Any stakeholder engagement process should be built on authenticity, transparency and the desire to build and strengthen stakeholder relationships.
Failures may arise if robust pre-planning is not undertaken in relation to both stakeholder engagement and stakeholder management. Effective stakeholder engagement means you must:
- identify your various stakeholder groups
- anticipate what the issues and opportunities are for your different stakeholder groups prior to the consultation
- listen and at times empathise during the process
- reduce barriers to contributing feedback
- track all communication with stakeholders
- record and be able to report effectively and quickly on results during and after the consultation
- feedback to stakeholders about results
In short, developing consultative processes which place stakeholder engagement at the core is crucial. Understanding the push/pull of individual deliverables and how to successfully influence stakeholders in understanding a project’s merit can be the key difference between a consultative process which is successful or a failure.
Utilising a spreadsheet to maintain a database of stakeholders and their feedback is ineffective, inefficient and time-consuming.
Utilising a secure proprietary online stakeholder management portal is efficient and cost-effective
Using spreadsheets to manage project and stakeholder data does not work and can lead to high-risk outcomes including over complexing columns of data, not being able to segment, tag and consolidate stakeholder feedback and more alarmingly that line items and complete databases can become corrupted or accidentally deleted.
Consider a project with over 1000 stakeholder’s participating – the time to maintain a single point of truth utilizing a spreadsheet is far more expensive than an online stakeholder management system which is built to manage thousands of stakeholders efficiently.
Moreover, as the project progresses further changes may occur, for which the spreadsheet being a one-dimensional item would not be able to incorporate. Stakeholder engagement software brings everything under one roof; streamlines the processes, centralizes it, organizes it well and makes it easier for stakeholders to get involved.
A Stakeholder engagement portal, platform or software comes with a number of consultation and engagement tools built-in that makes it easier for stakeholders to conduct meetings, get information and get involved. These platforms have a number of features to keep stakeholders captivated, and moreover, as these can be accessed anytime and from anywhere, stakeholders are likely to show more interest.
Which stakeholder engagement portal or software to use?
Engagement Hub is the all-in-one community engagement and stakeholder management solution to drive participation and collaboration. It comes with a number of features aimed at getting stakeholders involved, encouraging collaboration and building relationships.
No other community engagement tool includes a fully integrated stakeholder management tool. Don’t spend hours cross-referencing between spreadsheets and other software – Engagement Hub’s system is all together.
Opt for stakeholder management software and minimize the risk of consultative process failure. Choosing the right engagement platform for your organization is a vehicle to build consultative process success.
Contact us for a detailed proposal, book a demo to organize an online screen share and discussion of your objectives, or to explore the features in detail on our Engagement Hub demonstration site.
