Intro to Stakeholder Management

Last Updated September 22, 2025

Brief Overview

Stakeholder management is the process used to monitor and manage relationships throughout the company for those central and tangential to your digital adoption program.

A strong digital adoption stakeholder management strategy can provide the following:

- Clarification between strategic, tactical, and technical roles and activities
- Foundation for hiring, outsourcing, or reallocating plans to fill competency gaps
- Operational efficiency for digital adoption activities with shared responsibility

How This Impacts Your Program

The following are potential outcomes of choosing or not choosing to operationalize your stakeholder management strategy.

Benefits of operationalizing

Maximized resource efficiency
Stronger value narrative
Higher stakeholder satisfaction/NPS
Accelerated scale/reach/growth

Risks of not operationalizing

Efficiency loss
Negative sentiment
Loss of executive sponsorship
Low predictability
Slower time to value for business stakeholders

Two Primary Tools

There are two primary artifacts you should have for an effective stakeholder management strategy:

Stakeholder Map: Depicts the relationship of the stakeholder to the Center of Excellence (CoE) and to one another + their level of influence and interest in the CoE.
Stakeholder Communication Plan: Outlines the activities, communications, frequency and more for easy communication management.

DAP Team & Stakeholder Map

Step 1: List the people on your DAP team and their current digital adoption responsibilities

Start with the implementation part of the team! Who builds and manages the content delivery for WalkMe today? Where are those people located in the organization (or outsourced?)

Step 2: Cross-reference & map to WalkMe's recommended Roles & Responsibilities

See WalkMe's recommended roles & responsibilities here.

Remember - it's common for one person to wear multiple DAP hats when your team is getting started! Here are some common responsibility combinations:

Step 3: Expand the map to your broader business stakeholders

These are your contacts in the business who are on the requesting and receiving end of WalkMe implementations. Information should include -

Name
Email
Job Title
Organization
Relevant software applications

Feeling overwhelmed with all the people? Try this process:

Start with your sponsors. Who originally purchased WalkMe?
Then, list all the lines of business/departments who currently have WalkMe. Can you name 1-2 business owners or Sponsors for each of them?
Next, name 1 technical contact per Application/System currently live with WalkMe
Don't feel like you need to list all the subject matter experts! Some (i.e. experts on the user journey) may change project-by-project, anyway

Step 4: Assess interest and influence of each current stakeholder

What is each business stakeholder's level of interest and influence in Digital Adoption? This will help inform your communication strategy. Include the following:

Needs/Wants
Concerns
Influence (High/Low)
Interest (High/Low)

Step 5: Expand your map to include future stakeholders

Don't limit the scope of your Stakeholder Map & communications to current stakeholders. Write down 2-3 prospective stakeholders you would like to work with to help expand the reach and impact of Digital Adoption at your company.

Stakeholder Communication Plan

Step 1: Review the Interest & Influence documented in your stakeholder map

This provides the foundation for how often and through what channels you communicate with your people.

Step 2: Create your Stakeholder Communication Plan

Include the following in your plan:

Types of communication (Email, Newsletter, Meeting)
How they intersect with the quadrant of the influence/interest matrix (High Interest/High Influence, High Interest/Low Influence, Low Interest/High Influence, and Low Interest/Low Influence)

For example:

A quarterly Digital Adoption newsletter, as it is lower effort and personalization than a status meeting, may be a good candidate for all four quadrants
An invite to a bi-annual strategic planning and goal cascading meeting may be reserved for only the audience of the High Interest/High Influence quadrant

Step 3: Document and roll out a strategy for team adherence to the Stakeholder Communication Plan

The Digital Adoption Program Manager is in charge of this.

Below is an example Stakeholder Communication Plan mapped to the four Interest/Influence quadrants:

Cross-Functional Relationships: Who to Prioritize

Your Stakeholder Map and Communication Plans don't only tell you who you have - they shed light on who you don't have. Here are three cross-functional relationships you should prioritize building, in order of importance:

IT Management

IT Management (See Architect Role for more detail) - Without taking the proper technical deployment steps, WalkMe won't reach your end-users. One of the most common barriers to accelerated scale of Digital Adoption is not having a streamlined deployment strategy. Relationships in IT create the foundation for an IT Governance strategy (See What is IT Governance? for more details)

Take Action - Understand what IT is interested in: Legal compliance, risk reduction, and cost reduction. Work with your WalkMe team if needed to provide Security & Compliance documents.

Targeted Product Owners

Targeted Product Owners (See Subject Matter Expert for more detail) - Work with your Executive Sponsor(s) to determine high-impact opportunities for WalkMe, then target owners of specific applications.

Take Action - Find out what these people are measured on. Be prepared with the question "What does adoption mean to you?" You'll need to co-define a digital adoption value story with these people - the earlier you start that conversation, the better!

User Experience (UX) Team

User Experience (UX) Team (See Designer for more detail) - **Important** Start this relationship by talking about UX, NOT UI. The UX team likely has valuable user journey maps that help understand the holistic user experience and friction points within the broader user journey. Limiting yourself to friction points in a singular application.

- Take Action - Ask what user journey mapping exercises the UX team has done, and if you can have access to those materials for an initiative intended to increase adoption of your company's current technology.

Download Templates & Tools

DAP Team & Stakeholder Map Workbook

Use this workbook to map your people and their role in digital adoption. Start with your core Digital Adoption Team (tab 1) and progress to your broader stakeholder group (tab 2).

Download here.

Stakeholder Communication Plan Workbook

Sample Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for a stakeholder communication plan based off the Interest/Influence matrix.

Download here.

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