Co-operative Assistance Network Limited

An organisation will struggle or fail if it doesn’t operate in the interests of its key stakeholder group, balance the interests of all its stakeholder groups and involve stakeholder groups in governance appropriately. Therefore it’s crucial for an organisation to know and understand its stakeholder groups and their needs.

It is tempting to assume that an intuitive understanding of stakeholder groups will suffice – and indeed that may have got you this far – but deeper insights and a shared understanding that lead to improved stakeholder engagement will result in better planning, more appropriate governance, systemic improvements, greater efficiency, an increased chance of survival and better outcomes.

Carrying out an analysis of stakeholders may have some surprising results and may change perspectives. In any case, times change and it is important to keep up with stakeholders’ changing needs.

A stakeholder analysis report can provide evidence to funders and supporters and is a crucial component of any corporate feasibility study. It is necessary for social enterprises and community businesses in particular to have a detailed understanding of, and rich relationships with, their stakeholders.

Taking all the above into consideration, we can conclude that the best times to carry out a stakeholder analysis exercise are during the enterprise design phase and at regular intervals thereafter.

The tool we use for this exercise is fully optimised and our consultants are experts in this field, so it may not take as long as you might imagine. This keeps costs right down so that it is affordable to smaller enterprises.

Our report will include all the findings and recommendations, and a record of any agreed action plan against which progress can be monitored.

This service is charged at our hourly rate and the charge will be agreed in advance.  Data gathering and analysis with the client group by videoconferencing normally takes about 3 hours and preparing the report another hour.

Our Governance Product Area Team Leader is TBA.