For many working in stakeholder engagement, spreadsheets may be the first data management tool that comes to mind. However, spreadsheets don't provide the searchability, traceability and collaborative data management you need to keep up with regulatory requirements and/or reporting needs. In this blog, we share five important stakeholder engagement practices you can't do with spreadsheets and offer a software solution to solve these spreadsheet deficiencies.
1. See the big picture
With stakeholder information scattered throughout and entered inconsistently in spreadsheets, it's hard to find relevant information to help you understand stakeholder issues or key trends and themes in your data.
When your data is hard to find, search through, or understand, it's nearly impossible to see how it connects. This can leave you questioning the status of outstanding issues or knowing which stakeholders you need to follow up with.
The solution:
Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software with traceability. Traceability allows you to understand the history of engagement with a stakeholder, where an issue, commitment, or task came from, and what it's connected to.
To learn more about how traceability can help you see the big picture in your engagement, check out our blog!
For example, with the Jambo SRM, you can click on a stakeholder profile, view and access all previous engagement information associated with that stakeholder, such as their contact information or notes, communications you've had with them, details of issues they were involved in, or even commitments you've made to them. There's no need to search across spreadsheets or databases; you can quickly understand the big picture and drill into records, such as a communication log, to see other connected information, like what issues or commitments came up at that same meeting.
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2. Create comprehensive reports
During stakeholder engagement, it's not uncommon to be asked to run a report on "everything," but how do you run a comprehensive report if you can't be sure where "everything" is?
This is compounded when you consider additional documents like PDFs or other attachments, and you're not sure where the final version that was sent is located. Worse yet, what happens if something important changes after you've taken all that time to create your report? Is it possible to quickly and accurately change your reports, or is it a big effort to report again?
The solution:
An SRM with a robust reporting feature can easily compile a concise or detailed report in minutes. Report on interactions that occurred during a certain time frame, the full lifecycle of an entire engagement program, or simply project issues with a high priority that have an expiry date of this month. An SRM like Jambo even has the ability to download attachments (e.g., PDFs, images, etc.) in your reports, making it simple to download and share "everything" when needed.
Want to learn more about how SRM reports help your stakeholder engagement projects? Check out our blog!
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3. Integrate all your stakeholder information
Email is one of the most common forms of communication when communicating with stakeholders. However, it can be challenging to integrate your stakeholder emails into your spreadsheets (due to formatting, attachments, space limitations, etc.).
Due to these difficulties, your data is often added incorrectly, and your teams might procrastinate adding it or even forget about it entirely, leaving gaps in your data.
The solution:
While spreadsheets can't automatically log your email to a record, a good SRM will. An SRM with email integration, like Jambo, even has system logic to translate the emails into readable communication records and associate them with known stakeholders within the system, adding any email attachments to their records. Jambo can even convert your original email into a PDF and add it as an attachment so you have it as part of your supporting documentation.
Jambo has a free Outlook add-in seamlessly creates new communication records within a Jambo project from your emails or calendar meetings directly from Outlook.
4. Lower organizational risk
Stakeholder engagement and consultation have inevitable risks that can arise with stakeholder issues, legal expectations, data privacy/security, or the need to prove adequate consultation occurred. Spreadsheets are often stored on local computers and aren't shared easily across teams, creating risks of information silos or questions over what's most up-to-date.
When you leave your risk management up to spreadsheets, knowing if you've covered your bases is challenging. It would be best to ensure all your data is inputted correctly, has no duplicate records, and isn't missing vital information. It's also critical to know who can access your spreadsheets so you can maintain an acceptable level of data security.
The solution:
De-risk your project by looking for an SRM with the following features:
- User permissions
You need to be able to assign users roles and permissions by project to ensure they only have the necessary access. Sensitive information must be protected and only accessible to authorized personnel while enabling team collaboration. - Confidential contractor access
You want to collaborate with your contractors by limiting their access to sensitive projects or communication records and issue updates, commitments, and tasks. You also need to limit access to sensitive information, such as financial data or confidential internal notes, to prevent unauthorized viewing or editing. - Change history and audit trail
Tracking user activity and changes made to records provides a clear audit trail to ensure authenticity and accountability. - Activity logs
An SRM that can keep records of activity, such as who created, edited, viewed, or deleted a record, including what changes were made to data, who made the change, when it was made, etc., is helpful for de-risk confidential data. Activity logs can be used with your SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) software to help your organization maintain information security. - Single sign-on (SSO)
Single Sign-On (SSO) provides an additional layer of security for enterprise customers, allowing IT teams to manage staff access using existing tools and protocols easily. - Colour-coded issues management
Materiality matrixes allow you to quickly identify issues by impact and priority to better understand and communicate the risks facing your project. A good issues management module will also allow you to easily track an issue's history and maintain a record of all communications surrounding it.
To learn more about how to de-risk your projects with SRM, visit our blog!
5. Create an efficient input process
With multiple versions of spreadsheets floating around in emails and desktops, duplicates are common. Time can be wasted digging through data and searching for information only to find out you aren't even looking at the latest version.
It's also easy to procrastinate or start creating your own data input process because the spreadsheet processes created by others are inconsistent and confusing.
The solution:
A powerful, easy-to-use SRM like Jambo will instantly reduce the volume of ad hoc data management and make the entire stakeholder management process simpler, faster, more consistent, and much more effective.
Not sure how to switch from spreadsheets to SRM software? Check out our eBook to help you get started!
Next steps
Spreadsheets are a temporary solution when you want to manage your important stakeholder data effectively; for a more future-focused solution for your stakeholder management efforts, it's time to switch to an SRM.
