Newsletter, September 2007 |
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Contents this month
Introducing CitizenBase:
stakeholder management made easy
It’s the moment that we at Dialogue by Design have been
warming up to for many months now. Our innovative new stakeholder
management system, CitizenBase, is about to be launched upon the
world.
Over the years we have found that one of the biggest challenges
in managing large and complex engagement processes is to ensure
we serve the participants. To do this properly, we need to know
who and where they are, what interests and concerns them, what
events they have attended and information they have asked for;
in fact, everything that ensures they can be fully involved.
This is never easy, especially when the information is constantly
changing. So our project managers have been creating, developing
and testing our own stakeholder management system - purpose-designed
for ourselves and other organisations which manage public and
stakeholder engagement and consultation processes. It is far
more than just another contacts management package.
CitizenBase is accessed online, and allows any organisation
to custom-build a stakeholder directory. As you would expect,
it enables you to collect, store, update and retrieve contact
details of individuals and organisations securely and systematically.
But this is just the beginning. CitizenBase also allows you
to create ‘areas of interest’ which can be used to
identify the right target audience for consultation, event invitations,
newsletters or other information. On top of this, you can create ‘categories’ to
segment stakeholders by type (for example, as businesses, members,
patients, staff or any other categories you require). You can
then search for stakeholders within parameters such as postcodes,
names, interests or categories.
CitizenBase also offers you a template for stakeholder analysis:
you can create a checklist with several tiers, starting with
different sectors, and ending with specific types of organisations
or business areas. For example, if you start with the public
sector, the checklist will remind you of different types of government
bodies. If you choose 'central government departments' then the
next tier could be government departments, government agencies
and non-departmental government bodies. Once you have completed
the checklist to your satisfaction you need never worry about
inadvertently leaving some important organisation off your stakeholder
list.
The CitizenBase system allows for varying levels of administration
and editing access, which you can tailor for the individuals
throughout your organisation. It’s this function that enables
CitizenBase to be a constantly evolving system that can respond
dynamically to the changing nature of citizen engagement.
CitizenBase is now being used in Dialogue by Design projects
and we have made it as uncomplicated and intuitive as possible;
not least because our entire organisation and many of our clients
will be using it on a daily basis. It is now available for anyone
to use. For further details please contact Pippa Hyam at Dialogue
by Design either by email [email protected] or by calling
020 8683 6602.
