Business Relationship Management - building effective relationships with stakeholders.

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Gary Wheadon CRM Assignment Degree Course


A “stakeholder” is any person or organization that is involved in a project, or whose interests may be affected positively or negatively by a project. Stakeholders can be inside the organization or outside. In many projects the public at large will become a stakeholder to be considered during the project. The challenge for the project manager when the public is a stakeholder will be to act while taking into account public needs. Often there is no straight representative of the public to be consulted for the period of project planning. Potential stakeholders include but are not limited to: competitors, national communities, employees, government, prospective customers, government regulatory agencies, and prospective employees, Industry trade groups, the public at large (Global community), investors, shareholders, suppliers and local communities. When identifying stakeholders and ranking their level of interest and involvement in the project, it will become important to use some sort of a tool  such as  rating scale, an influence diagram, or a chart form to identify the level of power, influence, interest, or impact that the stakeholder may have on the project.

Every company has stakeholders. These stakeholders require certain information to be able to maintain your organisation and buy into its culture and processes.  Existing both internally and externally, these stakeholders can have competing priorities and needs. In an ideal world, organisations could ignore this for instance and go about the important business of making money, no doubt the reason for their being. No such luck. Stakeholder relationships that are unmanaged or mismanaged have a number of less than favourable consequences for the business as a whole. These include unnecessary expenses, and a lack of buy-in to processes and initiatives aimed at transforming the company. However, stakeholder management is a difficult undertaking for organisations because it requires investment and commitment.
Particularly in larger organisations, this process is a critical one because what sometimes can be a large network of stakeholders with an investment or interest in your business is broader than you would originally have imagined. Consider that likely stakeholders include your board, management, other employees, customers, suppliers and the community within which you operate. It is important when making this list that you gather and collate as much information as possible about the people and groups within. This will enable you to start thinking through correct and targeted communication among them which will be of great benefit.  .

However big your intentions regarding stakeholder relationship management are, there unfortunately have to be some peoples and group who’s needs are far more important and who require a different level of priority, if you intend holding their support. While this sucks for the internal people, the chairman of your board for instance, will be pleased to know that you have his best interests at heart. Prioritising begins with segmenting your list into groups and then listing them in order of importance. This process needs to be completed with the organisational goals and the level of stakeholder information in mind. In due course, this will ensure personalisation and consistency across communication channels at a later point in the process. (Gummesson, 2008: 187) states “Stakeholders require consistent and regular communication and service. However, their individual distinctiveness requires that this communication be personalised and targeted”. This is difficult enough in the corner store but is universally impossible across larger organisations – the number of individuals is just too great. The next best thing understanding each group. A key part of this is knowing what information they have, how accurate it is, how it aligns with your organisational goals and what information they should require or need be clear concise and extremely accurate.

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Now the easy part is over and you actually have to find an innovative and well-organized manner in which to communicate with these stakeholders. Whatever strategy you use, it is helpful to have a communication plan put in place, so that the procedure runs smoothly without negatively impacting on productivity. Using a combined software package could be the answer, particularly if you want to keep a specific group up to date about a certain project. Regular reports are useful and email’s of information, are very effective for those individuals who are not privy to sensitive information. Going one step further, ...

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