Financial Management

What do you understand by the phrase "stakeholder analysis"? Attempt a stakeholder analysis of an organisation that you are closely associated with.

Introduction

Stakeholder analysis is important for successful implementation of projects and/or strategic activities within any organisation. It is used to analyse the stakeholders in order to understand them and classify them according to their power, influence and interest. Stakeholders are people who have an interest in a commercial entity including those within the organisation and outside. These include the boss, senior executives, customers, suppliers, government, your co-workers, the team and others. All these people are important in the implementation and success of strategy.

The tool stakeholder analysis is used to: -

* Identify people or groups and institutions that will influence your initiative

* Anticipate the kind of influence, positive or negative, these groups will have on your initiative

* Develop strategies to get the most effective support possible for your initiative and reduce any obstacles to successful implementation of your program.

The following are steps that may be followed in using stakeholder analysis:

INDENTFY THE STAKEHOLDERS

There is need to think of all people who are to be affected by the project or strategy, those who have influence or power over it or have an interest in its successful or unsuccessful conclusion. Stake holders for Delta corporation include:-

 Government departments( Zimra, RBZ, Min of industry trade and commerce, ministry of sports and culture)

 Municipal authorities

 Standards association

 Customers

 Employees

 Management

 Trade union

 National employment council

 Directors and shareholders

 Suppliers

 The community and the public

 My family and extended family

 Lenders and interest groups among others.

The process of analysing stakeholders requires that you will need

to identify key human resource capital base that you will require to succeed in your project. Once identified and won over, the key stakeholders will offer opinions which will help in the early stages of the project and ensure high quality contribution and completion of the project. Powerful stakeholders will help on getting the necessary resources, financial and non financial. Frequent communication with all stakeholders will ensure active support as and when needed. Project managers from the user community and from IT management.

PRIORITISE YOUR STAKEHOLDERS

As you identify your stakeholders there is realisation that some of these may have the power to block or advance, some may be interested in the project and some may not care about it.

The Power/Interest Grid shown below may be used in the process of classifying the stakeholders in reference to their power and interest over the project. An example is of Delta Information technology project.

Keep satisfied

 CIO

Manage closely

 Bus. Inf. Mgr

Monitor

 Technical specialist

Keep informed

 Internal magazine editor

It is important to rank the stakeholders in terms of their power and interest to the project as this will have an impact on the success of the project, in this case an IT project.

The four boxes of the power interest grid can be interpreted as follows:

 High power, interested people - these are people who should be fully engaged and efforts should be made to fully satisfy them, e.g. the CIO, Chief Information Officer. He is highly interested in the success of the project and is the project sponsor therefore there is need to get a total buy in from him

 High power, less interested people - put enough work in these people to keep them satisfied, avoiding boring with too much to do. Business Information Manager needs projects to manage and implement. Their role mainly is to analyse business requirements and recommend appropriate ways of implementing

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