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.