A Shift to Business Relationship Management
NASCIO believes, as do many states we have talked with, that it is critical now to shift the focus on customer relationship management to business relationship management. BRM has been the focus of NASCIO President Denis Goulet’s presidential initiative and is the natural evolution of NASCIO’s past work with CRM and the development of a new CIO operating model.
NASCIO defines BRM as a disciplined approach to proactively managing working relationships with internal staff, agencies, vendors and partners. Instead of placing all the focus on the customer relationship, CIOs and their teams should also remain aware of vendor relationship management to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Several states have hired business relationship managers (often with different titles), but finding the perfect employee for this role is not easy. Ideally, business relationship managers should have domain expertise related to the agency they are assigned to, a technology background and relationship skills. While it may be hard to find a candidate that checks all those boxes, most CIOs we spoke with agreed that the most important trait was the ability to effectively build relationships — the rest can be effectively learned on the job.