There are numerous benefits to utilizing Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software for managing your stakeholders. An SRM can help lower your organization's and project's risks and help you save significant resources throughout the lifespan of your project, but one of the ways that an SRM offers your organization significant value is through saving time.
An SRM manages all your stakeholder relationships and communications with stakeholders. This software ensures that your stakeholder information is organized, accessible, searchable, and easy to understand, so you and your team can save time and focus on creating positive outcomes and achieving your project's goals.
To help you fully understand the value an SRM can offer your organization, today, we're breaking down eight ways an SRM will help save your organization a lot of time.
8 ways an SRM software will help save your organization a lot of time
The following are ways an SRM software saves your organization a lot of time:
Timesaver 1: An SRM easily organizes large amounts of stakeholder information
As you engage and consult, you and your team will be collecting a lot of different information:
- Contact information
- Stakeholder and community communications (emails, phone calls, meetings, etc.)
- Issues
- Commitments
- Notes on stakeholders
- Meeting locations
- Records of consultation and engagement
This information is essential, so it needs to be well-managed, organized, and accessible for your team.
How an SRM helps you save time through an organization designed for stakeholder management
With an SRM, all your stakeholder information is centralized within the software, so you and your team never have to hunt for the data you need.
Whether you need a phone number to reach a stakeholder, to check the history of engagement and prepare for a meeting, or to view the number of currently open issues for your project, you know exactly where to find your data.
Can't I just use spreadsheets for organizing my stakeholder engagement?
Surprisingly, many organizations are still trying to make spreadsheets work for their stakeholder engagement management. These are not the ideal tools because, with multiple versions of spreadsheets circulating within your organization, inconsistent input methods, and the difficulty of searching and reporting across spreadsheets, they commonly cause significant confusion, increase risks, and waste your team's time, which is counterproductive.
Learn more about why it's time to break up with spreadsheets →
Timesaver 2: An SRM offers invaluable analytics and improves your reporting
Your stakeholder data is valuable if you know where it can be quickly informed and utilized in projects.
How an SRM helps you gain insights from analytics and reporting features
Analytics and updates
While it's important to note that each SRM on the market is unique and won't necessarily offer the same features, many SRMs, like Jambo, do offer the ability to gain important insights about your stakeholders and projects, such as:
- How many stakeholders are we engaging?
- Where are we engaging the most?
- How many issues are open? How many are closed?
- What's the highest risk issue to our organization?
- Are there any open commitments?
- Etc.
With access to this kind of information, you and your team are quickly informed and can share important updates.
Reporting
In our SRM, Jambo, you can gain some of these insights from the dashboard and then even more detailed information with just a few clicks using our robust reporting options. These reports ensure your data is easy to understand and share at a moment's notice, and can be custom-built to meet your information needs.
Timesaver 3: An SRM improves communication and collaboration amongst your team
As you collect a lot of stakeholder information and have several team members engaging with various stakeholders and communities (often multiple team members interacting with the same people and groups), everyone must be on the same page.
How an SRM helps your team communicate and collaborate
In an SRM, your team is all inputting their data into the same software in a consistent manner so that your SRM becomes your team's single source of truth. The SRM serves as your team's reliable space for updates, progress, and adding new information.
Task Management
An SRM with a task management function also allows you to assign tasks to your team and yourself so that everyone knows what they are accountable for and when things have been completed. This is an excellent SRM feature that spreadsheets lack, adding tremendous value to your team's ability to collaborate and communicate within the software. Our SRM, Jambo, even has a feature that allows you to view recent changes on your dashboard as soon as you log in to the system, so you're constantly updated on what's new.
Timesaver 4: An SRM software gives you the history of engagement, so you know exactly what was communicated, when, and with whom
If you're preparing for a stakeholder meeting or trying to understand your stakeholders' perspectives, you'll need to be aware of what has been communicated. Without an SRM, if you weren't part of those previous conversations, it could be a time-consuming task to trace back through your team and their notes to figure out what has been communicated, who was involved, when it was said, and if anything has been promised.
How an SRM's history of engagement saves you time
Preparing for a stakeholders meeting
Sometimes stakeholder meetings are planned well in advance, giving you plenty of time to prepare, but other times, meetings can be last-minute. Regardless of the timing, you will need to be updated on everything that the stakeholders have shared with your organization.
With some SRMs, you can jump into a stakeholder's profile and see everything they have shared with your team, even if you weren't part of those conversations. You can also view any issues and commitments associated with the person's profile, as well as any notes your team has logged about that stakeholder (e.g., their preference for virtual meetings or availability on specific days and times).
