How to streamline stakeholder management

I wondered if we could start by just maybe you're telling me a little bit about your organisation and giving us some background, into who you are, you know, what the organisation objectives are. Absolutely. So, transport for the Southeast is the subnational transport body, unsurprisingly for the southeast of England. There are seven subnational transport bodies in England, and we are one. Our particular partnership brings together sixteen local transport authorities. So by local transport authorities, we mean county or unitary councils. We have five local enterprise partnerships in our area, and then forty six District and borough, local authorities, or councils, as well as a really large range of wider stakeholders from the world of transport business and the environment, not to mention thousands, literally, of Terrace councils, so quite a big ask. We also have seventy one MPs in the TFS region, so a really, really big political stakeholder matrix. The TFSE strap line, is all about talking to government with one voice. We're dedicated to creating an integrated and sustainable transport system that makes the Southeast more productive and competitive improves the quality of life for all our residents and protects and enhances our unique natural and built environment. We have a particular challenge, in the TFSE region around the environment. A third of our landscape is either protected or designated as area of outstanding natural beauty. So really big challenges around environment as well as politics, but by speaking with one voice on the region to transport priorities, we're able to make a really strong case to government for the investment that the Southeast needs. So that's all about us. Wow. That was really good. That that kind of outlined the organisation and and your objectives really really neatly. Thank you for that. So when I mean, you've had tractivity. You've been working with us now since January twenty twenty. If you can cast your mind back to before then, you know, what were the problems you were trying to solve when you started looking for a system? Our primary problem, was that we didn't have any sort of stakeholder management system. So we're a really new emerging organisation. Could almost be classed as a a startup, although TFSE had done some work historically. With a very small compliment of seconded and borrowed staff from other organisations that we didn't actually emerge as an organisation in our own right. With our own staff, until the very end of twenty nineteen, so a a really, really new organisation. We when when I started in my role, which is now coming up for two and a half years ago, we literally had probably fifteen or twenty spreadsheets that had been used over the time that TFSE had been involved. They had a varying degree of information about stakeholders on them. Some had first name and email address, I'll just add a little bit more, so we had first name, second name if we were really lucky. Added bonus would be things like a job title. And email addresses, but we had no record of where those stakeholders had come from, the level of engagement they had with us, what they'd been to, what they knew about TFSE, it was really just very, very basic. In addition to those multiple contact spreadsheets, There were then hundreds of other records of people who had been invited to and attended meetings, but they weren't up in any particular way. And then we had another lots multiple distribution list within Outlook for context, and that was just the way that it was managed. So no centralized system at all. It was quite a daunting task. I think when I came in at the start, the team had had a a little bit of adult consultant support. Around communications and management., but again no centralized record associated with that. And that meant that Those consultant records also have to be retrieved and incorporated. The biggest problem We then heard, or I then heard, was combining all of those multiple sources of data into one massive spreadsheet, And when I did that, I think the scale of the problem really hit me because we had just in that sort of immediate, combination of data. We had seven hundred and fifty contacts. And even at that relatively small number, it very quickly became apparent that that wasn't gonna be manageable. On a on a day to day basis. Are you able to expand on that? Because a a lot of a lot of organisations in your situation are still using spreadsheets today. So what was it about about that that you thought, actually, this isn't sustainable. Basically, we can't continue this way. Very, very quickly. User error, I think, is probably the the biggest thing that came to light. The way things were recorded is is a problem. When you have a spreadsheet that is owned by an individual rather than a team, There are multiple ways that that data can be input recorded and then interpreted. So that was one issue. A really big thing for us was around GDPR. We are although we are not transport for the Southeast, it's not a local authority in its own right, we do work on behalf of our sixteen constituent authorities, and we are hosted by a county council So we have to be very, very careful that we maintain and abide by all GDPR and data protection regulations, spreadsheets, aren't good. You know, it it's not a safe way to store data. There was a big issue with multiple people not being able to access that data at the same time. There was a further issue around the way that we store large files. So within our sort of own internal file management system, that was an issue. There was no way really of seeing who had added a contact and when? Certainly no integration with things like emails, no integration with any events management system, no integration with any survey module, or survey system. So quite unwieldy, very, very early on, and just very, very antiquated. