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Relationship Management

REM

The Relationship Management (REM) capability is the ability to analyse, plan, maintain, and enhance relationships between the IT function and the rest of the business.

Structure

REM is made up of the following Categories and CBBs. Maturity and Planning are described at both the CC and the CBB level.

ARelationship Management Strategy

Determines the IT function's overarching approach to understanding, managing, and leveraging its relationships with other business units.

A1Relationship Profiles

Understand the formal and informal networks in the organization and how these can provide insight into relationship characteristics, behaviours, and information flows. This includes an understanding of the organization's structures and culture, its strategic goals, the business models it uses, and the degree of operational autonomy that individual business units have.

A2Relationship Management Methodology

Define goals, objectives, and targets for the relationship management function/role. Design the relationship management approach to be taken; this includes details of roles and responsibilities, governance, policies, processes, and tools, and also any required support mechanisms such as skills development.

A3Capturing Business Awareness

Design information collation principles so that the IT function can recognize and comprehend relevant changes as they occur in the rest of the business — for example, this could include new business plans or project reports. Identify and develop tools and approaches to support this feedback loop.

A4Communication Programme

Design the communication programme to be used to keep stakeholders informed of IT developments, future plans, and other issues — for example, through the use of annual IT reports, IT strategy forums, and IT briefing papers. The frequency of communication is likely to vary depending on issues such as the target audience and message criticality.

BRelationship Management Practice

Describes how the IT function actively engages with other business units to create, enhance, and leverage their relationships.

B1Advocate IT

Advocate for IT by disseminating information to assist stakeholders (primarily outside the IT function) to understand the role IT currently plays and potentially could play in supporting the organization — for example, demonstrating the value of IT activities and promoting the identification of new opportunities.

B2Advocate Business

Collate information to assist stakeholders (primarily inside the IT function) to understand where technology can best contribute to enabling business value and supporting the organization.

B3Relationship Prioritization

Prioritize relationships with stakeholders and business units (for example, depending on previous, current, and upcoming business initiatives) to minimize negative impacts of competing priorities.

B4Awareness and Responsiveness to Business Intelligence

Maintain awareness of what is happening within relationships to track and act on business intelligence. Route business intelligence (for example, that relating to emerging risks, opportunities, and exceptions) to the attention of appropriate individuals/forums to enable suitable responses.

Overview

Goal

The Relationship Management (REM) capability aims to ensure that liaison and long-term interaction between the IT function and other business units foster business awareness, mutually align interests, and help minimize issues of conflict.

Objectives

An effective Relationship Management (REM) capability aims to:

  • Increase the opportunities for innovation and collaboration by fostering openness and knowledge-sharing between the IT function and other business units.
  • Use collaborative engagement approaches to guide business units through the technology element of projects.
  • Overcome internal organizational politics by championing mutual interests.
  • Earn the IT function a trusted-adviser and honest-broker status with other business units.

Value

The Relationship Management (REM) capability enhances goodwill, trust, and confidence between the IT function and the rest of the business.

Relevance

Disharmony between the IT function and the rest of the organization is a frequently documented feature of many organizations1234. This arises particularly where organizations seek more strategic ways to apply technology (for example, to support new products/services, to attract new customers, or to streamline processes), and lack the necessary liaison channels to broker the complex relationships between the IT function and other business units.

If the organization is viewed as a network, then the IT function is ideally placed as a primary node, connecting with all business units. By establishing an effective Relationship Management (REM) capability, an organization can leverage all the formal and informal networks and relationships between the IT function and the rest of the organization5, and this can be a first step towards overcoming any disharmony.

Scope

Definition

The Relationship Management (REM) capability is the ability to analyse, plan, maintain, and enhance relationships between the IT function and the rest of the business.

Improvement Planning

Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POM)

Representative POMs are described for REM at each level of maturity.

