the BRMConnect conference in Amsterdam, and I know that within Europe, BRMs are twice as likely to use service management techniques than in the United States. Therefore, conference attendees will benefit greatly from a session highlighting where service management ends and business relationship management continues, in order to add extra value to location-specific BRMs. It’s exciting to be able to use my professional knowledge and experience to impact BRMs positively across the world!

Although BRMConnect is still in its infancy—being a mere one year old—the resounding success of the inaugural conference shows great promise for 2016 and beyond. With the continuous evolution and improvement of BRMI, it truly is an exciting time for the BRM Council to be involved! Be sure to register for one of the four conferences now!

BRM facilitating innovation

The BRM is fundamental to business convergence, helping to bring together business operations and business functions at a strategic level. Leading organizations are now eliminating the service silos of yesterday, empowering business functions such as IT, HR, finance and the other departments to share accountability for strategy and business value through a teamed approach to value realization.

We know that the business innovates by changing business processes, expanding into new markets, creating new products, and exploiting changes to the macro-environment. On other hand, we are also aware that the business functions drive innovation as well, particularly through the expansion of capabilities and potential offerings. This is especially true of the IT sector, where the recent explosion of cloud-based IT services makes innovative capabilities newly available every day.

So how exactly does the BRM help facilitate the convergence of the business operation and function to produce innovative value creation?

For one thing, the BRM must keep up-to-date with the industry’s latest capabilities, as well as those within the business operational and functional capabilities. This way, the BRM will be aware of all the possibilities available to support the business’ ever-evolving needs. Ideally, this responsibility should be formalized in the BRM job description, as well as in other key roles.

Google used to encourage employees to spend 20% of their time on their own innovative ideas to add value to the company, which resulted in some fantastic services—and many failed ideas. Now, the company focuses on taking a more measured approach, encouraging innovation through a more top-down system in which specific areas or problems must be solved in innovative ways. In your organization, you may have some dedicated groups working in a similar model to Google, or you may even have innovative internal roles like that of the  Cloud Services Manager, whose responsibility it is to look at emerging cloud offerings and how they could be integrated within existing systems to bring added capabilities and value to the organization. If you’re really lucky, you may even have a Futurologist (coolest job title ever!) who is dedicated to looking beyond the current internal and external capabilities and instead foreseeing what is likely to be available in the future. With this role in your organization, you could plan to innovate and get even further ahead of the innovation curve.

However it works within your organization—and whatever functional area the BRM is in—the role of the BRM is key to merging not only the business operations and functions, but also their respective innovations, in order to ensure that they move together as a strategic partnership. Your BRM may not have a crystal ball, but you can certainly try and glimpse into a future of realized value—and then try and steer the convergence towards it.

Business Relationship Manager Sample Interview Questions

In the past I have had been the interviewee and the interviewer for the role of a Business Relationship Manager, I have also helped other in preparing for interview which they have said has been a great help, so below are some questions to help out anyone else.

There are the obvious standard interview questions you need to prepare for like the following:

1)    What made you apply for this role?

2)    Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

3)    Why should we employ you?

But what about specific Business Relationship Manager role questions? These are the real important ones and will be a test of your BRM skills, below are a selection of ones I have encountered:

1)    Describe a time you delivered a large amount of measurable value to the business.

2)    Give an example of when you have had to deliver a solution to meet conflicting stakeholder requirements.

3)    How do you prioritize one business units requests over another which require the same internal provider resource?

4)    At what level do you see as the best fit for the Business Relationship Manager function within an organisation?

5)    What tasks would you see fall outside of the remit of the Business Relationship Manager role?

6)    How would you help implement a new service or a large change to an existing service which has been introduced from within the provider?

7)    What situation would you find where you would have to say ‘No’ to an important stakeholder?

8)    How would you keep up to date with internal and external capabilities to ensure the business had access to the most suitable solutions?

9)    How do you see the Business Relationship Manager function expanding and maturing to meet growing needs?

10)  If the provider and the business have a difference of opinions how would you help resolve the issue?

11) Give an example of when you have had to communicate complex technical information to senior non-technical people.

12) Give an example of a strategic plan you have set and implemented to deliver long term value.

13) Describe how you would approach a senior leader within the organisation compared with similar request from a lower level manager.

14) Give an example of how you have worked with diverse business cultures from different business units.

15) How will you continue to develop yourself as a Business Relationship Manager?

I find preparing answers to all the above and more means I go into the interview confident and ready for 90% of what will be thrown at me. You will still get the odd curve ball but that's fine, just take your time and if you don't know be honest and say you will have to get back to them later.

