Adopting the BRM Capability at the University of Oxford’s IT Services

  by Tony Brett

Back in August, I had the pleasure of taking the Business Relationship Management Professional (BRMP) foundation course, and followed by passing the exam a few weeks later. It was especially helpful to complete this online course alongside a colleague, as we had plenty of opportunity to reflect on how the topics we studied made sense in our own context—that is, being an IT Service provider at a large, world-renowned federated university. Here, I want to share the specific lessons that I believe will be particularly helpful to us in our unique environment.

To begin with, I have been running a “reps” program for a few years now, wherein team leaders and senior managers from IT Services link up with colleges and/or academic departments at our university. When it came to strengthening the relationships between IT Services and the university as a whole, the BRMP course helped me create a vision and plan activities for the reps to undertake. Additionally, the course provided me with some excellent ideas to further assist them in their roles as relationship-managing reps.

Secondly, throughout the course, I was particularly intrigued by the Business Relationship Maturity Model, as it gave the reps a framework in which to describe and compare their interactions and relationships with the units with which they are working. As the program leader, I now feel that I have the tools for measuring the quality of our business relationships, as well as the means to plan and measure the reps’ continuous improvement. By better understanding some of the barriers to strategic convergence, I believe that IT Services can help our business partners maximise the value of delivered business outcomes by using the services we provide for them, followed by then planning our capabilities to better fit their roadmaps. In our context, of course, “business” means cutting-edge research and education, so a deeper understanding of how value is realised from our services in these areas will be a great asset to our reps, IT Services, and our colleagues in academic and non-IT support roles.

Next, I learned that in many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), there is often a risk that Service Units (not just IT, but those supporting administration as well) get too focussed on service provision without emphasising the business outcomes of a successful HEI. Examples of these outcomes include attracting the most academically gifted students and maximising research funding through excellent research assessment results. The BRMP material about Strategic Capability Road Mapping taught me how to navigate and overcome this issue, particularly through the concept of value leakage and its causes. The ability to better understand the sources of value leakage and to optimise the value harvesting process will benefit us as a service unit by shaping our offerings, and it will also help business units achieve their goals.

My fourth takeaway from the BRMP course was that while portfolio management was not new to us as a large service provider (we have a staff of around 350 people, an annual expenditure of around $30M, and over 80 IT projects running), it is critical to carefully govern the spread of resources, the projects that are (or should be) at end of life, and the ways in which we invest in new initiatives. As a result, I have been much more thoughtful about the things we do, why we started doing them in the first place, and why we continue to do them, all in terms of the value they deliver and the resources they consume.

Lastly, I learned that in any project, the true challenge often lies in the Business Transition, or the “people” aspect of the changes delivered by the project. In order to lead us and our service partners more effectively through those changes, the BRMP course gave me some excellent tools to create urgency for change and build hierarchies of trust. I am now on the lookout for any “black holes” that could thwart growth, and I have a clearer understanding of the need for change leadership to be regularly present and vocal about its support and commitment to the change.

Conclusively, despite the fledgling nature of the formalised, department-wide Business Relationship Management capability at University of Oxford’s IT Services, I see an exciting few years ahead. After an overwhelmingly positive experience taking the BRMP course, I look forward to working with colleagues to embed the BRM capability in our staff and culture, as well as reaping the rewards as we develop ever-better relationships with our business unit partners to deliver a strong and continuously-improving student and academic research experience.

Tony Brett is the Head of IT Support Staff Services in Oxford University’s IT Services and spends a large amount of his time managing the relationship between IT Services and the academic business units (colleges and departments) of the University, particularly through working with their own non-centralised IT Managers and support staff.