“Business Relationship Management, Who Cares?” A message to The CIO

Business Relationship Management (or 'BRM'), who cares?

What?! Who cares? How can we simply disregard such an important business capability in that manner? That’s controversial... isn’t it?

Well the point is, the BRMs are the people that care, but they've got a tricky job on their hands..

We don’t mean to upset any BRM’s reading this, so please don’t take it personally. Our intention is not to unsettle anyone, least of all, hard working and dedicated BRMs. Let’s be honest, if you’re a BRM and you are constantly working hard to fix failed relationships between IT and other business colleagues, then the job can suck.

We’ve witnessed those situations when an IT roll-out or new build has created more problems than it fixed. The new Windows (pick a version) that has been rolled out across the business technology estate and mandated for all business technology users. One day they’re using their older version quite happily and then the next day everything’s changed! Logging in; accessing the network; printing; storage; you name it, all those basic functions that business colleagues has got used to has now changed again! The crazy thing is no-one asked for the new version; and now the BRM is facing the wrath of unhappy business colleagues. The IT technical staff have finished their work, the mandate to update was given months ago. Too late to talk to the CIO about the decision now, but the reality is now yet another storm to settle down.

If you are a BRM facing this mediator type of scenario day after day and you probably also find that you have little, to almost, no authority to change the status quo and yet there you are, constantly trying to establish the peace between two sides that are in continuous battle. It’s a poor job and no one will thank you for finding that illusive peaceful outcome anyway; sorry, but that’s just how it is. You know it; we know it; it’s a poor situation.

So actually, is the title not that controversial after all? Perhaps not.

The Windows Update scenario and description in the previous section is probably familiar with many operational business relationship managers (albeit sometimes cant be avoided). Those BRMs who have been appointed within the back-drop of a failing IT Service Management capability. The back drop where the relationship between Business and IT has become a Them v Us battleground.

If you are the CIO leading an IT organisation where the relationship between IT and Business is somewhat difficult, employing BRMs in a purely operational capacity to rebuild relationships will not solve your actual problem! It’s like putting a bandaid over a bleeding artery. It just won’t work. You will think you’re doing the right thing. You’ll announce a grand new relationship initiative with your business colleagues and then you’ll inevitably shut the whole thing down later with a lot of egg on your face when you’ve still got unhappy business colleagues and you still haven’t shown any real business value.

There’s BRM and then there’s BRM. What??!! Yes, there’s good BRM and then there’s pointless BRM and the critical difference is your leadership as a CIO and how you approach the relationship between IT and your business colleagues.

What makes BRM work is you!! You, as CIO, are the primary BRM in your organisation. How you behave and conduct yourself with your IT staff and your business colleagues sets the tone for the relationship between IT and the rest of your business colleagues.

For example, let’s consider language. How do you refer to your business colleagues? Customers? Users? The Business? Be honest with yourself as you mentally consider that answer. Do you consider IT as somehow different from your business colleagues? Do you think about your business colleagues as colleagues working towards the same strategic endeavours or are they customers that give the IT department continuous demand and requirements? There’s a big difference in these two positions, and that difference is like night and day. The latter is very operational and positions IT as an order taker at best, whereas the former is far more strategic and adopts a position of shared vision, action and collaboration working towards solving strategic business problems with your business colleagues.

When BRM is considered as an operational capability it could easily fail. However, when BRM is undertaken strategically and BRM’s are given strategic remit, sufficient authority and the rest of IT also behaves strategically, then the BRM capability can provide significant business value.

A great BRM capability will position the BRMs as (kind of) junior CIOs. In fact, it’s amazing how many strategic BRMs have taken the route of CIO as they advance their career.

Throughout our time working closely with our customers, we’ve seen both the good and the bad, and we’re pleased to say we’ve had a hand in many of those good examples, but ultimately, what makes a good BRM capability good, is the CIO, and the organisational appetite to focus on those all important two buzz words... Business Value (more on that to come soon!)

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What is ITSM?

Information Technology Service Management processes include a range of activities designed to deliver and support high-quality IT services for your business. These can include incident management, problem management, change management, and service-level management. Additionally, ITSM involves continuous enhancement processes to improve service delivery, increase efficiency and reduce costs. By adopting strong ITSM practices, your business can improve service quality, customer satisfaction and achieve greater alignment between IT and business objectives. This holistic approach ensures that IT services are effective and integrated with your overall business goals. As ITSM focuses on aligning IT services with your business’s needs, you can ensure that IT processes and services support and enhance business operations. This is achieved through a structured approach to managing IT services, guided by best practices and methodologies such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). These models provide guidance on best practices for delivering and supporting technology and other enterprise services and can help companies align their capabilities with their business goals and strategic objectives.
What is ITIL and how does it underpin ITSM?