Also remember to have questions to ask your interviewer at the end, it shows you have thought hard about the opportunity and it also gives you a chance to interview them. After all they will be lucky to have such an experienced and valuable BRM if you deem them good enough to accept their offer!

I hope the above helps some people, good luck and happy BRM job hunting!

The Unflappable BRM

I was recently reminded of the importance of keeping a cool head during stressful situations  while reading articles about the new CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai. One story that went viral on the internet was the “cockroach story” he supposedly delivered at a recent speech. (I say supposedly as the story is at least four years old and he may not have even delivered it—you really can’t believe everything you read online—but regardless, the moral still holds true. Here is the story:

“At a restaurant, a cockroach suddenly flew out from somewhere and landed on a guest, who promptly  started screaming. The guest began jumping around and wringing both hands, desperately trying to get rid of the cockroach. Their reaction was contagious, as everyone in the group also began panicking. Finally, the guest managed to push the cockroach away, but unfortunately, it immediately landed on someone else in the group. Now, it was the next person’s turn to continue the drama.

The server rushed forward to their rescue, but in the flurry of movement, the cockroach next landed on the server’s shirt. However,  instead of panicking, the server stood firm and composed, and observed the behavior of the cockroach patiently. After a few still moments, the server was finally able to calmly pick it off and throw it out of the restaurant.

Sipping my coffee and watching the amusement, I began wondering, did the cockroach necessarily warrant the guests’ panicked behavior? If so, then why was the server able to handle the situation without any chaos?

I realized then that it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, but rather my inability to peacefully handle the disturbance caused by their shouting that further disturbs me. The traffic jams on the road don’t disturb me inherently, but rather my inability to handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me.

More than the problem, it's my reaction to the problem that further creates chaos in my life.

Lessons learnt from the story:

I understood that in lieu of a knee-jerk reaction, I should instead respond. The guests in the restaurant reacted, whereas the server responded.

Reactions are instinctive, whereas responses take time to think about in order to save a situation from going awry, to prevent cracks in relationships, and to avoid making decisions while angry, anxious, stressed, or rushed.”  

This story shows how reactiveness can often cause increased panic, and exacerbate the situation rather than resolving it. On the other hand, a calm, measured response can bring value.

So how does this relate to the world of BRM? Well, although we would like to spend 100% of the time working strategically with our business partners, there will be times when a major incident occurs and our business partners and the provider will need us to help them through it. In these situations, the calm, unflappable BRM can play a key role by remaining calm and facilitating the cockroach’s removal from the restaurant. Adding value to a fraught situation is always appreciated, from both sides of the BRM role, so always try to remember to remain calm, gather the relevant information and respond accordingly or help facilitate the correct response.

How committed are Business Relationship Managers?

After reading this article (http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150810-what-do-boards-do-all-summer) on the board members commitments particularly over the summer holidays it got me thinking how committed should the BRM be?

I know ideally we are 100% committed to the role but in reality a nice work life balance goes a long way. Take now for example, I'm in Italy on a family vacation and I'm writing this while I wait for my turn in the shower before we get up and start the day. This is ok by my family because they are asleep or in the shower, however if I am emailing or blogging over breakfast I will be lambasted for working when I'm supposed to be on vacation. After all this is family fun time not work time.

Another section of the article mentions the Board Member reading work related articles on vacation, finding it a good time to read and not get interrupted with the daily work duties. This is another situation I can relate to as a BRM and before my vacation I loaded up my Ebook reader with both fiction and non fiction and it's the non fiction I've dipped in and out of making the odd note of how it relates to work.

But that's mainly my personal views and situation, when we look at the BRM role in its matured state it is long term and strategic and if implemented with all the supporting roles in place the business should be able to cope without a BRM for a week or two. In reality though when those major incidents and outages happen the business partners want that BRM interaction along with everything else happening to ensure they are getting the maximum levels of partnership to resolve them. The BRM is such a caring and compassionate role that we will often help out when needed on situations such as this. I mean we aren't exactly going to be pulling out our BRM theory book and quoting it during a major incident stating that we shouldn't be involved until a certain stage has been reached.

So to answer my own question, BRMs are extremely committed individuals in a role that often requires them to go above and beyond the theoretical expectations. Now I better get back to my vacation before my family notices :-)

BRM competing with other providers?

