Why should stakeholder engagement be managed in one centralised system?

Centralising all stakeholder engagement activities in one system provides full visibility of every aspect of the process — including the stakeholder database, all communications sent, all feedback received, and any issues raised — to every member of the team. It eliminates the time and error risks of copying data between spreadsheets and multiple applications, keeps stakeholder data more secure, and makes recording, communicating, and analysing significantly easier throughout the entire engagement programme.

One System For All Your Stakeholder Engagement Activities

There are many obstacles that stakeholder engagement professionals must overcome, regardless of the reason for engagement, project size, or industry.

Although we often use the term ‘stakeholder management’, which suggests control and management, the overall aim is to engage, consult, and collaborate with stakeholders.

The whole stakeholder engagement process can be made easier by centralising all activities in one single system, allowing you to save time and resources.

Here's what your engagement process would usually look like:

Create a stakeholder database
Determine the levels of engagement
Communicate with your stakeholders
Receive and manage feedback
Streamline your stakeholder process

Create a stakeholder database

Managing your stakeholder database effectively is paramount to success. A complete and cleansed stakeholder database becomes the basis of your engagement process.

Spend time creating detailed stakeholder profiles, capturing all information of importance and relevance to your project.

The volume of stakeholders is of less importance than capturing and engaging with the right stakeholders. Ensure you have the right mix of stakeholders with the correct interests and influences on your project.

Bear in mind the environment you will use to store your stakeholder data. A GDPR-compliant system is the best way to ensure the safety of information while avoiding data breaches and their repercussions.

Right content and engagement level

Not all your stakeholders will require the same level of communication; you must analyse and categorise your stakeholders accordingly.

Take into consideration their influence and interest in your project, and create targeted distribution lists.

Set the appropriate level of engagement and the forms of communication that are best suited to each group.

Here is an example of how you can group your stakeholders:

1. Low-Interest/Low-Influence Stakeholders

These stakeholders require minimal effort and need only to know where to go to stay current on the project.

2. High-Interest/Low-Influence Stakeholders

These will need a little more consideration, as the high-interest motivation in them demands participation at some level in the project.

3. High-Influence/Low-Interest Stakeholders

A different breed of animal. If you rub them the wrong way, they can hurt your project.

However, if you take the “keep them satisfied” approach, their low-interest level will drive their actions. In this case, being satisfied means they will just let things go along as you want them to.

4. High-Influence/High-Interest Stakeholders

These stakeholders are the ones you must focus the bulk of your efforts.

They have ideas, and they can hurt your project if you ignore them. The engagement level with them must be personal and dynamic.

Creating targeted distribution lists will provide you with the capability to reach each group independently and adapt your engagement level accordingly.

Communicate with your Stakeholders

Consider a proper stakeholder engagement plan and a wide range of communication methods:

newsletters,
surveys,
events (face-to-face and online),
letters.

Where possible, try to reduce the need to copy and paste valuable data to and from different software applications (Excel spreadsheets, multiple databases).

This will help to minimise room for error, save time and resources, and keep your data more secure in the process.

Receive and manage feedback easily

Whatever form of communication you choose to use, providing your stakeholders with a way to get back in touch is crucial.

Look at ways you can record, track and log stakeholder feedback and issues.

Make it easier for your team to access your whole engagement process, so they can view every element, including your stakeholder database, communications, feedback and any issues raised.

Streamline your stakeholder engagement process

Consider stakeholder management tools that make your engagement process easier.

Try to ensure you can manage every aspect of your engagement process, reducing the need to use multiple applications and saving you invaluable time and resources.

Using one system for all your engagement processes will provide you with full visibility of every aspect of your engagement process to all of your team.

This will, in turn, make the recording, communicating and analysing much easier throughout your whole engagement process.

See how Anglian Water and National Grid each replaced fragmented systems with one unified platform.

Discover how you can centralise all your stakeholder engagement activities, obtain powerful insights and deliver better outcomes with Tractvity.

Book a personalised 1-on-1 demo of Tractivity, delivered by a member of our expert team.

Frequently asked questions

Why should all stakeholder engagement activities be managed in one system? Managing all stakeholder engagement activities in a single centralised system gives every team member full visibility of the entire process, including the stakeholder database, all communications sent, all feedback received, and all issues raised. It eliminates the time and error risks of copying data between spreadsheets and multiple applications, keeps stakeholder data more secure, and makes recording, communicating, and analysing significantly easier throughout the engagement programme.

What should a stakeholder database include? A stakeholder database should contain detailed profiles for each stakeholder, capturing all information of importance and relevance to the project, including interests, influence level, contact details, and engagement history. Quality matters more than volume: the right mix of stakeholders with the correct interests and influences is more important than the total number. All data should be stored in a GDPR-compliant system to ensure security and avoid the risk of data breaches.

How do you determine the right level of engagement for each stakeholder group? Engagement levels should be set based on each stakeholder's influence and interest in the project. Low-interest, low-influence stakeholders need only access to project information. High-interest, low-influence stakeholders require some level of participation. High-influence, low-interest stakeholders need to be kept satisfied to prevent project disruption. High-influence, high-interest stakeholders require personal, dynamic engagement and the majority of your effort. Creating targeted distribution lists for each group enables independent, appropriately pitched communication with each.

What communication methods should be used in a stakeholder engagement programme? A range of communication methods should be used depending on the stakeholder group, including newsletters, surveys, face-to-face and online events, and letters. The key is to manage all of these from a single system rather than across multiple applications, which reduces errors, saves time, keeps data more secure, and ensures the complete communication history is accessible to the whole team without manual data transfer.

How should stakeholder feedback be captured and managed? Stakeholder feedback should be recorded, tracked, and logged in the same centralised system used for all other engagement activities, not in a separate tool or spreadsheet. Every team member should be able to access the full engagement record, including all feedback and issues raised, so they can respond or follow up without information being lost between people or systems. Providing stakeholders with a clear, easy way to respond is also essential to ensuring feedback is actually captured.

How does Tractivity support a centralised stakeholder engagement process? Tractivity provides one system for every stage of the stakeholder engagement process — from building a GDPR-compliant stakeholder database and creating targeted distribution lists, to sending multi-channel communications, capturing feedback, logging issues, and producing reports. By centralising all activity in a single platform, Tractivity gives the whole team full visibility at every stage, saves significant time and resources, and ensures insights from across the engagement programme are always accessible to everyone who needs them.