Business relationship management


Business Relationship Management is viewed as a philosophy, capability, discipline, and role to evolve culture, build partnerships, drive value, and satisfy purpose.
BRM is distinct from enterprise relationship management and customer relationship management although it is related. It is of larger scope than a liaison who aligns business interests with IT deliverables.

Trends driving BRM development

Strategic business partners require a common methodology to drive true business innovation and strategy. These strategic business partners are converging with the business. There is one shared business strategy with each business partner accountable for portions of the overall business value achieved. Business Relationship Management Institute, Inc started promoting this business capability in 2012 with a non-profit membership community dedicated to the BRM profession.
These features include:
  • Business Relationship Management focuses on business value realization through accountable business partners
  • advances in the scale, scope, and sophistication of the network effect
  • constant disruption as the 'new normal' business dynamic
  • decentralization of knowledge and the devaluation of traditional intellectual property
  • increased openness of networked knowledge
  • decline of command and control management
The impact of these trends on business relationships have driven the foundation of a distinct BRM discipline.

Overview and goals

BRM is implemented through organizational roles, a structured discipline, and a developed organizational capability

As a discipline

BRM Discipline — The Business Relationship Management Discipline is an effective application of knowledge, demonstrated through a set of competencies and mindsets to advance a BRM Capability.

As an organizational role

BRM Role — The Business Relationship Management Role is the set of competencies required to advance the BRM Capability. Business relationship management consists of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that foster a productive relationship between a service organization and their business partners.

As a model

A key goal of BRM is to create a comprehensive model of business relationships, making their value explicit and measurable over time. A mature BRM model will ultimately support strategic business research and development efforts as well as tools and techniques that implement BRM principles.
The approach to the BRM modeling process is to identify and describe various aspects of business relationships in terms of:
  • defined relationship types, in which each type has a specified purpose, associated roles, and a measurable outcome
  • a set of processes that make up the business relationship lifecycles
  • a set of principles that apply specifically to these lifecycle processes
Assets and products derived from the BRM model are meant to inform and support:
  • A practice derived from applying BRM principles, analyzing outcomes, and refining over multiple iterations
  • A platform derived from successful practice that further support and optimize BRM as a discipline
The BRM model will identify and categorize business relationships according to type. Each type serves a distinct purpose, defined by specific roles, functions, and activities that can be identified, measured, and analyzed. Some examples of these relationship types are business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and business-to-employee.

BRM lifecycles

The concept of the business relationship lifecycle builds on charting the complex changing values of business relationships over time in contrast to simple transactional value.
Examples of BRM lifecycles include:
  • A large-scale grow and sustain cycle, characterized by one-to-many and many-to-one relationships. Activities in this cycle are more or less continuous and overlapping, such as marketing, customer product support or maintenance, or online community. These have indeterminate outcomes.
  • A small-scale engagement cycle, characterized by one-to-one, discrete or transactional relationships. These have discrete cycles and negotiated outcomes.

BRM principles

;Measurement and analysis
;Purpose
;Reputation and trust
;Governance
;Boundaries
;Exchange and reciprocity