Effective stakeholder engagement and consultation are essential for governments and organisations, where transparency, compliance, and accountability are non-negotiable. As consultation projects become complex, the number of stakeholders increases, and public scrutiny intensifies. Relying on manual processes or generic tools to manage engagement and consultation data exposes teams to significant risks, including regulatory non-compliance that can lead to litigation, stakeholder mistrust or disengagement, and project delays or cancellations.
Stakeholder engagement and consultation software is designed to help organisations and governments mitigate these risks by centralising data, documenting all interactions, issues, and commitments, and providing comprehensive reporting. This empowers teams to collaborate more effectively, meet regulatory requirements, and foster inclusive, meaningful engagement that builds strong community and stakeholder relationships. By streamlining workflows and maintaining a clear audit trail, such software ensures that every voice is documented and considered in decision-making.
What is stakeholder engagement and consultation software?
Specialised stakeholder engagement and consultation software is often called Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software.
Jambo has distinguished itself as a purpose-built SRM platform for teams and governments of all sizes. It streamlines stakeholder engagement data management by centralising information and simplifying the tracking of communications, commitments, issues, and regulatory touchpoints. This makes it easier for organisations and governments to stay on top of all their engagement and consultation data, demonstrate compliance and adequate consultation, and maintain transparency throughout their engagement processes.
While alternative SRMs like Tractivity offer useful stakeholder management features, Jambo's ease of use, advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, and expert customer success provide a distinct advantage. For organizations and governments evaluating solutions to address challenges such as scattered records, inconsistent or difficult-to-compile reporting, and increasing regulatory demands, Jambo's focus on fast data access, robust security, and responsive support directly tackles the critical gaps often found in less specialised or generic systems.
Jambo Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software
Jambo is a leading SRM platform purpose-built for organisations and government teams focused on stakeholder and community engagement and consultation. It simplifies stakeholder management for teams of all sizes, enabling users to log and track every communication, commitment, issue, and decision. This ensures seamless audit trails and easy reporting, helping teams manage their stakeholder engagement and consultation projects and stakeholder relationships effectively.
Tractivity software
Tractivity is a UK-based stakeholder management system designed to help teams map, engage, and generate insights to improve outcomes. It offers capabilities in stakeholder mapping and organisation, engagement and listening, and analysis and improvement. The Tractivity website indicates a focus on UK healthcare agencies and local councils, meaning it lacks a global presence.
Products and features overview
Jambo Stakeholder Relationship Management software offers comprehensive features to enhance stakeholder engagement and management.
Key features include:
- Advanced contact management (manage individuals, organisations and Lands)
- Communication record management with recent changes/audit trail
- Project-based workspaces and user permissions
- Issues and commitments management
- Tasks
- Jambo Insights: analytics and custom dashboards
- Configurable reporting
- Free and easy-to-use data integrations, including an Outlook add-in, an ArcGIS Pro add-in, and a Zapier integration
Tractivity provides a more limited set of stakeholder management features, which may require organisations to rely on additional tools for effective stakeholder management.
Key features include:
- Stakeholder database
- Stakeholder mapping
- Data management
- Management portal
- Dashboards
The differences between Jambo and Tractivity
1. User interface and ease of use
Jambo is described as modern, friendly, and intuitive. It features an interface that enables teams to add and access data quickly and supports users of all skill levels. The platform also prioritises accessibility, meeting WCAG 2.1 Level A standards to ensure it's inclusive and user-friendly. Jambo is project-based, with projects serving as workspaces that allow for complete data segmentation by project, department, division, project, station, etc. User permissions are controlled at the project level, and all reporting is project-based (unless you choose to report on global organisation or department-level information).
Former Tractivity customers who switched to Jambo have described the Tractivity interface as unfriendly and complex and hinted that it hinders team members' adoption. They've also noted that Tractivity cannot segment, view, or report on data by project, which limits how information can be organised and reviewed and requires a lot of copying and pasting when reporting on project-specific information.
2. Reporting and analytics
Jambo offers robust features that simplify stakeholder engagement reporting and data analysis. Tools like Jambo Analytics and Custom Dashboards empower project managers and teams to query their data, generate detailed visualizations, and gain actionable insights. Jambo users can create unlimited project dashboards to easily review key metrics such as team KPIs or project performance. Reporting in Jambo is highly configurable, making it easy to produce useful reports quickly and in various formats.
