Tractivity: Paving the Way in Stakeholder Management Solutions

A UK-based stakeholder management provider needed to find a security partner to become an extension of their security team, while providing enterprise-grade security and 24/7 support at a manageable cost.

Founded in the UK, Tractivity develops and deploys cloud-based stakeholder relationship management (SRM) software. Clients utilize Tractivity’s technology and services to handle complex, multi-billion-dollar projects in industries such as energy, utilities, transportation, and healthcare. These projects are often highly sensitive and take several years to complete.

Currently, Tractivity is engaged with Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, one of the UK’s major vaccine suppliers, to manage all communications regarding the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. Other initiatives include constructing nuclear power plants, extending metro lines, and building out trans-national railway infrastructure. In each of these projects, Tractivity’s clients are often legally obligated to engage with the community, request and respond to concerns and comments, and adhere to government regulations and timelines. As one can imagine, all of this requires a massive amount of coordination.

Enter Tractivity’s SRM software. Put simply, Tractivity is a “communications suite for stakeholder community engagement,” says Mark Aubin, Tractivity’s head of sales and marketing. Tractivity brings together all communications into one platform, whether digital (emails, online surveys, social media) or non-digital (comments made at town halls). Tractivity’s platform allows clients to integrate thousands of data points into one platform and then have the data distilled into meaningful insights and visible in a single dashboard. This enables clients to track overall sentiment and key performance indicators throughout the life of the project. Aubin summarizes, “The beauty of one tool is that we give clarity on what is happening across the stakeholder landscape.”

This may sound very similar to a customer relationship management (CRM) software. However, Aubin clarifies, “The difference is that CRM is designed to manage interactions with existing and potential customers with the intention of increasing sales; maximizing profit is at the heart. On the other hand, stakeholder relationship management (SRM) software is about keeping the stakeholder at the heart. The end goal is to successfully complete the project while remaining compliant keeping their stakeholders – that is, the community – positively engaged and delivering better outcomes.”

Tractivity has always been focused on maintaining a high standard of security and compliance across their solution. Initially, Tractivity purchased and maintained their own servers, which they co-located at a shared data center that provided a certain level of service and support. This model allowed Tractivity to deliver the confidence in data security to their clients.

Over time, however, Tractivity occasionally encountered technical anomalies with a couple of the more complex deployments and found that the knowledge and experience of the data center support team was often lacking. This presented a significant challenge for Tractivity. Additionally, with the substantial cost of owning and managing their own infrastructure in the co-location space, Tractivity decided they needed to make a change.

At the time, software-as-a-service (SaaS) was just starting to gain traction in the marketplace and Tractivity had already made the decision to invest in their own SaaS platform, which is now the hallmark of their service.

During their search process and while they were still with the co-location provider, Tractivity experienced a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Their provider was unable to help them or offer any solutions at the time. This was the impetus for Tractivity to make an immediate move to a different solution.

Tractivity had already been evaluating Armor when the DDoS attack occurred. Jonathan Mclachlan, Technical Director at RE:Digital Group, had previous experience partnering with Armor on several projects for Tractivity’s sister company RE:SYSTEMS and recommended Armor as a company and a team that Tractivity could trust. Armor quickly engaged with Tractivity and created a solution to seamlessly migrate all of Tractivity’s customers over to Armor’s private cloud. With this, Tractivity did not experience any down time and their clients ended up receiving greater security coverage without losing access to their critical data.