Are Business Relationship Managers going to be moving into an ever competing market? At the minute you might be happily providing your business with its solutions ensuring they meet requirements and are working towards the strategic aims, but what happens when an outside provider offers the same? Some will have tight controls and restrictions in place meaning business units cannot purchase IT consultancy or cloud based systems without going through the BRM function first to ensure they are strategically aligned but others might not have that luxury, also the restrictions still don't stop the offers of consultancy and cloud services come flooding in each day. Some of these offers might be useful and add value and others might not, come of the potential value might be better delivered from elsewhere, so what do we do with these requests? It’s important to educate the business to pass these requests to the BRM function if they think they might be worth investigating. It’s also worth reiterating the common phrase I have to often tell my business partners and that is, work out your problem, processes and requirements fully before looking at solutions, you can adjust them after looking at the capabilities but if you get drawn in by something you can often try and make the problem fit the solution. Now while this is good advice there are always exceptions, the main one being technological innovations which offer an improvement not previously thought possible, this solution will then fix a problem we never knew we had.

So as BRMs you should take heed to all the consultants offering services and consultancy as they might have a value to add. The BRM role is especially tricky when you think about trying to acquire the knowledge of not only all of your provider capabilities but all of the external capabilities you could potentially buy in especially with all of the latest advances in your field of expertise.

So in summary don't fear or try and block outside competitors/consultants/sales people try and utilize them for added value and for expanding the capabilities of your function.

Complaints and Compliments for the BRM

The life of a Business Relationship Manager is never dull and you can often be apologizing for an unexpected service disruption one minute and then receiving praise for perfectly aligned service delivery the next. So what should be done with this praise and criticism? Should you print out your praise in extra-large font and display it on your wall for all to see, trying to shout your worth from the rooftops at the same time as possibly looking like the most narcissistic member of your organisation? Or should you carefully file them all away just in case you need them for your own business cases later down the line? 

Or alternatively you could accept them in the humblest way you deem possible and pass them on to key players who helped earn it. After all the best managers and leaders will protect their team and take responsibility for any mistakes at the same time they will give all praise for successes to the team. When you are a BRM the same is true but your team is the entire provider department, in my case IT Services. So I will apologies and take responsibility for any failings regardless of where they have originated and I will pass praise on to the members of staff that delivered that value. 

Selflessness really is an important virtue to have as a BRM however some will recognize the work you are doing as a BRM and recognize your selflessness and really appreciate it, that's when you can print it out and stick it on the wall. :-)

Is the CIO the ultimate BRM?

I have recently been reading The CIO Paradox by Matha Heller, it takes a really good look at the common struggles of the Chief Information Officer and it seemed remarkably similar to the common struggles of the Business Relationship Manager role. Which raised the question in my head, what are the differences between the CIO and BRM roles? A BRM role can be positioned at various levels within an organisational structure and if it is at the C level is it in fact a CIO or is a CIO a turbo charged super BRM?

Vaughan Merlyn has just been thinking along similar lines and has created this great table highlighting the differences:

Read his full post here: http://www.themerlyngroup.com/2015/07/21/are-we-entering-a-new-era-of-enterprise-it-leadership/

This highlights the role of the CIO as a broader overarching position with a greater responsibility especially over technology focused areas as well as the business focused areas. Currently the CIO role can be seen as career progression from the BRM role although you could argue that they could work side by side rather than BRM below the CIO it all depends on your organisational strategy and structure to support it. I would say though as the IT business moves more towards focusing on business value realization it’s more likely for the BRM role to rise up to the C level and co-exist rather than be replaced by the CIO.

So let the BRM's deliver the Business Value and the CIO's take responsibility for the enterprise technology, if they work well together you will have a highly successful strategic IT partnership delivering business value across the enterprise.

The changing challenges of the BRM journey from conception to mature function

The move from a customer account manager to a mature strategically aligned Business Relationship Manager is long journey, even longer if you don't have a customer account manager role as a starting point. Along that journey many different challenges will be faced but they tend to be similar and come in a similar order despite the sector your organisation sits in.

Below are 6 steps in the journey and common issues with advice to help resolve them I have experienced from talking with other Business Relationship Managers around the globe through the Business Relationship Management Institute.

1)    Setting up the BRM function

The key to overcoming the first challenge of setting up the BRM function is gaining internal buy in. 

To do this you need to be able to answer the following questions from your internal provider group:

What are you going to do for us internal providers? Will you bring back more work, I’m already overloaded? Can I stop talking to customers now and put everything through you?

