Building strategic customer relationships: ITIL 4 Specialist: Business Relationship Management (BRM)

Not long after being accredited by PeopleCert earlier this year, Collie Computing became the first company in Northern Europe to run the recently released ITIL® 4 Specialist: Business Relationship Management (BRM) course.

The core content of ITIL material includes the practice of relationship management. Indeed, Business Relationship Management was described in ITIL v3 as one of the service strategy processes The ITIL 4 BRM module expands on this, providing strategic and best practice guidance to help organizations understand the value of BRM, along with its key concepts and challenges.

And while training in BRM is available from a number of sources, many customers want to attain the new skill while remaining grounded in the ITIL environment used by their organization.

A continuum of relationships

As a service management framework, ITIL is designed to help any organization that provides service to customers, internal or external. There is, of course, a whole continuum of relationships between service providers and customers: at one end of the spectrum are the commodity suppliers – they build a solution, scale it and attract customers from across the globe. These suppliers are less concerned with engaging closely with their thousands of customers.

At the other end, however, are suppliers that tailor their services to provide additional value to their customers. The more understanding these suppliers can gain into those customers, their marketplace, and their business models, the more able they are to tailor their services accordingly. BRM is a form of customer relationship management, focused on the service relationship between internal service providers and their service consumers. In this scenario, relationships are close, and services tailored to business needs.

Becoming a strategic resource

The fact is, service delivery can often break down as a result of the relationship between provider and customer, rather than because of the quality of the service itself. The addition of an ITIL 4 BRM module is therefore essential for those organizations looking to cement their position as service providers of choice and develop longer-term, strategic relationships. BRM gives them the insight they need and helps them develop expertise to understand their customers – to the planning horizon and beyond.

Ultimately, BRM can help a service provider move up its customers’ value chain to become a truly strategic resource. Rather than just responding quickly to their needs, the insight BRM offers can enable providers to actually shape a customer’s thought processes.

Related to the real world

Not surprisingly, all the candidates for the ITIL 4 BRM course, the first of its kind in Northern Europe, worked in relationship management. They enjoyed the pragmatic approach, providing them with relevant knowledge and skills related to the real world rather than being vague or theoretical. And they found it assuring that, according to observed best practice, they had been doing the right thing all along. After all, as with any qualification, part of the course serves as a validation of current practices.

Perhaps most importantly, there was a consensus among the candidates that the course had provided them with plenty of ideas that could be practically applied in their organization to improve their relationship management and, in turn, the additional value they could offer their customers.

BRM may not be a new concept but, as part of the ITIL 4 framework, it has a vital role to play in driving value – particularly for service providers.