With such quick access to this overview, you don't have to waste time digging through spreadsheets or emailing and calling your team for updates because you have all the information you need at your fingertips.
Timesaver 5: An SRM allow you to utilize voice-to-text compatibility (if your cellphone has this capability)
If you have a cell phone with a microphone, use the voice-to-text feature to save time entering notes and comments about an engagement. This time-saving feature is made for people on the go!
Use voice-to-text to make inputting engagement faster than ever
An SRM that supports voice-to-text allows you to input your data easily. This is an excellent benefit for those who want to quickly log notes from a meeting they just had with a stakeholder and don't want to wait until they return to the office.
Additionally, this feature is ideal for inputting information during meetings, allowing you to avoid wasting time and share your input with stakeholders for greater transparency.
Timesaver 6: An SRM makes your stakeholder data easy and quick to search
We've all had to dig through endless spreadsheets, random files and notes on our phones to try and find the information we need, which wastes time and is incredibly frustrating.
How SRM searchability is a game-changer
While this might not seem like a game-changer at first, having the ability to search for questions like these can improve productivity:
- Which stakeholder was connected to a particular concern?
- How many stakeholders have mentioned this problem?
- What date was the first time this topic was mentioned?
In an organized SRM, this information (and much more) is readily available to you, so you don't have to spend time or your team's time trying to connect the dots.
Answering stakeholder/regulatory body/team, or management questions
You won't be the only one who has questions about your data, and you want to be able to answer these requests for information quickly and efficiently.
Whether a regulatory body is checking in on your consultation records, a stakeholder wants to know the progress on a commitment your team made to them, or your team or manager wants to know how many issues are currently open, with an SRM, you can quickly find this information.
The ability to answer these questions rapidly also makes your organization look efficient and trustworthy because you can instantly search for the answer and have a populated list of related information right away, so no one is waiting on you.
Timesaver 7: An SRM offers email integration
This is a vital timesaver, as you'll undoubtedly be emailing your stakeholders, teams, managers, regulators, and others.
How SRM email integration speeds up your process
With an SRM that integrates email, your emails are automatically logged as records in your SRM, eliminating the need for manual copying and pasting or time-consuming input.
In Jambo, the system logic translates your email into a readable communication record. It associates the email with known stakeholders in the system while adding any email attachments to the record, ensuring everything is organized and accessible with minimal effort on your part.
Timesaver 8: An SRM ensures you spend less time on administrative tasks
We've all been there where we block off a half-hour of time to catch up on our emails and calls, and before we know it, three hours have passed, and we're not even done yet!
How an SRM will lighten the administrative task load
Fewer emails
With all your stakeholder data centralized and accessible in your SRM, you'll spend less time sending check-in emails because the updates you need are already available to you in the software. Additionally, with the email integration feature available in SRMs like Jambo, you don't have to waste time manually logging your emails into your SRM, as it's an automated process.
Fewer team calls and meetings.
You'll also need fewer meetings and calls with your team to check in on progress, as many of those updates are available in your SRM.
Less digging for the information you need
With your data in an organized, searchable and accessible system, you'll know where to find the information you need, when you need it, without all the time-consuming digging!
Additionally, if you select an SRM with traceability, such as Jambo, all your information will connect easily and logically, allowing you to understand the big picture right away. For example, suppose you're looking into an issue logged in Jambo. In that case, you can efficiently work backwards and see connecting information, such as the original communication where the problem was first raised. There's automation happening behind the scenes in Jambo that allows you to easily investigate your data for a deeper understanding in the quickest way possible.
Learn more about how SRM traceability works in our detailed post →
Shorter data inputting times
This benefit depends on the SRM you choose. Still, if you use an SRM like Jambo, your logging time for communication records is significantly reduced, allowing you to focus on engagement or other important tasks and goals without wasting time inputting data.
How to choose the SRM that will save you the most time
As we mentioned above, not all SRMs offer the same benefits, so you want to select an SRM that's fast to learn and easy to use, allowing you to optimize your team's time savings.
At Jambo, we take pride in being the fastest and easiest Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software on the market. Every feature mentioned in today's blog is available in our SRM. To help you understand a few of the unique features that Jambo can offer you and your team to save even more time, check out our blog on how Jambo helps you save time.
If you'd like to learn more about SRMs and the features to look for to ensure you choose the best SRM for your organization, we've created this free checklist to help your research. To download your free comprehensive SRM checklist, click the image below.
