ERM 

Enterprise Relationship Management – Making collaborative performance certain

Effective Relationship Management depends upon the implementation of a straight-forward but rigorously applied management process and its component activities. Key to this is the use of the Enterprise Relationship Management Plan. Enhanced capabilities and appropriate behaviours will develop naturally. ERM is fully described in our book Implementing and Managing Collaborative Relationships.

What is the ERM service?

• Advice on interpretation and implementation

• Review and support to collaborative operations

• Applicable to senior managers, relationship managers and joint teams

• Delivered by the experts in the field of inter-organisational collaboration who designed ERM

When is ERM Used?

• Before committing to a long-term collaborative relationship to select the right partner (The Decision Phase)

• To set up a new alliance’s relationship management to enable the partners to successfully mesh

• Where a system of formal relationship management is not in use and an organisation is in a collaborative relationship which is either experiencing problems or wants to improve its performance. ERM is implemented as part of a change programme that is initiated following performance measurement and diagnostics

• As a process for day-to-day, high performance relationship management (The Operations Phase)

• To wind-up a collaborative relationship when it has reached the end of its life (The Exit Phase)

What are the Benefits of ERM?

• It ensures that you select the most appropriate partner and avoid costly mistakes

• It provides a single agreed vision for the enterprise with a single view of the operations and their performance allowing clear, unambiguous control so that the result will be greater than the sum of the parts

• It promotes teamwork that brings together the many parts of the joint enterprise into an efficient ‘machine’ for delivering high-quality goods, services, and projects

• It creates an environment in which innovation will thrive based upon trust, commitment, co-operation and quantified achievements

• All of this translates into increased bottom line/value for money performance, in other words, securing a positive return on collaboration

• To terminate a collaborative relationship efficiently and to the benefit of the stakeholders