Ensuring Business Value Through BRM
While business value may include traditional economic measures like revenue, margin, and profit, it may also refer to forms of value that are not directly measurable in a monetary sense. In these instances, business value can be derived from employee engagement, process efficiency, strategic partnerships, community relations, even social consciousness.
Don’t let the limitless ways of defining value intimidate you, though. Whichever way your organization defines it, you as a BRM can help achieve it.
Identify Value
Whether you are reviewing a critical business process, discussing the next big project in the IT portfolio, or reviewing an executive dashboard with a business partner, you are uniquely positioned to identify value by nature of being a BRM.
With visibility and access that intersects entire business functions and departments, BRMs have the opportunity to discover and explore potential sources of value that others may overlook.
As BRMs, we are responsible for asking questions, diving deeper, and becoming thought leaders who unearth business value.
Evaluate Value
Even if you work within a high-performing organization, it’s likely that there is still an ample amount of identified-but-yet-unrealized business value. The challenge often lies in determining which opportunities can yield the most value in an environment of limited resources.
BRMs play a vital role in evaluating which initiatives to pursue, as we understand both the needs of the business and the constraints of business partners. By utilizing insight from key relationships, BRMs can assess and prioritize the relative importance of competing or dependent initiatives.
Often, BRMs can exercise even more objectivity in these situations, as they may not be directly responsible for delivering a solution or realizing an outcome. For these reasons, evaluating value is a critical BRM responsibility.
Deliver Value
BRMs inherently deliver business value through cultivating relationships, developing strategy, managing demand, facilitating communications, and so on. However, BRMs can play an even broader role in this process.
As critical stakeholders, BRMs can also help achieve value through rebalancing portfolios of work, optimizing resource allocations, and making sure change management processes within the organization are also value-focused.
Identifying, evaluating, and delivering business value can drive profits, grow market share, and even help an organization become an employer of choice.
Though the countless opportunities to deliver value can seem daunting, it’s critical that BRMs recognize the importance of their role in this process in order to earn the title of strategic partner.
Michael Malone is a professional business leader with over 20 years of experience in information technology, business relationship management, process improvement, audit work, and accounting. Michael has successfully led high-performance organizations across multiple business areas and specializes in developing and executing innovative and cost-effective business strategies that fuel business growth. He recently helped implement a BRM function at a large international retailer and is a member of the BRM Council.
