Another major aspect that businesses heavily depend upon is ‘relationships’.

When we talk of relationships, the discussions are primarily oriented toward customer relations. But any business executive will acknowledge that the term goes much beyond. Stakeholder relationship management covers the entire 360 degrees, involving investors, administration, employees, customers, and suppliers. It is important to ensure that relations with all work as strong pillars over the foundation of the business vision. Only then can growth be seamless and uninterrupted.

While it may be difficult to follow it by the book, and my view is that it should not be as it may look staged, it is normally helpful to have a documented process for relationship management of all stakeholders. Not only does it work as a reminder for keeping in touch with them, but it also ensures that no critical update is missed when updating the respective stakeholder. The engagement plan, updated schedule, and reporting structure play a crucial role in this.

I purposefully left out one key category of stakeholder that is gaining a lot of prominence in recent times. We have started to realize that businesses cannot work in isolation and the communities they interact with are also to be regarded as a key category of stakeholders. The reason for leaving this category out in my initial discussion is the overlap that it has with the other categories. This is because communities can be of various forms including customers and the society around us. In a few of my earlier blogs, I have touched upon the need to keep the community engaged with business operations.

In line with its importance, every business needs to have well-defined KPIs or Key Performance Indicators for this. But as with the others, measurement of this qualitative factor is still a challenge for many businesses. Till we find better ways of measuring the KPIs we may rely on the age-old but statistically validated method of survey. For each category, we need to run regular feedback surveys to understand their perceptions. One positive aspect of this method is the fact that irrespective of the type of feedback we get, getting one itself shows that there is a relationship to be nurtured. Even if do not get feedback, surveys also help is reminding the stakeholder that we acknowledge them and value their feedback. This is a very positive note.

As we get matured in the digital aspects of communication, the measurement of relationships will also be easier. A few aspects like calculating the Share of Voice, Engagement levels, and Sentiment Analysis are already getting widely used by corporates.

The sheer importance and diverse categories of stakeholder relationships call for another blog on the topic. Planning to write another piece on it. Keep following…