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So it's still staying back, you know, pre twenty twenty. What was it you were looking for? So we knew they were the that we knew they were the problems that existed. What how did you start that journey looking for a system? What was it you were looking or to to help solve the problems that you had? Well, again, because we are regulated, if you like, via county authority host. We were very lucky that we had the support of our IT development team. And we went to them, basically, with that list of problems that I've just recounted. I we have a very big spreadsheet. This isn't gonna work much longer. What can we do to really, try and make things better as as the organisation and the team grows? We then came up with a list of features, so we did the usual, essential, and desirable criteria list. And then the IT and D team went off and investigated a number of potential stakeholder management systems they came back at the end of their mini project, and their recommendation was productivity. So from there, we went Ireland had a demo. And then we had various conversations just to really make sure that it did do what we wanted it to do, and it did. I think it ticked all of our essential and desirable criteria, our one, which was to do with budget, but that I think primarily is down to are what could now be classed as unrealistic. But, certainly, we had no idea when we started this process. You know, in terms of functionality, it did everything and more that we wanted it to do. Okay. So, yeah, we had a we we had a list we had a list of, objectives that we needed it to deliver, which I've got if you would like me to go through them. That would be I think that would be useful, but it would also just just before we do that, you mentioned that they looked at other organisations. Did they look at a a CRM system, as opposed to a stakeholder relationship management., SRM system. We did there is a a system that is used at the moment within the county council. I can't remember what it's called. But they use it as a CRM rather than a sort of stakeholder system. There were a couple of reasons why that wasn't going to be suitable for us. One was to do with it it would have been hugely expensive to have replicated that system, the sort of TFSE arm of the county council. But also it didn't do what we really wanted the system to do in terms of integration. With things like events management surveys, and all of those sort of add on bits. It was much more about correspondence based. Sure. Yeah. Other than that relationship side. Yeah. We often get we often get a note from, prospects that are looking for a system that they're looking at a CRM system So it's it's always good for us to understand those points of differences and and how we can help them to understand as well. The difference between that CRM system. So you mentioned you mentioned the objectives that that you've got there. It would be good to understand those now. If you can take us through what those objectives were that you were looking for in a system? Yep. Absolutely. So the key objectives that we were looking for were secure access for identified users only, so a really secure system that was cloud based and could be accessed by any designated license holder from anywhere. Importantly, for us, it was a easy system in regards to navigation, particularly with lookup tools. Or something similar to a lookup tool, so a really easy search functionality, which was one of the big issues with the spreadsheet, the ability to sort of filter and sort. On, multiple criteria at times. The ability to use filters and tags to run reports We really wanted it to either have a bulk mailing system or be able to integrate with the, existing bulk mailing system that we used. One of the issues that we had with the spreadsheet, was that we needed to maintain a separate bulk mailing system or our newsletter. The regular newsletter that went out, it was literally a case of copying and pasting email addresses from spreadsheets into the separate bulk mailing system, but no integration between the two. Link to that was the ability to quickly build and easily maintain up to date distribution lists. That was a big problem with our previous system. Trying to maintain multiple contact lists in Outlook when they were owned by multiple different people was painful, and led to many errors. And also the ability to analyze the mo any bulk mailing that went out, to better understand how stakeholders were interacting. We said we would love, for it to be able to integrate with Outlook. So we have a a main team mailbox the ability to manage that team mailbox function within a stakeholder management system was important to us, but also the ability for any correspondence that came into us via their central mailbox to be saved directly to stakeholder records. As an added bonus, We had the ability to plan and manage events, including sending invites and processing responses, and likewise, with sending out surveys via both bug mails and on an individual basis. That was important to us because again going back to the spreadsheet and the way that we used that we would use spreadsheet contexts to then inform what we sent by separate platforms so we would use things like Eventbrite Smart Survey, separately from our contact distribution lists. So it's just really having everything in one place. We had, as one of our objectives, the them to record and map engagement to gather intelligence on each stakeholder over a period of time. And then finally, it was our budget requirement. And TRativity came in not very far over the initial budget requirement that's still significantly cheaper than many of the others that were looked at. Okay. So, I mean, that's quite a that's quite a long list and quite a tall order. Just thinking about that process. Do were you very clear on those objectives at that initiation stakeholder did working with us and possibly other organisations help