Relationship 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.