Relationship Management

Relationship Managers are the ‘translators’ who bridge the gap between business functions. They ensure that innovative technologies and analytic strategies are directly contributing to process effectiveness in order to drive value and revenue growth.

The Relationship Manager's primary role is to provide services to each functional area. As a business process point of contact the Relationship Manager is able to address the needs of IT architects and analysts throughout the development process – leaving front-line subject matter experts free to do their day jobs. As an IT contact the Relationship Manager will be a single point of contact for the business – helping IT project managers and analysts to prioritize and communicate more efficiently. In the Data Management space the Relationship Manager will engage the business to drive business requirements for data analytics and management into actionable processes and analysis.

At the end of the day the goal of the Relationship Manager is to make people’s jobs easier and to allow them to focus on those value added activities that drive growth. Often times, different groups speak very different languages but they are all working towards the same objective – to make themselves and their business more successful. By acting as the ‘translator’ across functions the Relationship Manager ensures more effective collaboration, eases organizational friction, and ensures that business enablers are most effectively meeting the needs of their customers.

Relationship Manager Functional Area Responsibilities

Customer
Business leaders, front line managers, and system/analytic end-users are all the customers of the Relationship Manager. These users depend on this role to understand how and why they use technology and to engage with technical resources to ensure that their requirements result in value added deliverables.

Engage decision makers across functions to understand strategic business goals
Work with end-users to define requirements for functionality and deliverables
Responsible for developing on-going relationships to elicit feedback for continuous usability and process improvements

Information Technology

IT groups depend on the Relationship Manager to act as the voice of customer to all levels of the organization. This allows the business to focus on creating value for the organization while the Relationship Manager handles the details of the development life cycle.

Set strategic goals and prioritize high level development efforts with IT leaders
The face of the business for architects, developers, and business analysts
Develops on-going relationships with the IT organization to link their efforts to the success of the business

Data Management
This includes data scientists and data management teams that may or may not be linked with a specific business function. Similar to the IT function, but with an analytic focus, they want a Relationship Manager who will translate business needs into actionable requests that are used to drive the analytics strategy.

Define strategic goals for data analytics and data management processes with managers and leaders
Work with data scientists to turn customer requirements into high value business analytics
Develop and maintain a feedback loop between the business and data functions