to own that, list for you as as you went through that journey. I think a combination of the two. I think we had a relatively clear idea from the start, that we had we'd been able to populate a list of requirements from the lessons that we'd already learned from using the spreadsheets plus the other multiple platforms that supported it. But certainly from having demos from various companies and listening to what these systems could do, we were able to tidy up that list, I think, and refine it somewhat. To be completely honest, I don't think any of us fully appreciated what functionality there was out there until we started to explore the market. Certainly fair to say that from my perspective, I think tractivity does a lot more for us than we anticipated we were gonna be able to get at the very very start of the process. Can you remember that journey with tractivity, particularly with us? Can you remember that, you know, what that process was like? Are you able to talk a little bit about what that process was like from those, you know, discovering tractivity? I think the way we initially were put in touch with productivity was via a call out on one of my colleagues LinkedIn profiles, and he had asked for proven recommendations for stakeholder management systems, and TRativity was one of the systems that came as a recommendation I can't remember who it came from, unfortunately. But anyway, that that's how we first heard about tractivity. I think from there, we made direct contact and we had a demo. I think it was with Mark, the other Mark, who talked us through the very high level functionality of TRativity, showed us the system in its sort of broadest form, you know, this is this is what it could do. From there, we went away and had to think about We did on a day to day basis, and that certainly raised some more questions about the potential fortrativity to be able to support those day to day. Functions for the for the organisation, and we then went back with it almost, can it do this? Could it do that kind of question list? We then had a further demo around some of the functionality, and in parallel to that, the, project manager from the EIT team, who was dealing with the technical side, was having technical discussions with the technical people from creativity, just to make sure that the very, very, lockdown council systems could support this as a sort of stand alone. Cloud based software. We did have some challenges around that, not from for activities side, but from the way that the council systems are locked down, particularly around VPN access, and how we could ensure that, for example, only employees of the council who had logged in to that secure VPN element of the Council Network could then log into tractivity. And then there was another issue around the integration of the email. Functionality. Sure. That that was an issue on our side rather than tractivity side, and tractivity were extremely helpful, in ensuring that That was dealt with. So we would there to support you, I guess, on both of those on both of those occasions, whether it's the VPN, the log in, at the at the email integration. Yeah. Absolutely. I think the sort of technical support, and then the the user support has been excellent throughout, we we couldn't fault it at all. Okay. Well, that's that's great to hear. So thank thank you for that. I'm just gonna come on to that now. You know, having gone through that, procurement process and and and making the decision. Yeah. Actually, we're gonna go with proactivity. It'd be really good to just explore what we call it the onboarding process, not very customer focused, really, but, you know, what was that process like for you in terms of really the day one of the system and what was the support like from tractivity? And maybe you could just talk us through that initial Yeah. There's first few weeks, really. Yeah. I think it was it was a challenge. It was very, very new. So I personally had never used anything like tractivity before. We were moving, as we've said, off literally off spreadsheets, into a very, very new system. Our account manager Vicky was amazing. She was on hand all of the time. I think it was daily phone calls, sometimes multiple phone calls or emails in a day, asking and answering so many different questions. For us, I think the the most challenging element was cleansing our data to make sure that it was right before it exploded. Attractivity. And in hindsight now, we completely underestimated the time that that was going to take. I think I had naively thought that because I had physically moved this data onto one spreadsheet, our job was almost done. But seeing then the, tractivity import template, which is Excel based, we had to make sure that the data was formatted into the required stakeholder said that it could be uploaded, also that we had all of the information that would ensure that when we did our initial upload to TRativity, that our stakeholder records were as informative as they possibly could be that really identified some gaps in our stakeholder knowledge that we wanted to complete and fill before we did our initial upload. So there was a lengthy time process, around that data cleansing and data gathering exercise. While we were doing that own the background on that upload spreadsheet, we were using the stage system. Of tractivity to start to explore functionality. So there was a a parallel running, for a period of time. And then, of course, we went into lockdown. And that was we went into lockdown on the day that Vicky and another colleague contractivity would you to come down to our offices in Lewis and do the initials presentation training element for the whole team. How would you write? Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. So at the very, very last minute, we ended up doing that virtually. And that was our our really early team onboarding. Well, that'd be interesting to hear about that because From our perspective, you know, as our organisation went into lockdown, we feel we transitioned really well into a lockdown. Phase or working from home. How did that look from your side from your perspective as we went into lockdown to transport you? It was great, and I think in a way, we we found this across multiple activities within the organisation. It's actually this working model of of working from home has enabled better engagement in many instances. Because it's a lot easier to get people together at the same time if they don't have to travel, particularly with our geography. And likewise with tractivity being physically located, your head office is nowhere near our head office. It's actually probably made things a lot easier to be honest. Well, maybe we'll come back and explore some of that, and particularly I'll be keen to talk to you about the events development and how that may be helping, you know, in this in this new world. Yeah. Less face to face meetings. But I guess I guess if is there any advice that you have, you you particularly pulled out pain point there or an area that that was really difficult for you that was focused around the data itself and and and the state of the data. Is there any learnings there that you can share with us? Anything that you would advise others to do? Prior to looking at a system like this? I think my primary piece of advice would be to move on to a stakeholder management system sooner rather than later. Don't wait until your contacts become so huge that you really have no other option. I think on the efficiency basis, us, I mean, we have a very, very small budget, and for us in terms of value for money and the way that efficiencies have improved. The amount of time I spend on, physical, almost stakeholder and contact management on track activity is probably don't know. Less than a quarter of what it would be if I was still trying to maintain spreadsheets and and outlook contact I think for us, we when we initially started, we imported those seven hundred and fifty contacts. That was painful enough. I wouldn't have wanted we now have nearly three thousand contacts on tractivity it would be very, very difficult. Now to take that from a spreadsheet, I think, and ensure that the the level of detail around those contacts and also the cleansing aspect was correct. So I would definitely say it's something to look at sooner rather than later. When starting a project or, you know, for emerging or new organisations. Will it have helped you if you'd have had the template sooner? Because that's obviously an easy an easy fix? Yeah. I think if we'd have known then what we know now, it would have been really helpful when I first started pulling that system, but that one's spreadsheet together. It would have been very useful to have done that on the tractivity template. And I think regardless, it's it's quite a good model in terms of the information, the level of detail that you Yeah. Really do need to record to ensure that you are able to filter and search and effectively manage those stakeholders. Yeah. I think that's something we don't know for interaction. I know it's something we can share in that balance and start talking about much sooner than than we have done. So that was really useful. Thank you. So as I said, January twenty twenty is when when you first started we're working with the system using the system. How has it been? How how have you found using tractivity since then? Very good. I think, you know, for us, it has been revolutionary in the terms in terms of how we manage our our stakeholders and the relationships with them. It is very user friendly. It's very intuitive. I think once you've have cracked, One module, it makes any other functionality easier to use. We did make a decision early on that I, would be the one that sort of got to notar activity first and then would knowledge share with colleagues. Okay. And I think that proved to be quite an efficient process. It seemed to work quite well having that sort of internal expert almost on the system in terms of knowledge, and then being able to share that with colleagues as and when, the system and our use developed. We started off purely using the organisations and contacts module, so we used it at a very, very high level. Really just to record our contacts. We used it as a a stakeholder management system a little bit like a CRM. I mean, that module in its own right is really it that is all about managing your contacts. It's it's just the the contact library almost. And that's that's the bit that we started off with. Once we were confident with that, we've gradually started rolling out the other modules so events we use quite a lot. We've used the survey functionality quite a lot as well. We did our mailbox integration that followed. I think that eventually came in in about July twenty twenty, so it took a bit of time, but that was really because we wanted to make sure we were using the system properly, and we had enough people proficient in using it, before we moved the core management function of our of our main emails into the system. So it's been good. There are sometimes some issues with the language. I mean, it is a off the shelf. System. Some of the descriptors don't always reflect what we use particular fields for, but that's fine. It's just sometimes it takes a little bit of, getting your head around almost, you need to play with the system to know how you're gonna use fields and functions and different groups and descriptors. Said that you are then able to easily filter and search. And and and during that process, and particularly with that, points around the descriptors. Have you is is that a conversation that you've engaged with your customer support team? You mentioned Vicky. Has has Vicky been there to support you through that with advice and suggestions? Yes. She has. And then in the early days, we had so many conversations around, you know, me going to