Business Relationship Management (BRM) is viewed as a philosophy, capability, discipline, and role to evolve culture, build partnerships, drive value, and satisfy purpose.^[1]

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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.^[2]

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:

• 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^[3]
• decentralization of knowledge and the devaluation of traditional intellectual property^[4][5]
• increased openness of networked knowledge^[6][7]
• decline of command and control management^[8]

The impact of these trends on business relationships have driven the foundation of a distinct BRM discipline.

BRM is implemented via organizational roles, a discipline, and an organizational capability.

The concept of the business relationship lifecycle^[9][10] 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 (micro) engagement cycle, characterized by one-to-one, discrete or transactional relationships. These have discrete cycles and negotiated outcomes.

Measurement and analysis

The goals of BRM require that its concepts and principles be identifiable and measurable. Given the model, a person should be able to identify the business relationships that they are engaged in, and measure them in terms like quantity or duration. The same holds for any aspect of BRM, such as type, role, or principle.

Purpose

Every business relationship has a purpose that requires the participation of multiple roles to accomplish. The purpose of a given business relationship is discrete and quantifiable.

Reputation and trust

The BRM model should attempt to model and quantify reputation and trust. Every relationship, and every interaction within it, contributes to reputation. Reputation mitigates risk and reduces friction within business processes. Concern for reputation incentivizes good behavior. Absence of trust will cause a business relationship to fail on the other hand trust increases efficiency and enables conflict resolution. The relationship between trust as a traditional core concept^[11] and in its emerging 'radical' form as a component of online community^[12] must be described.

Governance

The goal of effective business relationship governance is achieving both cooperation and coordination between business actors.^[13] They can rely on either contractual or relational mechanisms, or (most of the times) both, to facilitate the governance of business relationships.^[14] The BRM model needs to account for and align with models of corporate governance, including business ethics, legal constraints, and social norms as they apply to business relationships.

Boundaries

The BRM model should define the boundaries of business relationships within the larger continuum of interpersonal relationships. In addition to governance issues, the model should examine if there are optimal levels of personal connection, and whether they differ by type, role, or other attributes. The model should help define boundaries that optimize effectiveness while supporting good governance practices.

Exchange and reciprocity

The BRM model of exchange and reciprocity must extend traditional dimensions to account for not only financial exchange, but also time, money, knowledge, and reputation exchanges. These are a key feature of business relationships.

• Business administration
• Corporate communication
• Right-time marketing