Upgrading your digital strategy to manage your issues and stakeholders, and to prove your ROI, has never been more important. With many of the traditional ways of lobbying upended, successful corporate, external, and government affairs teams must digitally transform the way they anticipate, manage, and respond to public issues using technology.
While this digital transformation is not new to the public affairs world, 2020 pushed it into overdrive. Now, the question is: how does technology allow public affairs professionals to do everything remotely, in a way that keeps teams cohesive, successful, and on message while crushing their goals?
“I think the big challenge we're all facing … is how to keep organized because the inflow of information is massive — and how to make sure that we focus on the right things,” says Marcel Halma, vice president of public affairs and government relations at Nouryon, a specialty chemicals company operating in 80 countries, with 10,000 employees, and an annual turnover of $5 billion, that built a fully integrated team using FiscalNote.
Keeping track of legislation, stakeholders, and teams across the world is a big task. The volume of information and legislation has been steadily increasing over the years and now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, governments at the local, state, and national levels have had to ramp up activity to effectively respond. This adds an unexpected level of complexity for public affairs teams.
“Going forward, working the old-fashioned way with Excel sheets and Share Points, etc, is not sufficient.” Halma adds. Tools that combine political intelligence with stakeholder management; connect teams and streamline workflows; help analyze data to assess feasibility and impact on your company and your issues; and help define your team’s ROI are essential for creating a sustainable government affairs strategy going into 2021 and beyond.
Issues Management & Analytics
It’s not just the volume of information that has dramatically increased, it’s also the number of platforms to keep track of. Issues management technology must allow you to store your information and keep track of meetings held, what was said, and what are your key documents and positions on your issues.
But even beyond that, Alan Hardacre, director of group corporate affairs at Imperial Brands, a multinational consumer goods tobacco company, believes artificial intelligence will become more and more important for government affairs technology. Specifically, tools that can help visualize trends and data “to move into a space where it’s helping you not just determine what happened yesterday and where things are today, but perhaps where they might be tomorrow,” he says.