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!