Interview with Loughborough University, Recipient of itSMF UK’s Special Innovation Award
BRM Institute is proud to announce that Loughborough University is a recipient of itSMF UK’s Special Innovation Award. Jeremy Byrne, a long-standing member of BRM Institute, accepted the award alongside his BRM team.
According to itSMF UK, “the Special Innovation Awards are a new addition to the Professional Service Management Awards presented by itSMF UK. The winners are selected for their accomplishments in exploring new challenges around the periphery of traditional ITSM, often offering imaginative solutions to complex problems within their respective organisations. Loughborough University received the Special Innovation Award for business relationship management.”
Mark Lillycrop of itSMF UK stated, “BRM is rapidly gaining importance within the service management community, which makes this award particularly important. The Loughborough team have applied a mix of practical collaboration with some emerging BRM techniques, and in this way, have managed to develop a new and engaged culture across the organisation. This has been noticed and appreciated by various key stakeholders, such that IT is now seen to be more of a collaborative and strategic partner, rather than a dispersed and uncoordinated set of technical groups.”
To learn more about what this award means to Loughborough University’s BRM team, BRM Institute caught up with Jeremy Byrne to ask him a few questions.
Jeremy, can you tell us more about what led to winning this award? What has business relationship management helped your team accomplish?
Business relationship management has helped us create and improve existing relationships between IT and the university’s business functions, leading to strategically important projects being prioritized and delivered.
After we saw the award promoted through both BRM Institute and itSMF, we thought that through the application process we could create a document of our achievements and also use it internally to promote the value that converged business and IT brings to the university through the BRM capability. While creating our application, not only did we document BRM capability successes, but we also leveraged this content to educate new starters on what a BRM capability is and why it is critical to moving IT to a strategic partner successfully.
How does business relationship management support the goals and strategy of Loughborough University?
We help by co-creating strategy with business and ensuring that existing business strategies deliver business value results. We then focus on the key objectives and ensure that IT delivers the most value to achieve them. This is usually done through pushing long-term project proposals through ideation and ring-fencing key resources to ensure they are delivered effectively. We also look at the shorter-term aims and ensure that our business capabilities are optimized through improvements and adjustments.
We help by co-creating strategy with business and ensuring that existing business strategies deliver business value results. We then focus on the key objectives and ensure that IT delivers the most value to achieve them.
What are some key lessons and challenges that you and your team encountered along the way?
Improving transparency was a key challenge we identified as key to our success. Business cannot see IT as an order taker, service provider, or black box they submit requests to—and then see a result come out the other end if they’re lucky. They need to be able to see how their business challenge is being solved within IT.
Another challenge within the IT department was how the role of the BRM functioned and where the boundaries and crossovers existed with other roles, such as the project management function or the enterprise architect. We spent time process mapping things like strategy reviews, new ideas, requests, and complaints, showing exactly where the BRM role fits in.
How do you see BRM evolving and growing amongst your team? What’s next?
We need to expand and get more BRMs so that we can continue to elevate all of IT to a strategic partner and deliver more value to more business functions. We are also looking to create an entry-level tactical BRM role, the business capability manager, for some of our shorter-term objectives.
Do you have any advice or words of wisdom to impart to other BRM teams in the education sector?
The greatest indicator of BRM success is being able to articulate the value coming out of the relationships.
The greatest indicator of BRM success is being able to articulate the value coming out of the relationships. As we work to become a converged strategic business partner, we plan to focus more on capturing and optimizing business value through the value plan defined and introduced by BRM Institute.
We also recommend improving transparency both internally and externally to show everyone what you do and how you are delivering value—that way, business partners will use your BRM team to improve the organization, in line with strategic aims.
Congratulations again to the Loughborough University BRM team!
Jeremy Byrne is a business relationship manager (BRM) for Loughborough University and has worked at the university for over ten years across multiple teams within the IT Services department. Jeremy helped to create the BRM role within his organisation and has ensured its success. Jeremy is an active member of Business Relationship Management Institute and serves as a vice chair of the BRM Council.
