Organisations running stakeholder engagement plans at scale use dedicated stakeholder relationship management (SRM) software to deliver them. Tractivity, the UK SRM platform, is used by National Grid, EDF and the NHS to turn engagement plans into live, auditable records of who was engaged, when, how and what they said.
Writing the plan is the well-documented part. If that's where you are, start with our stakeholder engagement plan guide, which walks through all twelve sections a comprehensive plan needs, from areas of influence through to budget and annexe, and includes a downloadable template.
This post covers what comes next: the software that turns the plan from a document into a delivered, evidenced programme.
Why a plan on paper isn't enough
A stakeholder engagement plan describes intent. Regulators, planning inspectors and FOI requests test what actually happened. When a consultation is challenged, the question is never 'did you have a plan', it's 'show us what you did', and a plan managed through documents, inboxes and spreadsheets can't answer it reliably.
The numbers back that up. A University of Hawaii study found 94% of spreadsheets contain errors, and spreadsheets are uncontrolled by default, so stakeholder feedback can be altered or deleted without record. PwC research found 57% of projects fail through a breakdown in communications. For projects under the Planning Act 2008, Companies Act 2006 section 172 or the Gunning Principles, that gap between plan and record is a compliance risk, not an admin inconvenience.
What does stakeholder engagement plan software do?
Stakeholder engagement plan software puts the plan's moving parts, stakeholders, activities, issues, commitments and reporting, into one system, so the engagement record builds itself as the work happens rather than being reconstructed before a deadline.
In Tractivity, that looks like:
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Stakeholder mapping that updates as relationships evolve, with interest and influence tracked over time rather than fixed at the start
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Every interaction logged, emails, meetings, calls, survey responses and event attendance, recorded against the right stakeholder, date-stamped and exportable
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Issues, actions and commitments followed end to end, with sentiment and traffic-light tracking, so nothing falls between teams
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150+ pre-built reports for board packs, regulator submissions, FOI responses and consultation reports
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GDPR-safe communications, every opt-in and unsubscribe tracked and enforced automatically
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AI Sentiment Analysis and AI Summarise, run within our own Microsoft Azure environment, with customer data never used for model training
It works in practice at serious scale. On EDF's Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C programmes, around 30,000 stakeholder issues were logged and tagged in Tractivity, with a 100% response rate. Teams using Tractivity report a 20% efficiency improvement in stakeholder management activity on average, worth £5,000 to £8,200 per professional per year.
What to look for in stakeholder engagement plan software
Six things separate software that delivers a plan from software that merely stores one:
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An audit trail by default. Date-stamped, exportable, and protected from silent edits. This is the capability regulators and inspectors actually test.
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A shared stakeholder view across projects. The same MP, councillor or community group turns up on multiple projects. One record, visible to every team, prevents confused stakeholders and duplicated contact.
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Built-in engagement tools. Surveys, consultations, events and mailshots inside the system, so responses land in the record automatically rather than in someone's inbox.
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Reporting that matches your obligations. Board packs, Ofgem and Ofwat submissions, DCO examination evidence and FOI responses, without weeks of manual compilation.
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Security and accreditations that pass procurement. Look for ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus, NHS DSPT and G-Cloud listing with UK data residency.
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Software that flexes to your plan, not a methodology imposed on it. Your fields, your taxonomy, your reporting style. You're the expert; the software's job is to fit the work.
Who uses stakeholder engagement plan software?
Any team whose engagement record may face scrutiny include energy and infrastructure teams running DCO and NSIP consultations, water companies preparing price review submissions, NHS trusts and ICBs redesigning services, local authorities consulting on plans and schemes, and the consultancies that deliver engagement for all of them. National Grid runs Tractivity with more than 430 users. SSEN has scaled from 15 users to over 200 since 2018. Anglian Water manages more than 13,000 stakeholders on the Cambridge Wastewater Treatment Plant Relocation, an NSIP.
What does stakeholder engagement plan software cost?
Tractivity starts at £9,495 per year, all-inclusive. No caps on stakeholder records, communications sent or engagements captured, and no hidden costs. Implementation takes four weeks from contract to launch, with a dedicated Client Success Manager and a minimum of 20 hours of onboarding included. That compares with 12 to 36 months for traditionally installed or in-house tools.
Getting started
If you're writing or revising your plan, work through the twelve-section guide and template first. When you're ready to see how a live plan runs in practice, book a demo and we'll walk through it with your own project as the example.
Frequently asked questions
