Business Relationship Management reaches greater heights at Dubai Airports with BRM

I have 24 years of extensive and insightful global experience including 20 years in the aviation industry. Over the years, I have gained expertise in a number of areas including strategy and operations, business relationship management, business transformation, corporate learning and development, process re-engineering, operational excellence amongst others. I have been instrumental in defining vision, strategy and delivery road-maps, ensuring the right investments are made and successfully implemented and adopted.

Connecting 245 destinations across six continents through 78 airlines Dubai International (DXB) is the world’s busiest international airport and prides itself on its commitment to enhancing passenger experience despite the highest traffic volumes. This can be a challenge as our airport is a mini-city with numerous partners - airlines, ground handler, hotels, food and beverage, retail and various authorities working together to provide a seamless experience to some 88 million customers across our two airports. My role involves enabling better collaboration between Dubai Airports and its partners for all things technology. Connecting all to serve the future growth of Dubai.

Some of the key accountabilities include designing and enabling the technology strategy with key industry partner and establishing strong relationships with partners in order to influence and support technology investments. All geared towards enriching customer experience and improving operational efficiency.
 

My journey started with a succession of roles in product, portfolio and programme management. I believe that business relationship management was a critical competency to have in these roles.

I started working formally in a relationship management role in IT a few years ago as an operations technology solutions manager for Emirates airline. When the opportunity at Dubai Airports came, I was very keen as the role allows me to build relationships and network across various partners throughout the airport environment. The role is pivotal to influence a common technology vision and strategy, influence how we optimise investments and focus on seamless passenger experience. Collaboration is key to the success of aviation sector.

Image credit Dubai Airports Srividya Prasad 

I love the ability to have the right engagement and build trusted and profitable relationships with so many key stakeholders. The learning you gain about different businesses never allows a dull day on the job.  There are very few roles that can influence the delivery of common vision, strategy and optimised solutions like the role of Business Relationship Manager. That makes it very interesting and fulfilling.

A typical day for me involves staying in contact with partners and internal stakeholders. Engagement through phone calls, emails and meetings are part of the normal routine. I love being hands-on and sometimes prefer to work at partner’s premises to have continued informal engagement. The high points of my day are when I find myself dealing with someone who shares ideas and values about how we could collaborate. A large portion of my day is also spent communicating through emails. I love being structured and organised and hence quite of lot of my time is also spent on planning and engaging internal teams for the right and timely outcome.

The External Partnerships team was established only two years ago. Strong relationships have been built with partners. We have clear agreed priorities and collaboration areas, better visibility of each other’s investments and a plan on how we optimise and support them for collective gain. It’s also helped in understanding of pain points and developing trust in services offered and mutually established trust.

Two key challenges we faced in establishing the capability:

• Do not set up the role as tactical - It is important to clearly set the context of the role. It is not a delivery role and is extremely easy to sway into being a tactical service management function
• Assumption of partners’ willingness to engage and collaborate - Especially since they want to maintain control their investments. Many take the initial view that they have been successful so far without this structured collaboration.

To overcome these very common barriers:

•  It is important to first build trust in your organisation’s service management and delivery capability
• Once this is done set clear common vision, priorities and start delivering value with agility
• Maintain engagement through structured and informal catch-up’s especially with the right influencers
• Present facts and be honest. Earn a place on partners table

The following skills are what we look for when hiring a team member:

• Excellent communication, influencing and listening skills
• Strategic thinking
• Gravitas, confidence and presentation skills
• Assertiveness and diplomacy
• Energy and focus
• Empathy
• Ability to analyse and research information
• Ability to explain complex information clearly and simply

It would be extremely beneficial to someone new to the role. We all learnt on the job and by making mistakes. We believed that BRM is an art and either you can do it or not. The tools and techniques make it a science and will hence make it easier for the individual starting on this role.

As a team we learnt and benefitted a lot through the BRMP classes. It has helped us understand what needs to be done for us to be strategic partners to our key accounts. The science behind relationship management, and the tools and techniques have both been extremely beneficial for us. Taking BRMP^® has helped us to evaluate everything we do and create a clear strategy and plan for 2020.

Today more than ever, successful organisations believe that convergence of Business and IT is important to implement technologies that drive business outcome. This can be best accomplished by introducing BRM capability in the origanisation. If you establish the right level of engagement and trust, it is easy to invest in the right technology enablers for a business strategy and implement it effectively. It also drives the right level of accountability to ensure that the benefits of technology solutions are fully realised.

Three key learnings come to mind based on my experience:

• Choose a career that you are passionate about. If it involves being a BRM then great. Be bold and be curious. It is motivating and fulfilling to do something you are passionate about
• Focus on the impact you can make. It is less important what position we work at, it is more important that you are one of the best at it. Understand your strengths and use them wisely. Seek help when you need it.
• Focus on your team and what your company wants to accomplish, identify team strengths and use it to the benefit of all.