Turning Your BRMs Into Digital Business Leaders: A Reflection

Overall, it was a great week at the BRM Connect conference in Charlotte. The BRMs in attendance showed great curiosity about the future and seizing the opportunity to build on the value they already create for their organizations,  and I was incredibly impressed by the passion and engagement levels on display. Standing still is not an option and I came away more optimistic about ‘The Future of BRM’ than ever before.

For more than a decade, LEF research has been based on the idea that business and IT are converged and co-evolving, and that this unstoppable integration is altering the very nature of companies, competition, and work. Along with globalization, it is the defining economic transition of our time.

To succeed in this world, senior executives must increasingly think digital first, while professionals and employees at every level must learn new skills and adopt new ways of working. The individuals who embrace this future will enjoy exciting career opportunities, but those who resist it will become increasingly marginalized.

Nowhere is the impact of these forces greater than on the Enterprise IT function. IT has always been among the most inside-out parts of the firm, since developing and managing internal information systems has required (and still requires) a deep focus on the detailed nature of individual company operations and processes. This heads-down culture is so strong that companies often appoint dedicated Business Relationship Managers (BRMs) who have the communications and consulting skills needed to keep IT’s efforts synched with the overall goals of their firm.

Although the need for traditional BRMs remains, BRMs must become more than just effective internal business partners in order to be key enablers in the future; they must also emerge as externally-engaged Digital Business Leaders (DBLs). The difference is one of orientation: while traditional BRMs focus mostly on internal systems, processes, and applications, DBLs primarily engage with the wider digital ecosystem—the start-ups, technologies, platforms, and disruptive business models coming out of Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

Finding the time, budgets, skills, and bandwidth to make this inside-out to outside-in transition (while still taking care of demanding internal work) is the biggest and most difficult strategic challenge facing Enterprise IT today. The following seven recommendations can help:

1. Get the foundations right. The communication, negotiation, and consulting skills that IT professionals need to be successful BRMs are directly transferable to the digital age.
2. Take a hands-on approach. Many consumer and internet of things (IoT) technologies need to be experienced to be fully appreciated. However, most companies do not have an effective process for getting new digital technologies into the hands of the right employees. Think about how you could replicate our recent effort to help a utility firm imagine and demonstrate the field engineer of the future.
3. Work like a start-up. Modern software tools and techniques can often lead the order-of-magnitude productivity improvements, but the use of such approaches within many traditional IT organizations remains surprisingly low.
4. Be socially ready. For whatever reason, many IT professionals (as well as many senior executives) are neither comfortable with (nor experienced in) modern social media. Social Readiness training helps individuals and groups alike get over the hump so that they can effectively engage with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in order to look more professional online.
5. “Map” your marketplace. Technology tends to evolve in a pattern, from genesis to customization, to productization and eventual commodity/utility status. Our Value Chain Mapping (VCM) workshops leverage this pattern to help firms visualize and anticipate likely market shifts. Many clients are now using VCM to improve their situational awareness for a variety of strategic, operational, and competitive analysis purposes.
6. Develop a disruption point of view. While some industries have been much more disrupted by IT than others, every sector has its own disruption story. IT professionals should be able to help their firm’s senior executives think through how technology is changing the way that industries operate and innovate, but many IT professionals shy away from such discussions.
7. Tell your digital story. Most companies have a clear business strategy, and most also have a formal IT strategy. However, relatively few firms have a compelling digital business narrative that makes sense both inside and outside of their organization. In recent years, we have helped a number of firms tell their digital story more effectively.

Of course, no one person can be skilled in all of these areas, but developing these capabilities across your organization is a realistic goal. When captured together, these capabilities define the mindset of successful Digital Business Leaders—and for those individuals who embrace these opportunities, the future has never been brighter.