Drive Stakeholder Value: Journeys, Relationships and Demand
Drive Stakeholder Value covers the relationship between provider and consumer: how demand is understood and shaped, how customer journeys are designed, and how value is co-created across the relationship lifecycle.
The customer journey
Stages: explore, engage, offer, agree, onboard, co-create, deliver and support, realize, improve. Each stage contains touchpoints; mapping the journey exposes moments of truth, pain points and drop-off, and shows where the provider must act.
Stakeholders and agreements
- Map stakeholders (customers, users, sponsors, influencers) and their interests; use RACI for decision clarity.
- Relationship types: basic, cooperative, partnership - the type sets expectations for communication and shared risk.
- Service level agreements with customers, operational level agreements internally and underpinning contracts with suppliers must be consistent; measure experience as well as service levels.
Demand and shaping
Understand demand patterns (seasonal, cyclical, random), segment the customer portfolio, and shape demand through pricing, quotas, channel design and product design. Onboarding - communication, training, self-service - largely determines time-to-value.
Worked example
A SaaS HR tool shows heavy drop-off at data migration. Journey mapping locates the moment of truth; the fix is a pre-onboarding checklist, a guided import session and a 48-hour follow-up. Reasoning: the intervention sits at the stage where customer effort peaks, and time-to-first-value plus ticket volume measure whether it worked.
Traps
Ending the journey at go-live. Treating SLA attainment as proof of a good experience. Building one journey for every segment. Shaping demand only through marketing while ignoring capacity signals.