Vicky and saying, this is what I need to do. This is what I want to be able to do with the information that I put in. Which fields should I use? What's gonna support? Which functionality do I need to to tick? What do I need to do, in order to make that work for us? And she was always really helpful coming back with suggestions and ideas about where we might put things. Okay. That's good. In terms of going back again, looking at that original list of objectives, and you map them to to the kind of the features of of tractivity, How how does that look now? Have have we met those expectations or are there are there still gaps and I'll ask that question while those questions first before I throw the next one at you. I think, the only gap for us, really, and this is our gap rather than your gap, is around the tagging of issues. So that element of the system, we haven't fully explored yet. The primary reason behind that is capacity on on our side, and the fact that feels a little bit daunting. That's the the sort of functionality that once you start it, you've got to have the capacity to maintain it. Otherwise, it's not gonna be able to be used the tagging of issues to build that intelligence around stakeholder relationships is definitely something that's that's the next thing on our list, that we would like to explore and really start using, and that links in also to the surveys module, and the tagging of issues in survey responses. So that is something we do want to explore. I did raise that in conversation last week. I had an account review with Jazz, and so he's aware that that's on radar, and we've been offered training on that already. It's just making that fit, with the capacity that we have. And As with everything else, it comes down to the commitment to using it. And we need to make sure that we've got the capacity to to start it and then carry it on. Sure. Okay. So, I mean, do you see do you see the system as it's working at the moment? Adding value? How are we adding value? Is it is it worth the the license fee that you're paying for, I suppose, is the question? Yes. Undoubtedly, yes. You know, I'm a big advocate now for tractivity. So was it then a question to ask that woman? Hello? Yeah. Try not to give the wrong answer. No. You know, genuinely, we have recommended it to our our colleagues It absolutely has added value to the organisation. It's sped up our processes. We have everything held centrally now. We have a very, very complex technical work program underway at the moment, which involves something like twenty five, I think, individual stakeholder groups and there is no way that I would be able to maintain that. Using a spreadsheet, the fact that it is all in one place, and that we can easily just click on a stakeholder record until not only what sort of events or information they've been sent or invited to, but also very importantly whether they've responded. Whether they attended an event, it's it's really important as we move forward to the next stage of our work, which is a large public consultation next year. Around our strategic investment plan that we are able to evidence our engagement activity with our stakeholders So, yeah, absolutely it's added value. Great. Okay. Then you talked about the wider organisation there. And your objectives at at the beginning was specifically around you and and then your your objectives, your department's objectives, Is there do you see tractivity adding value in the wider organisation or do are they very different in their in their needs? I think, in terms of transport for the Southeast as an organisation, we're there with TRativity, it's that is the system that we use. In terms of our host authority, being a county council and the others County Council authorities, there is absolute potential for TRativity to be used, either within individual departments or even at an organisation wide level. I think the challenge around that is to do with politics with a big and a little p, and also the way that local government organisations are contracted to use certain options. It's I guess my question was more around, I guess, do you see this being a tool that would be used for for different organisations and different market sectors as opposed to just an organisation like yourselves? Yes. And in fact we have worked with some of our other stakeholder. So our non political key stakeholders to try and explore how they are using interactivity. So some of our our partners do use the system already, and they use some functionality within the system that we don't use, so the Engage three sixty portal, for example, a couple of our partners are using, and we have spoken to them and have demonstrations and support to see feedback about how they're using the system. So, yeah, absolutely. I think that is the beauty of it being fundamentally an off the shelf system that you can personalize. Because you could really make it work for any type of organisation. Great. That that's good to hear. I mentioned earlier that I'd come back to this. You know, particularly during COVID and lockdown and the fact that, you know, a lot more business is being done remotely and working from home. And and and also I I was speaking to Vicky before this call actually just to make sure, the elements of the system that you're using Bicky mentioned that the, the area around the events, and the fact that we've been working with you around developing the the online events platform part of it for you. How's that process going? How have you found that? It's been it's been really interesting. When we first started using the events module with interactivity, we came across a few things that made it not so easy for us to use. It was really in terms of working it with our existing methodology. So around things like teams meetings, we can't use Zoom. That's just one of our restrictions within the authority, so everything had to be done on teams. And there were also some