Improved stakeholder experience is an intangible yet indispensable element of value realization. Vendavo’s Director of Value Realization, Darius Fekete illustrates why is matters, how it influences solution adoption, and how we can measure and maximize it.
In the culmination of our exploration of value realization, we turn to the most nuanced and vital aspect: the improved stakeholder experience. While this benefit may seem intangible, it plays a crucial role in facilitating adoption which unlocks even more value. Let’s explore why stakeholder experience matters, how it influences solution adoption, and how we can measure and maximize it.
The Essence of Stakeholder Experience
Stakeholder experience encompasses every interaction that customers, employees, suppliers, and others have with your organization. It’s about trust, satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. It’s not just about products or services but the complete journey with your company.
Stakeholders mention these benefits often in an emotionally charged context – feeling more secure, understood, valued, and enabled. When combined with tangible benefits, stakeholder experience provides an equally important part of the value realization puzzle – a great story of how technology supports the business.
Stakeholder Experience and Adoption: A Symbiotic Relationship
An enhanced stakeholder experience fosters greater adoption:
- Customers: Happy customers are likelier to adopt new products and become loyal advocates. Benefits supported by commercial excellence solutions often relate to customers feeling trust and transparency towards your business.
- Employees: Engaged employees are more inclined to embrace new tools and processes, fostering operational excellence. Additionally, users of pricing technology often mention that they can focus on more strategic activities, thus enjoying their role more.
- Suppliers: Strong relationships with suppliers ensure smooth collaboration and a seamless supply chain.
How to Measure Stakeholder Experience
Unlike revenue growth or operational excellence, stakeholder experience is not readily quantifiable. However, it’s not impossible to measure the stakeholder experience. You can begin to measure stakeholder experience through:
- Surveys and Feedback: Gather insights directly from stakeholders, typically through direct customer conversations or surveys.
- Usage Rates: Tracking how improved experience leads to higher utilisation of products, services, or processes.
Software’s Role in Enhancing Stakeholder Experience
Software dedicated to commercial excellence can be a powerful ally:
- Relevance: Tailoring offers, communications, and support to individual business needs and preferences. For example, a CPQ solution displaying a product catalogue relevant to office supply distributors.
- Efficiency: Speeding up response times, processing orders, and resolving issues. For example, updating an entire price list within minutes and having more time to do strategic work.
- Insights: Utilizing data to understand stakeholder needs and anticipate their expectations. For example, providing cross-sell recommendations based on what products similar customers also purchased.
Why This Matters: The Ripple Effect of Positive Experience
Improved stakeholder experience doesn’t exist in isolation; it’s interwoven with every aspect of value realization:
- Facilitates Adoption: As seen in our value realisation formula (Revenue X Scope % X Adoption % X Lift %), increased adoption leads to a higher value.
- Builds Trust and Loyalty: Positive experiences cultivate long-term relationships, ensuring sustained success.
- Amplifies Other Benefits: It complements and enhances tangible benefits like revenue growth and operational efficiency.
Stakeholder Experience is Intangible Yet Indispensable
While stakeholder experience might seem abstract compared to other benefits like sales and revenue or operational excellence, its impact is profound and far-reaching. Through thoughtful measurement, leveraging software, and understanding its role in fostering Adoption, you can unlock a dimension of value beyond mere numbers.
Value realization is complex and multifaceted by nature. From tangible gains to the intangible connections that bind stakeholders to your brand, the path to value is woven with decisions made with people, processes, technology, and data. Understanding and harnessing these aspects will pave the way for your organization’s thriving, responsive, and valuable future.