Business Consulting > Issues Management and Corporate Decision-making

What is an Issue?

An issue relates to a gap between what your company is currently doing and what stakeholders in your business expect of you. Stakeholders are individuals or groups internal or external to a corporation that are affected by the corporation's performance. The stakeholders can be employees, investors, customers, media, community groups, activists, etc

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What is Issues Management?

According to the Issues Management Council, Issues Management is the "process by which you close this gap. The phrase 'issue management' was coined by Howard Chase in April of 1976…Chase was fascinated with the increasing influence that outside forces exerted on corporations." Chase felt that if you could alert the organization to a possible issue early enough, plans could be made in advance to better deal with the issue when it actually hit or even allow the organization to by-pass the issue altogether. As a result the Issues Management Process Model was formulated in 1977
  1. Issue identification - doing a gap analysis between social, political, economic and technology trends and corporate goals.
  2. Issue analysis - determining the extent of these differences, how the corporation and others deal with the issue, and the possible consequences.
  3. Issue change strategy options - map out alternative solutions for dealing with the issue
  4. Issue action program - deciding on goals, strategies, and tactics for dealing with the issue
  5. Evaluation of results - to make sure strategy is working
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What are the benefits of Issues Management?

  • Avoid or mitigate conflicts both internally and externally thus avoiding crises
  • Deal with issues and crises more effectively.
  • Monitor strategies to determine their benefits and sharpen their approach.
  • Identify trends and discover opportunities that can lead to creation of products and services meeting hidden demand.
  • Sharpen internal strategy by comparison with external trends.
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How can technology support Issues Management?

In the digital age, monitoring and identifying trends, as well as managing processes are the perfect areas for the application of online technology. In the past, reading news, conference reports, legislation results, etc. was a time consuming manual process. The comprehensive analysis of these sources of information was an even greater task, and making sure this analysis resulted in positive action that was verifiable, again a painful process. All of these sources are now available digitally or can be converted through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to a digital form.

These digital documents can be categorized and taxonomies created through such techniques as Topic Maps, Case Based Reasoning, PLSA (Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis), etc. This process can also be performed on data supplied by the corporation in the form of Meta-data or unstructured documents. These techniques are key to current online Knowledge Management systems. Through these automated technologies, internal and external trends can be identified and compared, allowing new issues to surface. These issues can then be automatically monitored and routed to the correct decision maker. Business process management tools can then automate the process of following through on all the further steps of the Issue Management Process Model.

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arvato systems and Issues Management

arvato systems teaming up with the Corporate Communications Department of Bertelsmann, can now offer a web-based packaged solution that utilizes the cutting edge technology described above to aid large corporations or Public Relations firms solve the problems of Issues Management, IM net. Digital news feeds, online website content and corporate or external clipping services can all be integrated into this solution to provide the digital data to identify and monitor issues. Issues can be assigned to Issue Champions. Follow-ups can be monitored through electronic routing, and resolutions can be monitored through electronic alerts using every possible channel of communications: email, SMS, etc. In addition resolutions can be implemented such as PR email campaigns, informational websites, etc.

Let us discuss your current solution for dealing with problems before you enter a crisis, or tracking external trends to uncover new opportunity for business. We are sure that we can smoothly integrate this automated solution with your processes, bringing you all the advantages of Issues Management, reducing your risk, and making you much better prepared for the inevitable hassles inherent in the modern business landscape.

For more information please fill out the following request form

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