This role may be all well and good for the business partner groups (customers) but what about the internal provider group (IT Services in my case). You need to sell the ideology of the function highlighting the benefits to them. This isn’t a case of just listing the benefits from literature and best practice but finding the real suffering points internally and showing how BRM will help reduced these. In my case it was the fact that all too often partner groups would purchase IT solutions to problems and start to implement them without consulting IT Services first as they thought it would all just work and they didn't need to bother us with an external system, cloud services sales people have a lot to answer for! Invariably further down the line they require help with integration, migration of data or support which caused a real headache for IT Services as they had little or no knowledge of the system. Sometimes we would find two or more identical systems as well, so the big selling point for BRM internally was that it would stop or at least reduce this, it would capture the requirements early and deliver the right solution with the correct people involved from the start.

However you will also need to manage expectations and clearly outline what the function isn’t there to do, for example the BRM’s can be an escalation point but not for everything. “I’ve emailed them but they haven’t responded can you give them a call?” As much as some people hate picking up the phone the BRM role isn’t the only role to talk to people external to the provider group, technical people need some soft skills as well.

2)    Starting the BRM function

The key to overcoming the second challenge of setting up the BRM function is gaining external buy in. To do this you need to be able to answer the following questions from your internal provider group:

How will you be delivering value? How is this not a gate keeper? Will this role get things done? Can I use you as an escalation point? Can you help with our planning?

Again try not to repeat text book responses and think about how the role will help each partner group, how can you deliver value? Can you streamline processes, input expertise to increase accuracy of deliverables, help improve reputation, remember value isn’t all about money! It’s also important to highlight that the role isn’t a gate keeper, you might want all requests to be known to you but they don't all necessarily have to go through you for approval, the worst thing for the partner is to see you as a hoop to jump through or even worse a wall that blocks requests. Planning is key and although strategic planning may be hard to get involved with at first it’s important to offer the service and highlight the importance and benefits. If necessary start with the short term plans and work up to the longer term strategic planning.

3)    Proving the BRM function works

The third challenge happens after the function has been setup, this challenge is proving the worth of the BRM, preferably without over stating it. Questions asked at this stage tend to be:

How have you saved money, time or effort for the organisation? Or have you delivered value through other means, such as improving the reputation of the organisation externally.

Initially it’s best to get some quick wins in early to show that the function is effective, then try to work on the more business critical issues which have the biggest impact and deliver the more important business value. These can be hard to quantify and there may be conflicting ideas on the more important issues which need to be tackled but let the business decide, after all they are the experts in business value, and then take that decision and ensure the work is completed. Once you have a good few success stories under your belt it’s always good to produce a simple one page report outlining the value the function has delivered for those who are interested.

Also it’s important to learn from your mistakes and let people know how you have learnt from them, do not try and brush them under the carpet and cover them up, everyone  makes mistakes the important part is how well you recover from them and ensure they are unlikely to happen again.

4)    Expanding the BRM function

Once you have proved the worth of the function you will be well positioned to expand into any areas not currently covered. This means breaking down those last pockets of resistance who might still ague the facts of the worth you have collected, so depending on office politics you may need your argument to be watertight! Potential difficult responses could be:

This may work for them but we don’t want to use it for our area, our business area will work better without you.

The answer to these issues is going to be very specific for each situation but there will always be a number of options available to explore, even if the option is to leave one part of the business and focus on delivering value to the other parts, eventually someone will notice and push for your role to be expanded. Mostly though once the process is set up and mature, value is being delivered and you have learnt from your mistakes and mitigated the risks of them re-occurring, business units will want to work with you even if it is in a limited capacity at first. Don't try and force your way in and push your processes on people they have to want to adopt them to gain the benefits you have proven to deliver elsewhere.

5)    Growing the BRM function

Then once you taken over the world, or at least setup a large and varied network of provider and partner relationships which are working together coherently and delivering tangible measurable value to the organisation you can make a case for more staff to improve grow and deliver even more.

What will you do with more staff? What have you not delivered?

As you work you will find gaps which will need filling and you won’t be able to fill them all so you will be looking at the high value gaps as mentioned before, but with more staff and a larger function you could be delivering on all the smaller gaps which all add up to more business value.

6)    Maintaining success of the BRM function

Lastly don't rest on your laurels, don't get complacent, continue to strive for improvements, monitor tweak and adjust. There is always room for improvement and there is always more to learn, both internally within your organisation and externally through new innovative capabilities and also through developments within the BRM industry. Of course the best place to stay up to date with BRM developments is the BRMI web site so make sure you are registered and get involved!

