About the organisation
Involved in mineral exploration and mining, our client has been exploring areas for precious minerals for over ten years.
They have projects to explore a variety of minerals, and these projects can have a positive impact on the greater area and local community in terms of economy and employment.
With an expected lifespan of over 20 years and a large investment in the mine operation, they’re generating thousands of direct and indirect jobs across the area, from suppliers to contractors and subcontractors that will be multi-generational.
We spoke with one of their community relations officers responsible for stakeholder input and engagement with many different stakeholder groups, from landowners, residents, businesses, suppliers and contractors to local councils, voluntary organisations and politicians of all levels:
“We strive to engage and develop good, strong relationships with all kinds of organisations and entities that are in the local and regional communities, covering a multitude of different areas.”
Due to the nature of the operation and the scale of the project, they must work with several governmental departments, whether it’s infrastructure, economy, community, agriculture or environment, and be able to satisfy all their requirements in order to progress.
The situation
Community engagement and direct contact with stakeholders are really important as it’s a way of involving people and showing them the organisation’s plans, where they are going and how those will affect them.
A lot of the engagement is done face-to-face in the local areas through community events, especially with the residents, landowners, local businesses and partners.
And to store all the information gathered from the events and communications, they were using their own kind of shared drives for stakeholder databases.
Originally, they would rely on spreadsheets and locally held databases, which then evolved to have their IT team build a stakeholder management system.
The internal system was good at the time; however, it started to become quite limited in terms of the amount and type of information that it could store. Also, there were the GDPR and security issues to consider.
“As we progressed through the development of the company, we realised the need for something more advanced.
A system that could safely carry more data and would allow us to incorporate a lot more details about the nature of the activities of our contact, the places, the event details, link emails and documents to organisations, and easily find all the activities related to a stakeholder”.
They identified the need for a live system where you can hone and drill down to companies, individuals and sectors and quickly visualise all the activities that were happening there, all the material sent and received, the feedback, the engagement, and the outcomes.
"Previously, having to go through all of that was very cumbersome, and without a proper system, relevant information could simply slip through the net.
We needed an easy-to-navigate and operate, secure solution."
The requirements
With so many different types of stakeholders to engage with and a large amount of data to be handled, the team knew it would require a system that provides the ability to:
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Add data and link it across organisations and individuals
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Include a variety of activities, including events, phone calls, surveys, and emails
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Record data remotely, when the team are out in the field, using a phone or laptop
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Have all information safely stored, with different levels of access
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Follow the GDPR guidelines
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Report with details on all the activities carried out
In addition, it had to be a fit-for-purpose solution, a system that could be tailored to their own needs and evolve with them.
The action taken
Once the decision was made to outsource the stakeholder management system, they decided to look for a company that was an expert in this type of solution.
The team researched the market to find a system that could be personalised and came back with three or four different options.
Tractivity was the one who saw the requirements and embraced the opportunity to build a bespoke system. In the words of the community relations officer overseeing the development:
“I think the development and customer success teams from Tractivity enjoyed the challenge of tailoring the system, especially as our specifications were very unique. They removed bits they would normally keep in and added other things that they wouldn’t usually include.
And that made the system very much bespoke, a stakeholder management system made for us. Of all the benefits, though, the ability to access and update remotely has been the most noticeable.
As much of our work is done “on the road”, we often returned to the office at the end of the day with an additional few hours’ worth of data to be input, which was both frustrating and time-consuming, especially as so much can get lost from conversations over even just a short amount of time unless recorded there and then. Remote access by phone was a game-changer for us in the immediate upload of detailed and quality information.
The Tractivity system ticks all the right boxes, so it’s easy for us to access and use it.”
With the decision made, the implementation of Tractivity went smoothly, with the support of the customer success team and training.
“The initial inception of the system was pretty much flawless and seamless. A lot of training was given, and it is pitched at a level where people who aren’t overly technologically gifted can learn it and apply it fairly quickly.”
Tractivity’s team made sure to provide the support necessary for the system to work.
“The support team are very professional and would understand and accept our requests. If they couldn’t fix something, they would advise us of potential fixes, and if something was going to take a bit longer, they always kept us advised and updated.
Having a customer success executive assigned as a go-to point of contact and who would also proactively engage with us, made the implementation, operation and development much smoother also”.
The results
Using Tractivity, the community relations team are being able to carry out their daily work a lot more efficiently.
Every piece of engagement done is added with ease into the system from wherever they are, safely recording all information obtained from stakeholders that could be otherwise forgotten by the time they return to their workplace.
They are seeing great improvement in the number of activities tracked, with a total of stakeholder engagement activities being around a third higher than what they had previously.
In addition, Tractivity provides clarity regarding their work. With the reports and dashboards, they have a clear picture of all the engagement done.
They can have a clear picture of all the engagement they’ve done with reports - the number of emails they send and receive, meetings they have, phone calls, visits, presentations, etc.