Customers who have transitioned from Tractivity to Jambo have mentioned that Tractivity's limited reporting capabilities make data extraction difficult. One former customer spoke of spending considerable time reconfiguring raw data after export to generate needed reports. As a result, Tractivity may be best suited for users who prefer detailed, unformatted data exports that require further processing.
3. Customization and scalability
Jambo is highly configurable, offering custom fields, tags, and flexible dashboard options. The Jambo team also actively collaborates with customers to co-develop new features based on user feedback. Its project-based setup and global overview option allow for rolling up all data, and its extensive user roles and permission options that can limit access to confidential projects or information enable organisations to scale easily from single projects to full organisational rollouts. At the same time, governments can expand from individual teams to entire departments.
Former customers report Tractivity's limited configurability and the lack of an easy way to view important project information independently. Additionally, Tractivity's website does not mention if controlling user roles or permissions is an option, which, if unavailable, could create challenges for large teams seeking to restrict user access.
4. Support and customer success
Jambo customer testimonials on their website frequently highlight the customer success team's helpfulness and rapid support.
Former Tractivity customers who switched to Jambo reported that Tractivity's customer support was difficult to reach and slow to respond.
5. Industry expertise and training
Jambo boasts a team of expert customer success representatives, including IAP2-certified professionals with prior experience in stakeholder engagement. This expertise allows them to provide users with valuable advice on best practices for stakeholder engagement, data management, and reporting. Jambo's customers span the globe and represent diverse industries and government levels, giving the customer success team broad experience across sectors.
Tractivity's customer base mainly consists of UK public sector agencies, such as councils and NHS healthcare agencies. This could limit the scope and diversity of experience of their customer support team.
6. Global presence and data management options
Jambo has a global presence, with offices in Canada, Ireland, and Croatia. Its customers are located in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. Jambo software is available in both English and French. It offers extensive localisation options for account setup, including options to set a default currency, time zone, date display, and number format. Additionally, it maintains data centres in multiple locations, including one in Europe, to support data sovereignty requirements.
In contrast, Tractivity is UK-based and, according to the customer logos on its website, primarily serves the UK market. Its website does not mention internationalisation options, and no additional language is reported.
7. Value for investment and pricing
The Jambo Professional subscription, which includes five users and 20 projects, starts at $995 monthly. For the Jambo Enterprise plan, interested customers can request a customised quote. Jambo is well-regarded for its high user adoption, excellent value for money, and significant time savings on report creation, reducing the process from days to seconds.
Tractivity's pricing is not publicly available on their website. The only published pricing is specific to the UK government and is listed in pounds sterling.
Jambo vs Tractivity comparison table
| Feature/criteria | Jambo | Tractivity |
| Support | Highly responsive, expert team, fast. | Slow response times |
| User interface | Modern, intuitive, fast data import/export; project-based with project-only views and reporting and global views and reporting options | Difficult to navigate and use; hard to get data in/out; steep learning curve; no project, only views or reporting |
| Reporting/analytics | Advanced data visualisations via Jambo Analytics; highly configurable; multiple export formats | Limited configurability, some visualisation options, and detailed data exports. |
| Customization | Highly configurable with custom fields, tags, and dashboards; localisation options for account setup | Tags, dashboards |
| Global presence | International offices and support, English and French, global customer base, internationalisation options | UK-based office and support; primarily UK customers; English only; no internationalisation options |
| Training and expertise | Hands-on training; customer success team are IAP2-certified professionals; federal, provincial/state, and municipal/local government experts | General support; UK public sector experience |
| Adoption | 5-star ratings on SourceForge | Reported low adoption by past customers |
Why Jambo is the best Stakeholder Relationship Management software
Jambo is the choice for organisations and governments prioritising effective, collaborative, and reportable stakeholder engagement and community consultation. While Tractivity offers the basic stakeholder management features needed in an SRM, it focuses on serving the UK market.
Jambo delivers an advanced, scalable tool designed for organisations and governments worldwide. With a European data centre and an office in Dublin, it's equipped to serve the UK and European market. Its powerful analytics, intuitive interface, and extensive reporting options ensure teams of all sizes can easily track stakeholders, issues, and commitments and demonstrate real impact and compliance.
With deep expertise, global reach, and a focus on continuous improvement, Jambo sets the standard for stakeholder relationship management software, making it the smarter, more reliable investment for teams serious about long-lasting engagement and consultation success.