2Basic
  • Practice
    Communicate a responsibility matrix so that general IT employees (for example, business analysts, developers, and helpdesk colleagues), and those with specific relationship management duties clearly understand their roles and how to deal with the grey areas of overlap that may occur when dealing with other business units.
    Outcome
    IT employees are apprised of current and previous engagements with specific business units, and clearly understand that a relationship management initiative is under way.
    Metrics
    • Frequency of briefing sessions held across the IT function.
    • Percentage of IT employees attending briefing sessions.
  • Practice
    Prioritize stakeholder relationships across business units.
    Outcome
    Stakeholders are prioritized in order to focus initial relationship management efforts most effectively, while initial successes will facilitate the approval of the additional resources required to run relationship management activities full time.
    Metric
    Percentage of relationships that are prioritized.
  • Practice
    Measure customer satisfaction regarding IT service quality — building to include impact on business productivity variables.
    Outcome
    A performance baseline is created from which to improve.
    Metric
    Results of customer satisfaction surveys.
  • Practice
    Define the IT function's requirements for business intelligence on business units and identify likely sources of such intelligence.
    Outcome
    An understanding of business units' opportunities and challenges emerges.
    Metric
    Percentage of IT's relationships with other business units with defined information requirements.
  • Practice
    Hold regular meetings between IT executives and other business units to share concepts and points of view.
    Outcome
    The IT function and other business units build trusting relationships and additional dialogue is encouraged.
    Metric
    Number of regularly scheduled communication sessions between senior IT and other business unit management.
3Intermediate
  • Practice
    Move from a reactive to a more proactive process for dealing with business unit concerns.
    Outcome
    A friendly, courteous, and responsive process resolves problems, and satisfactorily closes the loop with clients.
    Metric
    Mean time to resolve problems.
  • Practice
    Use stakeholder expectations of the IT function as a basis for defining a formal suite of KPIs.
    Outcome
    The performance improvement of the IT function can be measured with more business-framed criteria.
    Metric
    Percentage of KPIs agreed between the IT function and other business units.
  • Practice
    Establish an intra-organizational forum to discuss business requirements for new IT projects and changes to existing systems.
    Outcome
    The IT function is aware of the business requirements across all areas of the organization.
    Metric
    Percentage of prioritized business requirements jointly agreed between the IT function and other business units.
  • Practice
    Keep business units informed of the way emerging technologies can help their business units.
    Outcome
    New usage models emerge demonstrating the strategic value of technology.
    Metrics
    • Proximity of CIO to CEO/CFO in the organizational hierarchy.
    • New revenue enabled by technology as a percentage of total revenue.
  • Practice
    Plan regular meetings between the IT function and stakeholders from other business units.
    Outcome
    Better relationships between the IT function and other business units can be nurtured and maintained.
    Metrics
    • Percentage of stakeholders who have regularly scheduled meetings with the IT function.
    • Satisfaction levels of surveyed stakeholders.
4Advanced
  • Practice
    Formalize account management roles for key relationships.
    Outcome
    Dedicated account manager roles are responsible for all aspects of a stakeholder's relationship with the IT function, and ensure that each stakeholder receives the highest standards of service.
    Metric
    Percentage of key relationships for which there is an account management plan.
  • Practice
    Develop regular communication plans jointly with other business units for key projects and events.
    Outcome
    Communications are jointly validated as ‘fit-for-purpose’, and are released in a timely manner.
    Metric
    Number of IT communication plans defined jointly with other business units.
  • Practice
    Process and disseminate key information captured across business units to support the IT function's decision-making.
    Outcome
    Business intelligence is routed to appropriate employees for consideration and, if necessary, action.
    Metric
    Number of negative events that arise from poor communications.
  • Practice
    Regularly hold customer advocacy sessions to ensure that the entire IT function understands evolving customers' requirements and can respond with the right quality of service.
    Outcome
    By working with product development teams, for example, the IT function can ensure that the IT services portfolio reflects changing customer needs.
    Metric
    Number of updates to the IT services portfolio attributable to customer advocacy sessions.
5Optimized
  • Practice
    Keep understanding of the business intelligence current through regular updates.
    Outcome
    Decisions are based on an up-to-date understanding of business units and their challenges.
    Metrics
    • Refresh frequency of business intelligence across business units.
    • Number of issues arising from poor business intelligence.
  • Practice
    Establish a cross-organizational forum of senior employees with responsibility for optimizing long-term relationships.
    Outcome
    There is a higher chance of defining win-win objectives, and of preventing the emergence of a ‘them and us’ culture.
    Metric
    Percentage of objectives shared between the IT function and other business units.
  • Practice
    Continually monitor the health status of relationships to identify improvement opportunities.
    Outcome
    Improvements in relationship management activities are enabled, giving confidence that stakeholders across business units are receiving proper levels of customer attention.
    Metric
    Percentage of relationships with regular health status reviews conducted.

Reference

History

This capability was introduced in Revision 16 as a new critical capability.