DVLA Business Relationship Manager

What is a Business Relationship Manager?

A Business Relationship Manager (BRM) helps build and maintain constructive relationships with business areas, understanding needs and issues. They ensure the business understands the value of service, facilitating a high level of customer satisfaction. They identify changes in business requirements that could impact the services which are provided and make sure this is communicated appropriately within their department. They provide a point of contact for the business area and ensure that the needs of the business and customer are represented within their department.

A BRM is responsible for acting as the liaison between the business and a selected customer group within a department to understand the operational and developmental needs of the business.

What does a Business Relationship Management do in DVLA?

Our Business Relationship Managers are the strategic link between Government Digital and Data delivery teams and business areas across DVLA. The team work with colleagues to develop their business plans and identify their need for digital technology and services. As part of this job family, you will:

• act as a translator and mediator between IT operations and the business
• be the single point of contact for the business
• attend business meetings and management forums
• provide communications and information for all related digital and technology activities
• be responsible for ensuring that strategic demand such as the spending review and services strategy commitments are met and communicated to the appropriate IT operations functions
• make a positive impact on the business through the reduction of costs arising from service issues, increased efficiency, and improved communication by better understanding user needs and championing departmental commitment to continual improvement
• proactively serve as a trusted advisor and a key point of contact for the business, stakeholders, corporate and other government departments
• represent the needs of the business and ensure that there is effective management of DVLA services, including third party external IT service providers
• support service managers and other business areas to provide customer centric services
• provide a point of contact for IT related escalations and new business requirements for business services, domain or business areas
• liaise with service level managers and business service managers to ensure co-ordination and communication between the areas
• be accountable for the production and maintenance of a ‘risks and issues register’ for business relationship management within specific business services, domain or business areas – ensuring that appropriate management of risks and issues are carried out (including escalation to senior management and IT controls as required)

What transferrable skills should a Business Relationship Manager have?

This role involves extensive interaction with stakeholders. Strong analytical, organisational, and presentation skills are essential. Also required are excellent interpersonal and communication skills to manage expectations and issues effectively, establishing and maintaining a high level of customer trust and confidence.

You will have the skills and ability to empower the team, ensuring each team member is fully engaged in the project and making a meaningful contribution, and encourage a sustainable pace with high levels of quality.

What skills should a Business Relationship Manager have?

You will need the following skills for this role, although the level of expertise for each will vary, depending on the role level:

• Continual service improvement

  You can:

  • identify and explore opportunities for service and business improvement
  • produce analysis and identify, prioritise, and implement improvements and efficiencies, ensuring that the organisation gets maximum value from services
  • recognise the potential for automation of processes, determine costs and benefits of new approaches, and manage change or assist implementation where needed

• Ownership and initiative

  You can:

  • maintain focus on the whole life of service delivery (designing, developing, delivering and operating)
  • ensure that a set of IT products, suppliers and vendors come together to deliver an IT service

• Service focus

  You can:

  • maintain focus on the whole life of service delivery (designing, developing, delivering and operating)
  • ensure that a set of IT products, suppliers and vendors come together to deliver an IT service

• Stakeholder relationship management (IT operations)

  You can:

  • identify, analyse, manage, and monitor relationships with and between stakeholders
  • clarify mutual needs and commitments through consultation and consideration of impacts
  • co-ordinate all promotional activities for one or more customers to achieve satisfaction for the customer and an acceptable return for the supplier
  • assist the customer to ensure that maximum benefit is gained from the products and services supplied

• Strategic thinking

  You can:

  • take an overall perspective on business issues, events, and activities and discuss their wider implications and long-term impact
  • determine patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps and vision statements
  • effectively focus on outcomes rather than solutions and activities

• User Focus

  You can:

  • understand users and identify who they are and what their needs are, based on evidence
  • translate user stories and propose design approaches or services to meet these needs
  • engage in meaningful interactions and relationships with users
  • show that you put users first and can manage competing priorities

What does a typical day look like?

“A typical day in the life of a BRM never looks the same! You have weekly catch ups with each of the business areas and monthly formal service reviews. You could be knee-deep in a service incident one day or facilitating infrastructure moves and upgrades the next. It’s a really diverse role with plenty of variety every day.

I meet regularly with all business areas, providing an overview of service performance and a forward view of IT change. I provide an opportunity to escalate issues – this can range from IT hardware problems to interactions they’ve had with the service desk or IT projects. I take the issue away, fix it for the user and improve the service and process behind it.

If I’m presented with IT changes and outages to services, I quickly assess the need for maintenance, and the impact on operational areas, and push back to the technical engineer community if the impact outweighs the benefit. Whilst the service managers have responsibility for the customer-facing services, they trust my judgement and allow me the freedom to make decisions on deploying maintenance both in and out of hours.

Training

You’ll need to keep up to date with the latest developments in the field as new technologies are constantly being developed. You can boost your knowledge by studying for industry qualifications.