challenges around Sometimes we have events that are open to people that aren't on our stakeholder database. And initially, the way that the events module work meant that it was very hard for people to register for an event if you didn't already know who they were, and then it made it very hard to track. Who those people that might be sort of add ons at a later stage were. Vicky has been great though, and at every stage of us using the system more and more, has been very open to feedback from us about what could be done to make that better. And the relate the latest release of the events module is great. It does everything that we asked for it to do. And really for us, the big functionality that we've got now that we didn't have before is an ability to set up and manage an event within interactivity and then share the link to that event anywhere so we can share that booking link on our social media accounts We can send it in an email to our stakeholders and partners that we already have good relationships with and ask them to forward it on to wider networks. And from that, people can register from an event and register themselves on to activity at the same time to develop that stakeholder record So that's a massive step forward for us, and in fact we're we're just planning a large meeting for mid October. We've been discussing this morning, the fact that we're gonna use that as our our guinea pig meeting for the first of the this new, the new events, which will Good. Well, I mean, from our perspective, that's really good to hear. It's good to hear because we, you know, we we pride ourselves in trying to listen to to our customers. And in order to be able to, you know, really understand how you're using the system or where it's not helping, you just be able to feed that into our development and into our roadmap to see now ultimately the change in the product of the next release, you know, we've we've listened, we've we've developed a solution, and we're then we we've launched it. So it's nice to see it go right through the organisation right through from from account management right to back to yourselves. There's an updated solution. So it's nice to see that process working. So last question really, I suppose, in terms of the journey that you've been on. Is there any one recommended recommendation that you give organisations that haven't found a system like tractivity, any recommendations that you'd give them to start this journey. Don't leave it till it look too late. I think it comes back to what we were saying earlier. Really build in to budgets and time scales, the need for a stakeholder management system early on in your project planning process. Don't leave this stakeholder engagement element as a a bit of an added bonus or an add on because it really does inform the work of the wider organisation, and even, you know, our our technical team who don't use productivity themselves on a day to day basis, even they can see the benefit of the system because they can ask us. The data or intelligence and have it within five minutes because it's a case of running a report. So don't underestimate the there's bigger of a stakeholder management system. It's not just about admin. It's about that whole stakeholder relationship process. So they can get you early. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. And keep good records. Yeah. But that's always, hindsight's brilliant, isn't it? Twenty twenty vision in in hindsight. But yeah. Okay. Listy, that's all the questions that I had for you. Is there anything that you wanted to share with us that that we haven't discussed? Is there anything you wanted to add to that? I don't think so. I think perhaps the only thing we haven't discussed, which is a real positive for us around our activity. Is the sort of account grouping function. Okay. Although we only have we we have tractivity as a system, but we run multiple projects within it. And I mentioned earlier that we have this really complex technical program at the moment, resulting in multiple stakeholder groups, involving so so many different people. And the ability to categorize them and be able to filter them and search for them instantly on the system is a really, really big bonus for us. Because basically that would be each of those account groups, or stakeholder groups would be a tab on a spreadsheet that wouldn't actually talk to each other at all, but that integration of functionality around managing multiple stakeholder groups and multiple meetings is really, really good for us. Mhmm. Okay. I guess there is one more question, and that is, has track activity helped you as an organisation to evolve, have you have you found benefits from that that you wouldn't have done? Or I guess you wouldn't be naturally the journey you've been on, but, you know, ultimately, has it taken you beyond where your objectives work, where you expect it to be? I think it has, in terms of stakeholder intelligence, Definitely. I think we're in a much better place than we anticipated that we would be when we first started looking for a system to support the needs that we thought that we had. There is, you know, we're still discovering bits of collectivity as we as we go along. Oh, actually, we could use that for that, or we could do this on that bit of the system. So, yes, I think definitely it has enabled us to achieve more than we thought we were going to. And it's also we are we we are a really, really small team. There's only ten of us in total, and I am the only stakeholder management. we do also have a cons manager, but it's enabled a very small team. To deliver a very complex system of technical work Okay. Thousands of stakeholders and keep it. On track and safe and secure, and really build those good records as well, which we wouldn't have been able to do without the system. Right. Lucy, thank you. Alright. Bye. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. No problem. Good.