The primary purpose of BRM is to build and maintain an effective, productive relationship between customer and service provider, founded on an understanding of the customer and its business needs. This means more than reacting to new customer requirements. It is more profound than this. It is about understanding the customer, its strategy and business drivers sufficiently to be able to anticipate and influence the customer’s requirements as circumstances change. As ITIL puts it †“Business relationship management is the process that enables business relationship managers to provide links between the service provider and customers at the strategic and tactical levels.” Customer and provider will have a common interest in ensuring that the customer understands the value of service offerings and has realistic expectations of them. For such a relationship to work there must clearly be commitment, trust, openness and honesty on both sides, and at times this will require the service provider to be open and honest about the customer, for example in relation to obligations the customer has failed to meet.