Business Relationship Management and the internal social network

Should the Business Relationship Manager play a pivotal role in the internal social network of an organisation? Recently there has been an upsurge of internal social network implementations within organisations with products such as Yammer, Tibbr and Jive. These tools help increase internal communication and engagement so should the BRM role be a part of this and if so how big a part?

As with any tool such as this, it is often not how feature rich the tool is but how aligned the implementation of the tool is to the requirements of the users which counts. A badly implemented tool will seem useless and unwieldy and as a result be met with resistance to adopt it, so it’s important to get the implementation to be as best fit to the organisational needs as possible. A lot has been said before about successful system implementations but I found this paper said it particularly well:

“scholars and practitioners recognize and appreciate many of the same issues integral to the success of system implementations. Practitioners, through the school of hard knocks and years of experiential analysis, have learned “what” seems to work and what doesn’t. Scholars, through years of academic study and research, can tell us “why.” By blending the whats and the whys, and tossing in a bit of common sense, we strengthen the guidelines for successful implementations” 

Paula Vaughan, System Implementation Success Factors; It’s not just the Technology 

So presuming a successful implementation has occurred then the BRM has the opportunity to exploit this tool and use it for their advantage. It can be used to engage more across the business, break down the walls of communication, remove those silos of information, to gather opinion and add weight to business cases or even as a collaborative tool within the BRM function. The increase in communication and transparency of work across projects can really help BRMs, remember the BRM function can have IT requirements as well. 

So just for one day take a look internally and think about tools which can help you as BRMs rather than what can help your business partners, ultimately everyone will benefit and more business value will be made. 

Fast tracking BRM maturity

A question which has come up within the BRM community on the Business Relationship Management Institute is, is it possible to fast track BRM maturity? Can we skip some rungs on the maturity ladder? Or even just set up the function in its most mature state rather than setting up low and maturing up?

Lets look at the first scenario, a low maturity level BRM function that wants to fast track and jump rings of the maturity ladder. The most comprehensive maturity ladder framework is on the BRMI web site and gives 5 levels of maturity, they are:

1) Ad-hoc
2) Order Taker
3) Service Provider
4) Trusted Advisor
5) Strategic Partner

Each level has steps to get to the next level so can you really jump from an ad-hoc or order taker straight up to a strategic partner? Well I think you could but you will be making the change hard for everyone. The splitting of the levels allows for a transition plan to be put in place, benefits to be realised and value to be delivered before moving to the next stage. If you try and roll all of these changes into one big change you increase the level of risk, you intensify the level of resistance you are likely to encounter and any failures will be harder to spot and rectify before they become larger issues.

The other scenario is different though, if the function doesn’t exist at all it would be wise to set it up as close to a strategic partnership as possible. I say as close as possible as a certain amount of the strategic partnership needs to be earned over time, through collaborative working and business value delivery. You can certainly aim high though and set up as much at a strategic level as possible, it will save a painful re-positioning exercise later!

So although I would advise against skipping the rungs on the maturity ladder I would suggest setting up as high as you can and maturing as quickly as possible without increasing the risk and making sure you demonstrate the business value delivery along the way. After all the sooner you act as a strategic partner the sooner you can deliver the maximum business value possible for your organisation.

SFIA v6 released but what does it mean for BRM?

The Skills Framework for the Information Age http://www.sfia-online.org otherwise known as SFIA has just been updated to version 6.

What does this mean for Business Relationship Management? Well BRM falls under Relationship Management, or RLMT as SFIA call it, and they have placed this role in a group called Relationships and Engagement, where previously it was placed under Business Change. So this is a very positive move forward raising the importance of relationship management by giving it its own section.

It now sits alongside other stakeholder management roles such as Contact Management. It also sits next to Sales and Marketing roles, which depending on your organisation may or may not be as relevant!

BRM/RLMT still covers the top 4 levels of responsibility:

• Level 4 - Enable
• Level 5 - Ensure, advise
• Level 6 - Initiate, influence
• Level 7 – Set strategy, inspire, mobilise

But what does this really mean for the BRM world? Well some organisations use the SFIA framework for skills management, so that means primarily recruitment and a guide as to remuneration for differing role types based on the levels of responsibility and also for role development. The good news is BRM/RLMT is right up there in the top bracket with level 7 so it is recognised as being long term strategic based and even the lower levels are still strategy based. There are full descriptions of each level and how they should be interpreted for the role over at http://www.sfia-online.org you can evaluate them for free.

