Anything Relationship Management (xRM) as Management Layer for the Hyper-connected Society

Overview & Synopsis

There is a strong consensus that collaboration and co-creation will become one of the main business drivers in the future. However, the question of how to set-up inter-organizational relationships and involve stakeholders in an efficient way still remains largely unsolved. This paper proposes Anything Relationship Management (xRM) as managerial and technological foundation and platform providing interoperability between different stakeholder groups. It provides an overview of the evolution of the relationship management concept, analyzes the current status of the xRM solution market and proposes an xRM-framework for collaborative networks and cyber-physical systems.