IT Business Relationship Manager

Job Summary

• The Business Relationship Manager (BRM) is a critical leadership role within the IT Project Management Office (PMO). This role is accountable for shaping, governing, and optimizing the portfolio of strategic technology investments that enable the regulated gas utility to achieve measurable business outcomes aligned to enterprise strategy.
• Serving as a senior strategic advisor to business executives, the BRM co-owns the business IT agenda by translating functional strategies into a multi-year investment roadmap, leading demand shaping and prioritization, and ensuring disciplined investment governance and value realization.
• The BRM partners closely with IT leaders (Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Applications) to define solution options and delivery approaches, and with Finance and Procurement to ensure financial rigor, sourcing strategy, and transparent decision-making across the portfolio.

Major Responsibilities/Essential Functions

Strategic Business Partnership

• Build and sustain trusted relationships with executives and senior leaders, including Field Operations, Gas Supply, Customer Service, Innovations, Engineering and Regulatory; serve as the primary IT strategic partner and escalation point for the client portfolio.
• Translate functional strategies into a multi-year technology investment roadmap, defining target outcomes, sequencing, dependencies, and trade-offs.
• Proactively identify, shape, and challenge opportunities for value creation and risk reduction (e.g., compliance, controls, employee experience, financial close, sourcing effectiveness), bringing forward options and recommendations.
• Identify, evaluate, and advance Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation opportunities to transform business processes, improve operational efficiency, and accelerate value realization across NJNG functions.

Portfolio & Investment Governance

• Lead portfolio governance processes, partnering with business and IT executives to define priorities, approve investments, and manage trade-offs across capacity, cost, risk, and value.
• Own and challenge business case development to ensure enterprise alignment, financial rigor (TCO/ROI), delivery feasibility, and clear benefit definition and realization measures.
• Establish and maintain portfolio performance metrics, dashboards, and executive reporting (health, spend, benefits, risks, milestones) to drive transparency and timely decision-making.
• Drive value realization across the lifecycle from intake and discovery through delivery handoff and post implementation measurement ensuring accountability for outcomes and adoption.

Program Management

• Provide oversight for active projects within the client portfolio to ensure alignment with approved scope, schedule, budget, risks, dependencies, and business outcomes.
• Serve as a senior escalation point for active projects, partnering with project managers, delivery teams, and business stakeholders to resolve issues, remove roadblocks, and elevate decisions when needed.

Financial and Vendor Management

• Partner with client and IT Finance to manage portfolio budgets, forecasts, capitalization strategy, and cost transparency; ensure investment decisions consider full lifecycle costs and operational impacts.
• Coordinate demand and capacity planning with PMO leadership, delivery teams, and enterprise architects; drive scenario planning and sequencing to maximize throughput and minimize disruption to critical operations (e.g., close cycles, audits, labor/employee processes).
• Lead discovery-to-sourcing activities for initiatives requiring external solutions or services, including RFI/RFP development, vendor evaluation, and recommendation of sourcing options.
• Partner with Procurement and Legal to support contract negotiations, commercial terms, risk controls, and vendor performance management throughout the engagement.
• Ensure solution selections align to enterprise architecture standards, security/compliance requirements, and operational support models.

Qualifications

Education and Experience

• Bachelor s degree in Business, Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical subject
• 10+ years of experience in enterprise IT leadership spanning business relationship management, portfolio/demand management, program delivery, and executive stakeholder engagement.
• Demonstrated success leading strategic portfolios including multi-year roadmaps, investment governance, and value realization, as well as influencing investment decisions at the executive level; experience in the utility/energy industry.

Technical and Business Acumen

• Experience leading enterprise platforms and process transformation for utility functions and applications (e.g., IBM Maximo, Clevest (mobile workforce management), SAP S4/Hana and C4C, Emarsys, GIS, LocusView, AMR), including integration and operating model impacts.
• Strong business and technical acumen to develop strategy, process capabilities, enabling technologies, and associated investment governance
• Strong financial and commercial acumen demonstrated by portfolio budgeting/forecasting, capitalization considerations, business case development (TCO/ROI), and partnering through RFPs and contract negotiations.
• Project/Program/Portfolio management training or certification (e.g., PMI-PMP/PMI-PgMP, ITIL, or equivalent) preferred.
• Communication and Leadership

Additional Desired Skills

• Graduate degree in Information Systems or related discipline
• Experience leading in a matrix environment
• Utility/energy industry experience and knowledge is required

EEO:

Mindlance is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in employment on the basis of Minority/Gender/Disability/Religion/LGBTQI/Age/Veterans.