Today, stakeholder engagement is about much more than just managing data or trying to influence opinions. It's about building meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders and communities to achieve positive, lasting outcomes.
Organizations looking to improve how they manage these relationships may wonder: Is stakeholder engagement software worth it?
This blog will explain how stakeholder engagement software can help your organization strategically manage stakeholder information, foster positive relationships, and deliver better project results.
What is stakeholder engagement software?
Stakeholder engagement software is a centralized digital tool designed to help organizations manage all their relationships and communications with stakeholders and communities they engage with or consult.
With stakeholder engagement software, your team has one place to log and access detailed engagement information. This organized approach ensures everyone knows their needs, making stakeholder engagement management less overwhelming and confusing.
Stajeholder engagement software keeps your team informed about stakeholders' interests, past interactions with stakeholders, and ongoing concerns. This helps you communicate more consistently and build meaningful, trusting relationships, which is crucial for better project outcomes.
Who uses stakeholder engagement software?
Stakeholder engagement software benefits any organization handling large volumes of stakeholder information, especially those committed to regulatory compliance or fostering strong, long-term stakeholder relationships. Stakeholder engagement software supports essential engagement activities across many sectors, including:
- Forestry
- Mining
- Energy
- Renewable energy
- Utilities
- Construction
- Transportation and infrastructure
- Government
- Healthcare
The list of industries is extensive because most organizations engaging with multiple stakeholders can benefit from having dedicated stakeholder engagement software to manage communications and relationships efficiently.
Benefits of stakeholder engagement software
Stakeholder engagement software isn't just about storing data; it empowers your organization through critical features that improve your work with stakeholders. Here are five key benefits of stakeholder engagement software
1. Stakeholder management
One of the biggest frustrations when managing stakeholders is messy or incomplete contact information. Without organized, comprehensive stakeholder profiles, it's hard to know who has been engaged, what was discussed, and what outstanding issues or commitments may be associated with them.
Good stakeholder engagement software creates detailed stakeholder profiles that easily capture:
- All previous communications with them
- Raised issues or concerns and their current status
- Commitments or promises made to them, and whether they have been fulfilled
- Their interests and concerns
- Stakeholder sentiment
- Associated organizations or groups
- Their opt-in status for communications
Having this all in one place means your team can renew stakeholder profiles and be prepared for meetings and follow-ups with them. This will keep messaging consistent and improve trust by allowing you to reference past conversations.
2. Issues management
Issues inevitably arise during stakeholder engagement. Unmanaged issues can stall your projects, drain resources, damage your organization's credibility, erode stakeholder trust, and increase risks.
Stakeholder engagement software with issue management features lets your team:
- Record all issues raised
- Manage issues by impact and priority
- Assign tasks to address and resolve issues
- Quickly review all data related to the issue (like associated stakeholders, tasks, communications, etc.)
- Manage the resolution efforts of issues through a timeline
- Easily report on issues and how they were addressed
Effectively managing issues signals to stakeholders that you take their concerns seriously, helping build lasting trust and avoiding escalation or rumours.
3. Commitment management
Commitments or promises to stakeholders will arise throughout your projects. Keeping track of all commitments is essential because missing one can harm trust and relationships.
Stakeholder engagement software with commitment management features lets your team:
- Log commitments as they are made
- Review how many commitments are still open
- Assign tasks to address commitments (even if they aren't due for months or years)
- Filter by commitments by due dates
- Report on commitments
This transparency helps ensure commitments are fulfilled, strengthening your organization's reputation.
4. Engagement record management
Maintaining accurate, detailed engagement records is becoming more critical, especially with evolving regulations like the Duty to Consult, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and CSRD, reporting requiring organizations to demonstrate their engagement.
Stakeholder engagement software helps you manage records of engagement by:
- Keeping all engagement records organized and accessible
- Providing integrations like Outlook add-ins for easy logging of engagement records
- Making reporting on all engagement activities fast and easy
- Building a history of engagement for each stakeholder
Some stakeholder engagement software, like Jambo, also offers integrated mapping. This allows you to visualize where engagement took place, highlight areas of concern, and create geospatial reports. This improves transparency and helps explain your engagement efforts clearly to stakeholders, decision-makers, or regulators.
5. Save time
Well-designed stakeholder engagement software saves valuable time for your team by:
- Centralizing all data for easy access and updates
- Facilitating real-time collaboration so everyone stays on the same page
- Ensuring consistent and fast data entry
- Making information searchable to avoid time wasted searching for details
- Allowing the quick generation of reports to assess engagement status
- Offering third-party integrations (e.g., Zapier and Outlook) to streamline workflows
- Employing secure AI-powered automation to reduce manual data management tasks
Stakeholder engagement software acts as your organization's source of truth, reducing time spent on administrative tasks and letting your team focus on meaningful stakeholder engagement.
Problems with using spreadsheets for stakeholder engagement management
If your team still relies on spreadsheets for stakeholder engagement, you are likely losing time due to:
- Inconsistent data entry methods
- Difficulty finding specific information amid massive datasets
- Challenges in controlling versions and copies of files
- Checking with team members for missing data or updates
- Struggling to build complete, reliable reports
Spreadsheets are not designed for stakeholder engagement management, and they increase security risks and inefficiency.
Learn more about why spreadsheets aren't the best option for stakeholder management →
Problems with using a CRM for stakeholder engagement management
Many organizations try to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for stakeholder engagement, but CRMs aren't built for this specialized purpose.
Using a CRM for stakeholder engagement means:
- Spending time and money customizing software to do what stakeholder engagement software does out of the box
- Risking poor user adoption due to frustrating workaround processes
- Ending up with inconsistent data and limited reporting abilities
For these reasons, software explicitly designed for stakeholder engagement is a better investment.
More reasons why a CRM isn't the best option for stakeholder management →
How to pick the best stakeholder engagement software
To choose the right stakeholder engagement software for your organization, look for software that includes:
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History tracking: Automatically record who changed what and when, plus the ability to add searchable tags for trends, concerns, and keywords. This helps your team understand stakeholder data easily.
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Task management: Assign and track tasks related to specific communications or issues, helping your team stay organized and accountable.
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Attachment management: Attach documents like PDFs or images to engagement records and easily include them in reports, saving time explaining or searching for supporting files.
These features improve usability, accountability, and reporting, key factors for effective stakeholder engagement.
Stakeholder engagement software examples
While many stakeholder engagement software products exist, Jambo offers all the features, a user-friendly design, and powerful, secure AI tools to streamline engagement efforts.
Book a free demo to see how Jambo can meet your organization's unique needs.
To help you make a well-informed choice, we've also developed a Stakeholder Engagement Software Checklist to guide you through important considerations when researching engagement software options.