All in all a positive change from version 5 to version 6 for the role of the BRM, raising the importance and now firmly occupying one of the six key areas of skills for the information age.

If you want to discuss this change then head over to BRMI http://brminstitute.org and join the community of Business Relationship Managers.

Repositioning the BRM function

So you've got your BRM (Business Relationship Management) function set up and you've been climbing the maturity ladder but then you hit a wall. The wall is a mix of operational and strategic work but the final repositioning to a fully strategic function is met with resistance, so what do you do?

You need to attack this problem from two angles, operational and strategic. 

First the operational level, it's important not to leave a value gap. You can't just stop delivering all that business value at an operational level, so how do you fill the void? Maturing your operational level processes for other functions, empowering others and guiding them. 

At the same time you might be met with resistance from strategic level groups not wanting the BRM function to increase its presence in their areas. A perceived loss of power can be a strong motivator to putting up resistance. One option is to demonstrate the business value of the BRM function to get a seat at the table. The other is to get involvement in recreating the strategic table with BRM a key player at the new table. Again it can be met with resistance but the resistance has moved to an alternate group. 

Ultimately you want what's best for the organisation and it may seem like game playing and political wrangling to get there, but the result should be more business value! Just try not to upset anyone on the way after all you are a BRM and hopefully you can make everyone happy and deliver the maximum value :-)

For more in depth and a less personal view please check out the Business Relationship Management Institute BRMI as that is a fantastic source of information and has a thriving community discussing these types of issues!

Quantifying qualitative data a bacon perspective

In my Business Relationship Manager role I often want to measure how the various relationships are going, I could ask the business partner but depending on how I ask and how often would give me different results. Here's an analogy to make my point clear:

Here is a quick graph showing my love of bacon over time.

As you can see my love of bacon goes up and down over time, these key 10 marks are probably when I’m hung-over.

So depending on when you ask me the answer will be different due to a number of factors such as how much I've had recently, have I just smelt someone cooking some and of course if I am hung-over. So a fair assessment of how much I love bacon would be my average quantified love of bacon which over time is 8.2 out of 10.

But how do you collect this data, well you could ask the question over and over but would that affect the results? I think it would….

Here is a quick graph showing how I get sick of being asked if I love bacon all the time.

Then my overall love of bacon has dropped to 6.7, you’ve made me fall out of love with bacon!

So what is the moral of this story?

BRMconnect conference

So the BRM conference has finally come and gone and as I sit bleary eyed in the airport I still can't process all of the valuable information learnt over the past few days. I have at least three new initiatives I want to implement back at work on Monday and then plenty more to come after reviewing all my notes and slides. Not to mention all the book recommendations to follow up on, some of those looked really useful as well, I can see I'm going to be very busy for the foreseeable future.

However the biggest gains will be through the connections made with the other members, some truly inspiring people. All of which I hope to see again soon but until then we will remain in contact and work together remotely to improve the BRM function both for ourselves and the Business Relationship Management Institute.

It really was both the most valuable and fun conference I have ever been to.

Business Relationship Management Institute

I have been working with the BRMI council and it's really rewarding.

The BRM Council is an advisory group made up of BRM’s from global enterprises affiliated with the BRMI, who have proven successes and vision in the role of a BRM. The purpose of the BRM Council is twofold:

1. To provide BRMs an extensive toolkit and fellowship to enrich the practice of Business Relationship Management.
2. To provide all BRM Council members with business -wide recognition as industry leaders in the practical role of BRM and be recognized as the leading BRM council around the globe through relevant training, tool development and fellowship.

http://brminstitute.org/about/brm-council/ 

I highly recommend anyone in the industry sign up and become a member its the most valuable resource to a BRM out there. If you have any questions about it please drop me a mail.

LinkedIn update

Just been updating my LinkedIn profile feel free to have a read and add me:

BRM Interaction with the Business and Provider Teams: A maturity and culture perspective

Here's a link to a webinar I produced for the BRMI, it was a lot of fun to do and raised some good talking points. I will hopefully be doing some more of these soon.

https://www.academia.edu/11954001/BRM_Interaction_with_the_Business_and_Provider_Teams_A_maturity_and_culture_perspective

Changing Information Technology strategies to cope with funding changes within Higher Education

Here's a link to my masters paper on how IT strategy has changed to cope with the changes to funding within Higher Education. It's a few years old now but I'm still seeing the effects happen to this day.

https://www.academia.edu/10930785/Changing_Information_Technology_strategies_to_cope_with_funding_changes_within_Higher_Education