The focus for this issue is to understanding the unique needs of the business requirement for each of your stakeholders. Because each one of the stakeholders that you have identified has unique needs, and it is incumbent upon the SMM lead to address those needs when designing the SMM program. Below are some of the unique needs of various stakeholders.
Let's start someplace we don't usually begin when speaking about stakeholders, let's start with the meeting participants! A unique need for them is to know that you have done your due diligence in order to provide the proper duty of care for their safety and security while they are in transit and in attendance at the meeting. Additionally, the learning environments need to be designed in order to facilitate the exchange of ideas and networking during the live events that appeal to several generations at once.
Meeting sponsors have their own unique needs. In fact, you need to understand that they must feel extremely confident that the meeting location being recommended is being put forth because it is the best fit for their meeting, not because it is simply $4.00 less per night per sleeping room than the alternative hotel.
The travel department has the unique need of understanding how the meeting and event expenditures can help to leverage the transient hotel program. Similar there is a need to understand how the group air spend impacts the preferred airline agreements
If you are in the process of assessing and deploying technology, you need to have a keen understanding of the unique needs of the information technology (IT) department. They will have concerns regarding the capability, privacy, compatibility and standards of the technology you intend to deploy.
Suppliers should also be considered as stakeholders, and thus their needs should be taken into consideration as well. They need to know your process and policy and they should be alerted in advance to upcoming changes in policy or process.
If your organization has a compliance and/or regulatory department, it is critical to understand their very unique approval and data reporting needs. As you design your SMM program, it is essential that their requirements be built into the process.
Certainly, there are many more key stakeholders to include in your process, but this should give you an idea of the variety of unique issues you will need to understand if your SMM is to be inclusive and successful..