Business Relationship Management (BRM) 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 (what used to be referred to as shared services or service providers) require a common methodology to drive true business innovation and strategy. These strategic business partners (IT, Finance, HR, external providers, etc.) 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: The impact of these trends on business relationships have driven the foundation of a distinct BRM discipline.

Overview and goals

BRM is implemented via organizational roles, a discipline, and an 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 (or competencies) that foster a productive relationship between a service organization (e.g. Human Resources, Information technology, a finance department, or an external provider) and their business partners.

As a model

One goal of BRM is to provide a complete model of business relationships and their value over time, in order to make their various aspects both explicit and measurable. 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: Assets and products derived from the BRM model are meant to inform and support: The BRM model will identify and categorize business relationships according to type. Each type has a discrete and clear purpose, characterized by a unique combination of roles, functions, activities, and instances of each type that can be identified, quantified, 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:

BRM principles