​In Part 1 of “How can Business Relationship Managers Influence Organizational Change”, we looked at how Business Relationship Managers can serve as a translator for both IT and their business partners by bringing the benefits of IT work to life for both sides.  They can help IT staff and business stakeholders understand the true impact of the work by relating the benefit in a manner that is meaningful.  It is about more than saving money or upgrading a server.  Business Relationship Managers can explain how the work directly impacts the customer or the employee.  They understand the bigger picture but they can drill down to the day to day operational level and explain the benefit which allows all stakeholders to connect with this work at an emotional level and ultimately, improves the adoption of change.
 
Another aspect of driving change adoption is understanding existing performance as well as progress toward improvement.  Business Relationship Managers (BRM) are in a unique position to use metrics to help all of their stakeholders understand the value of the work being proposed or completed through the use of metrics.  The metrics can drive action and improve the adoption of change.
 
The business areas are tracking various productivity and satisfaction metrics.  The work completed relating to technology should enable stronger performance in these areas.  The BRM should be reviewing these measures with their customer on a routine basis.  Work completed by IT is often reflected in these measures.  Using our example from part 1 of this blog series, the work to upgrade an ATM may be reflected in the volume of customers using specific ATM functionality, the volume and type of security issues relating to the ATM, or the number and type of support calls about a particular application used at the branch. 
 
Technology supports the business in doing their job effectively.  Metrics that are monitored by business partners often show the impact of changes to the technology as well as changes to IT process and changes to the IT organizational structure.  Business Relationship Managers are able to use these metrics to show the IT staff how the work they do has a very meaningful impact. 
 
The same metrics can be used to facilitate a conversation with the business about the value IT is bringing to the organization.  While the business will also be making changes to strategies, processes, staffing, procedures, etc., and the BRM needs to understand the work that is underway, changes to the metrics also reflect changes taking place to the technology that is used every day by the business staff.  With minimal effort, the BRM can help the business understand the value proposition for IT by using metrics to show how IT is supporting business outcomes.
 
Using business metrics and correlating them to the work of the information technology team will have a considerable impact on change adoption by helping both IT and their business partners understand how the work being completed is affecting success.  Additional training, communication, application or other technical enhancements, process and procedure changes, and even organizational changes may result from truly understanding the metrics and how the changes completed by the IT team influences the end result.
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When an organization adopts new technology or processes, there is a change to how people work.  They need to modify their attitudes and behaviors to adopt the changes and this usually results in new procedures, updates to tools, and changing relationships between coworkers or departments.
 
Business Relationship Managers (BRM) understand the needs of the business and they understand how the IT organization works.  BRM’s work directly with business partners to ascertain their current and future needs and they help the IT team navigate meeting these needs.  They have intimate knowledge of both organizations and they are pivotal to keeping these organizations in sync.
 
While some would argue that the BRM should not be spending their time on organizational change management, it is actually a critical part of their role.   IT staff often wonder about the value of the work they perform.  They are asked to do tasks or take on projects but they aren’t provided with a lot of information.  They may be given a copy of a business case but the overall handoff to the IT staff generally does not include the context relating to the true impact of the work they are doing.  The BRM’s are in a perfect position to provide this context.  They understand both the tangible and intangible benefits.  Every communication to the IT staff should talk about the value of IT’s work to the business and relate this information at a level an IT staff member can understand and connect with at an emotional level.
 
For example, the business case for completing an application upgrade at a bank may indicate that the branches will save millions of dollars and that customer satisfaction will be increased.  Generally, this is what IT staff know about the work as it is in the business case.   Why should they care?  The upgrade could result in lots of additional hours of overtime.  In this scenario, the programmer or engineer only sees the negative impact.  They don’t connect to the meaning of the work and therefore, they aren’t incredibly motivated to do the work.
 
The BRM has the opportunity to translate this upgrade into something meaningful for the IT staff.  They know the impacts to the organization’s strategic plan as well as the individual employee at the branch.  They can relate the impacts to a customer experience.  If the programmer or engineer understands that a branch employee will no longer have to contact support about the application when a customer is sitting in front of them or that the upgrade will provide the ability for self service through an ATM rather than requiring a customer to visit a branch, it would make a difference.  It would motivate the IT staff member to improve the experience for both their internal and external customers.  The BRM is in a perfect position to help IT staff understand why the work is occurring and the true impact of their work.  The BRM can tell the story.
 
On the business side, the BRM understands the various departments, organizational structure, and politics of their assigned area.  They are instrumental in setting and managing expectations.  The BRM understands enough about the IT organization and workload that they can effectively translate something technical into something meaningful for their business partner.
 
The BRM also knows their business partners well enough to understand their pain points and what motivates them.  They can influence buy in for upgrades, downtime, process changes, IT restructures, and other changes by applying this information in a useful, meaningful way.  For example, the server upgrade that will restrict application access for a half a day is required if you want the self-service functionality on the ATM.  The ATM downtime this week will allow us to ensure the customer’s information is safe and secure.
 
The BRM can tell the story to both IT and the business about how their work creates something meaningful for the staff and for the customer.  They can link the impact of the work to tangible and intangible benefits that will appeal to leadership as well as the frontlines.  They can have a huge impact on the success and adoption of change.
 
Don’t miss part two of this blog where we’ll talk about how Business Relationship Managers can use metrics to influence change!  Join our mailing list to ensure you don’t miss the next blog!