Stakeholder engagement: Working together

What is stakeholder engagement?

“It is difficult to overlook the importance of stakeholders in project and product development processes.” -Erika Roshdi, IMS Consulting

Leading edge organizations are quickly recognizing the business benefits that increased stakeholder engagement creates, and have made this concept a prerequisite in their product development strategies.

The term “stakeholder engagement” can be described in broad terms as a continuous collaborative process between an organization and the people and groups who are potentially influenced by its initiatives. Stakeholders who have an ‘interest’ in the range of activities that span particular projects or business initiatives need to be part of and engaged in the organization. More specifically, in product development, stakeholders are parties internal and external to the organization who collectively make decisions in areas such as, the design, production, launch and improvement of products and services. Employees, suppliers, vendors, business partners, regulators and customers are all stakeholders that need to actively contribute in the product’s success. Actively including external stakeholders and effectively managing their input can have a direct positive impact on business sustainability and competitive advantage.

Stakeholder engagement: Business Benefits

Leading edge organizations are quickly recognizing the business benefits that increased stakeholder engagement creates, and have made this concept a prerequisite in their product development strategies. A collaborative approach to managing stakeholder relationships increases engagement. This means stakeholders, integral to the product development process, will actively participate by providing direct input at all stages of the development cycle. Increased stakeholder engagement has numerous benefits:

• Improves the quality of the decision making process which leads to more focused results
• Reduces product revision cycles by communicating product needs from the onset
• Incorporates customer expectations and ‘wants’ which ensures customer-centric products are created
• Breaks the barriers of communication and fosters a dynamic dialogue with all stakeholders
• Ensures the communication of important business changes and news about product or market developments are fluid and timely

Increase stakeholder engagement with

“The past few years have seen significant changes in stakeholder engagement as businesses are beginning to take advantage of online tools…” -Erika Roshdi, IMS Consulting

There is no denying that the face of stakeholder engagement is changing. The growing awareness and overwhelming evidence that increased stakeholder collaboration and involvement is good for business has steered organizations towards leveraging the opportunities presented by the web and emerging technologies to increase engagement. With the Internet as the central focus of our communications, online dialogue tools provide organizations with opportunities to establish dynamic relationships with stakeholders, and gain competitive advantage.

OneDesk’s suite of social business applications helps your team effectively collaborate and put every stakeholder on the same page in real-time. integrates Customer Feedback Management, Requirements Management and Project Management together. It also includes the social collaboration tools to get everyone “thinking social.”

Here are some of the ways OneDesk helps to increase stakeholder engagement across the organization:

• Continuous conversations between all stakeholders can help hurdle roadblocks and eliminate lack of clarity or misunderstandings.
• Sharing projects and collaborating with team members, business partners, subcontractors, etc. ensures everyone has a voice and is part of the conversation.
• Keep the product team motivated and create ownership of projects by having the team know “what” they are working on and more importantly “why” they are working on it.
• Built-in social collaboration tools like blogging, email, discussions and real-time collaborative editing, enable team members to publish, share their thoughts and ideas and stay updated on any news or changes.

Align your engagement strategies with your business needs by signing up for a free account today.