BRMs Ensure Companies Move Faster
The big day has finally arrived! You’ve put all your effort into your CV, had several phone interviews, purchased a new outfit, and today you interview in person. When you start the car, though, you realize you don’t actually know the way to the office.
After a brief moment of anxiety, you remember that it’s 2017, so you grab your phone and punch the address into the app you use for navigation. You’re relieved to see the directions, and your phone prompts you with a couple of routes to choose from—it has context that you don’t, such as the shortest route or the fastest one, where there’s traffic and what the road conditions are. You choose a route and get going with the help of your phone, which continually provides you with updates to ensure that you arrive as soon as possible.
Not only is this a normal experience, but C-suite executives have a similar reliance on navigation. They know where they need to be and when they need to arrive, but they don’t necessarily know how to get there.
BRMs Are Navigators, Orchestrators, and Connectors
It’s easy to find articles online that guide organizations on what they need to do in order to move faster. You’ve heard it before: it’s all about staying in front of the pack and being the disruptor, not the disrupted.
But what role does a BRM play in this? How does a BRM accelerate business?
By stimulating, surfacing, and shaping demand for the business partner and increasing their understanding of the Provider’s services (acting as a connector), the BRM can then orchestrate key roles and resources to drive business value. Doing so requires the BRM to act as a navigator between the business partner and Provider.1
There’s More Than One Path
Sometimes the fastest route isn’t the preferred one. We could take the route with the shortest distance to conserve fuel and reduce cost, the one with the most enjoyable view by expanding costs and scope we could simply pick the route that gets us there the fastest no matter what, or we could pick the one with the most return value in the shortest amount of time.
A Business Relationship Manager (BRM) will need to present executive management with different options, keeping in mind that the executive team knows where they need to be—they’re just unclear on how best to get there.
A BRM will need to present executive management with different options, keeping in mind that the executive team knows where they need to be—they’re just unclear on how best to get there.
A BRM is aware of the organizational landscape and can provide well-informed recommendations that help companies get from point A to point B in the most business value adding, efficient and effective way possible.
Avoiding Obstacles
Offering up options is one thing, but what happens when something changes after you’ve left?
We’ve all worked multi-year projects that start with a large discovery phase. All the requirements are documented, design is complete, and we start working towards the goal. After a few months, business priorities change. Maybe the company had a low-performing quarter and the project loses funding, or perhaps a group of key stakeholders were left out and the project team identified new requirements.
As a navigator, the BRM offers immense value in that they have access to a large database that reports on obstacles like road construction, accidents, toll roads, debris on the highway, and so on. A good BRM taps into their network within an organization to ensure a smooth trip.
Hands-Free Driving
Most states in the U.S. prohibit texting while driving or general use of a device that requires your hands, because it makes paying attention to navigating difficult. Driving a business to its destination is similar to a vehicle in that it’s easy to become distracted. BRMs prevent distracted driving.
When executives trust that the BRM is navigating the business route properly, they can focus on the destination, rather than how they will get there.
A BRM provides peace of mind to the executive management team. This is why establishing trust is critical to a BRM’s role. When executives trust that the BRM is navigating the business route properly, they can focus on the destination, rather than how they will get there.
BRMs have the ability to accelerate a company because of their knowledge of interdepartmental workings and the external market, making it critical for BRMs to understand the market and be multilingual within business.
Without the role of a BRM, your organization is missing critical skills that will help navigate to great business success. Are you plotting the course with outdated maps and a limited understanding of weather conditions. Is your software up-to-date? Do you have BRMs?
Jeff Hileman has over 10 years of experience in IT. After building his organization’s BRM capability from the ground up, he is now responsible for leading the BRM team and was successful in positioning IT as a trusted strategic partner to the business. In the past, some other major successes of his include designing and managing a successful global IT service desk, developing a marketable service desk structure and model that grossed over $5 million per year, and reducing IT operating expenses within one company by $200,000 per month. Jeff is an active member of the helpdesk community, HDI and IT Leadership Exchange, and Business Relationship Management Institute.
When he’s not hammering away on a process improvement project or working to launch a new IT service, you can find him running through the trails in Southern California, preparing dinner for his family, or asking the question “Why?” to just about anything.