We adhere to the ITIL Framework in delivering our ITSM consultancy services. ITIL is a globally recognised set of best practices for ITSM that helps businesses provide consistent, high-quality IT services. By implementing ITIL processes and principles, we ensure that your IT operations are standardised, efficient and aligned with industry standards. ITIL4 is the latest version of ITIL, designed to help enterprises navigate the new technological era known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This version introduces a more flexible, modern approach to ITSM, emphasising its integration with other areas of business management.
What are the core practices and processes in ITSM?

Effective ITSM revolves around a number of processes. Whilst there are 34 practice areas in ITIL4, there are often a core set of practices that many of our clients are particularly interested in optimising. As understanding and implementing these processes can significantly enhance the performance and quality of IT services within your organisation. Incident Management Restores all service operations back to normal as soon as possible, minimising to lessen the impact on your operations. This process might involve logging, categorising, prioritising, and resolving incidents, ensuring which can help mitigate disruption to users and the business. Configuration Management Keeps an updated record of IT infrastructure - hardware, software, and network components - in a centralised configuration management database (CMDB). This database provides accurate data on configuration items (CIs) and their relationships. Change Management Ensures any changes to your IT services are controlled and coordinated. This process evaluates the impact of changes, approving them through a structured workflow, and ensuring successful implementation with minimal risk. Service level Management Defines, negotiates, and monitors service level agreements (SLAs) between the service provider and the customer. This process ensures that agreed-upon service quality and performance levels are consistently met. Asset Management Tracks and manages your IT assets throughout their lifecycle to ensure efficient use and cost control. You maintain an accurate inventory of hardware, software, and other IT resources through this. Problem Management Identifies, analyses and resolves the root causes of incidents. Proactively addressing underlying issues can prevent recurring incidents. This, in turn, provides improved system stability and reduced downtime. Request Management Handles the lifecycle of user service requests, such as access to applications, software installations or information enquiries. It ensures requests are managed efficiently to provide a streamlined approach that fulfils user needs and enhances satisfaction. Knowledge Management Captures, organises and shares knowledge to improve efficiency and support decision-making. By leveraging a centralised knowledge base, your IT teams can quickly resolve incidents and problems, and end-users can find the right solutions to common issues.
Why is ITSM important to organisations and their IT (and Enterprise) teams?

Implementing the right ITSM strategy and optimising your tooling can provide a range of benefits for your company, including: Improved Efficiency and Cost Savings By streamlining processes and automating routine tasks, ITSM can help your enterprise work more efficiently and reduce the time and resources required to deliver and support IT services. Good ITSM is a silent enabler of success across a range of organisational goals. Improved Compliance and Risk Management ITSM can help you ensure that your IT systems and processes comply with industry regulations and standards. It also ensures that you are effectively managing risks associated with your IT operations. This can help you avoid costly disruptions and legal consequences. Increased Productivity Effective ITSM practices can help your business prevent problems and fix them quickly if they do occur. This can help you lower costs—outages cost money—and increase productivity and employee satisfaction. Better Customer Satisfaction You can improve customer satisfaction and build stronger relationships by delivering high-quality IT services that meet customers' needs. Improved Service Quality ITSM ensures that IT services are delivered consistently and meet agreed-upon service levels, leading to higher customer satisfaction and better overall service quality. Business Continuity ITSM processes like incident and problem management ensure that disruptions are minimised and services are quickly restored to ensure business continuity. Strategic Alignment ITSM aligns IT services with business objectives, ensuring that technology initiatives support and drive business growth. This alignment helps you make informed decisions and prioritise projects that add the most value. Enhanced Collaboration ITSM promotes a collaborative environment where IT teams can work together more effectively, sharing knowledge and best practices to improve your delivery of services. Proactive problem-solving Through problem management and a proactive approach, ITSM helps your IT teams identify and address the root causes of incidents to prevent future issues and reduce downtime. Continuous Improvement ITSM encourages continuous monitoring and improvement of IT processes, allowing your IT teams to refine and enhance their service delivery regularly. Better Resource Management With ITSM, IT teams can manage resources more effectively, ensuring that personnel, technology, and budget are allocated optimally to support business requirements.
Do you provide ITSM tooling support and what tools do you specialise in?

The ITSM People are completely agnostic with ITSM tools and not tied to any vendors. Given the close relationship between ITSM related processes and ITSM tools, we often get involved in tool selection projects, or making recommendations on how to improve tools and get the best value from them. We work with tools such as ServiceNow, BMC, Jira, ManageEngine, Fresh, Halo and Xurrent.