Stakeholder engagement is the process by which an organisation involves people who may be affected by the decisions it makes or can influence the implementation of its decisions. They may support or oppose the decisions, be influential in the organisation or within the community in which it operates, hold relevant official positions or be affected in the long term.
With this in mind, it is not so much about which internal stakeholders to involve in your travel programme, but about choosing the right ones at the right time.
It is crucially important that stakeholders have the opportunity to influence the decision-making process. Influence is the main differentiator between stakeholder engagement, which happens before a decision, and communication of that decision in order to influence behaviour.
Give this some thought.
Why do you need to involve internal stakeholders? What is their role? Do you know your stakeholders? What is your aim to involve them? When to involve them?
In order to be able to answer these questions you should ask yourself some questions too.
- What kind of corporation are you working for?
- Is your company managed in a very traditional way or in a matrix?
- Do you have to mix a structure of businesses lines with countries, which are based in different geographies and all with different regional headquarters and divisions?
- Is the project geared to one line of business, one specific division, one country, or a region?
- Is your company working with steering committees and sponsors?
- Is your travel programme matured or is it in its infancy?
When it comes to stakeholders, many projects require a tailored approach but in most of the cases the sponsors or the top stakeholders remain the same.
Distinguish between the projects you are running e.g. is it a TMC RFP or is it a tender for corporate card? Or are you implementing a (new) travel policy? Furthermore consider how you are running these programmes. Are you running a programme locally, regionally, across regions or even globally? Are you running a mandatory programme or a voluntarily one? Are some stakeholders more important or influential as others?
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In order to identify the right stakeholders, I recommend following these steps.
- Clearly define the goal, scope, problem statement, objectives and deliverables in a business case (the category management strategy)
- Develop a project timeline including milestones
- Put together a routine and communication plan including:
- What (the title for the communication such as project announcement, core taam meetings and 1:1 meetings)
- Why (purpose)
- Who (participants)
- When (frequency)
- How (communication type e.g. email, conference calls, video-conference)
- Develop your stakeholder overview (depending your own organisation structure, you may not need all of the levels indicated)
- Core project team: individuals from various disciplines, who will be driving the project including yourself as project lead
- Subject matter experts (SMEs): Those who will be operationally affected, but not necessarily take part in the decision process. These stakeholders are crucial for developing a project baseline, among other things.
- Project champion: this would most likely be your manager
- Project sponsor: this individual could reside in a business line eg the one who is asking you to conduct a certain programme or your manager's manager
- Advisory committee which consists of senior leaders and influencers within your company. This group will review and finally comment on the outcome of the project before the project sponsor will send it to the steering committee. Job titles like director or vice president of finance, human resources, procurement and facility management are likely to be found in this group. Depending on the countries in which you operate, you may need to involve members of a works council, such as in Germany or France
- Steering committee: the top executives who take the final decision. Within this group you would find, for example, a chief procurement officer, senior vice president of human resources and similar for finance. You could also add the SVPs of various business lines.
So now let's put all of this into an example. Imagine you are conducting a global RFP for a travel management company, with 40 countries divided into three regions and one global headquarters. For this example, I am using the seven-step ATKearney purchase process — there are other approaches as well. (By the way, it is not my intention to explain the procurement process here, but use the various steps as to explain which stakeholders to involve.)
During this phase the focus is on profiling the spend as well as the supplier base. Working with suppliers, and your subject matter experts in all of the countries involved, will be crucial to understand the spend and any challenges.
You will also set up your core project team (and possibly, based on project scope, an extended team) and start to build your category management strategy including a communication plan.
Choosing the members/stakeholders in your core project team is important for the success of the project. You may want to involve people who are based in the countries with the largest volumes or the ones who will potentially be affected most. A balanced project team will ensure maximum buy-in during all the phases of the project to come. During step one you will also discuss your draft business plan/category management strategy with the project champion and project sponsor.
- This is where you decide on your sourcing strategy. Are you focusing on, for example, best pricing, global sourcing options or relationship restructuring? This is the phase where you finalise your business plan/category management strategy with the project champion and sponsor, but also with the advisory committee and the steering committee. It is crucial that all involved are aligned, because you will go to market during the next phase.
- Although not related to stakeholder involvement, but essential for the success of your project, I recommend developing an initial scorecard (for example, price 40%, technology 25%) as this will be your main document to evaluate criteria. You can develop the detail with the core team, but the basics of the scoring scheme should be approved in advance.
- This step does not involve that much interaction with stakeholders other than the core project team and, potentially, subject matter experts. During this phase you will need to identify all viable suppliers to include in your RFP.
- During this phase you will need to decide on the most appropriate execution strategy to select your suppliers. This can be by conducting an RFP or an e-auction, for example. Also during this step you will mainly work with the stakeholders in the core team but make sure you keep the project champion and sponsor posted.
- This is one of the most crucial steps in your strategy. Once you have met suppliers, negotiated, established a service level agreement and studied the outcomes of the score card, the core team will have to make its recommendations. During this phase you will need to interact with all of the stakeholders involved but at different times. Your last stop before the steering committee is the advisory committee. Once all lights are green - and this can be a lengthy process - you will send a final recommendation to the steering committee.
- This step is about the integration of the supplier into your organisation, whether they are a new supplier or the incumbent. Communication with stakeholders can be achieved in many ways: a member of the steering committee (e.g. CPO or CFO) could send a message to all directors and above globally (a top-down approach) but it could also be that you, on behalf of the core team, communicate with the subject matter experts (a bottom-up approach). To ensure the message is always the same, you may also want to include your communication department as a stakeholder.
- Once the contract is in place you will start to monitor both the supply market as well as your supplier performance. During this phase you will mainly work with subject matter experts across the globe.
Going back to the question posed by this article, which stakeholders to involve might be challenging to answer and one size will certainly not fit all. One thing is for sure, the selection of the right stakeholders is crucially important for the success of your travel programme.
Source: Consult Llewellyn