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Global Relationship Management for joined up working says e-procurement expert, Peter Robbins.

Relationships are at the heart of an organisation’s business, be it private or public sector. Yet, it is estimated that nearly half of all councils are still to implement customer service strategies, never mind supplier management strategies. In addition, an even greater number haven’t even integrated their front and back offices. Even if some relationships are being managed, it is far from best practice to manage them independently of each other. It costs time and money. The answer is a simple process through which all relationships from citizens to suppliers can be brought together in one central data engine, accessible throughout the organisation via graded passwords.

With the pressure for greater efficiency and joined up operations, now is the time for organisation’s to grasp the true capability of managing all relationships through one central process for efficient delivery of services to citizens. Organisational change, technology and implementation should not be perceived as complex barriers that tarnish a more holistic, global and joined up approach as a risky business.

The public sector has a number of competing objectives and influences that make managing relationships a serious challenge. But with a vast number of services on offer, complex interactions with citizens and a very high requirement for quality data, existing independent CRM and SRM systems are struggling. A central approach makes perfect sense and directly joins the tripartite buyer-procurement-supplier relationship to that of the citizen.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) have both played important roles in delivering a form of independent structures through which these relationships can be harnessed. However, sound citizen relationships are of little use if supplier relationships are ill managed, undermining the delivery of service excellence the citizen expects.

With Gershon’s ‘Efficiency Review’ prompting authorities to investigate how technology can help, it is more important than ever to build bridges of understanding to ensure the right path is followed towards achieving the end goal.

The Public Sector can undoubtedly improve levels of service to citizens whilst optimising ‘cost to serve’ but only with a streamlined process, supported by powerful technology, that goes beyond a prosaic customer centric approach.

This dictates that an entire organisation must embrace and champion the new process. To that end, we must collectively recognise and understand the change management issues that need to be addressed for the development of existing business processes. People make a process work not the technology that drives it.

This means technology that correlates all data across all relationships, date stamps them and provides for channels of communication backed by a central data backbone.

Such technology that goes well beyond just harnessing citizen data, enables a process that can only be described as Global Relationship Management (GRM), and this is a modern day reality not a philosophy!

GRM is simply delivered by automation that allows departments to interact and share secure information from eg. marketing department, site offices, accounts department, housing and environmental departments and so on. This means joined up enterprise wide interaction and importantly mass compliance (FOI Act). After all, citizens expect departments to be joined up and 'speaking' to each other.

It is only this type of process and level of information sharing that can build mutual value in stakeholder relationships. With organisational commitment to this simple concept, a harmonious approach will improve delivery of services to citizens. Flexible technology simply facilitates and streamlines the enterprise workflow, making it manageable and scalable.

However, for this process to work in any organisation GRM must be at the front of its corporate strategy. Organisations that put any relationship strategy at the back of their business will waste time and money. Rest assured the technology will be blamed for the processes failure.

In conclusion, there is great pressure for the public sector to deliver high value services at the best possible cost. Long term commitment to the entire ethos of managing, integrating and transforming enterprise wide interaction - Global Relationship Management - is the key to saving time and money to deliver a better stakeholder experience.

Organisations that commit to new ways of working will be winners as citizens see authorities become more transparent, accountable and better at delivering services. The nub of this success is in adoption of a new process in the first place. The public sector needs to ensure it is delivering joined up solutions to its staff and thereby to the public.