Understanding Key Business Stakeholders Through Software Development

Understanding Key Business Stakeholders Through Software Development

Connecting Business Studies with Real-World Technology

When building software, it's easy to focus entirely on writing code, designing databases, creating APIs, and fixing bugs. However, successful software development requires more than technical skills.

Every business has people and organizations that influence its operations or are affected by its decisions. These are known as stakeholders.

Whether you're developing a restaurant management system, an e-commerce platform, a property management application, or a financial system, understanding stakeholders helps you build software that solves real problems.

In this article, we'll explore the key stakeholders in a business and how they relate to software development.

What Are Business Stakeholders?

Business stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations that have an interest in a business because they can affect it or be affected by its activities.

For example, when developing an online shopping platform, stakeholders may include business owners, customers, employees, suppliers, payment providers, and competing businesses.

Each stakeholder has different needs and expectations. A developer must understand these needs before designing and implementing a solution.

Let's examine five important stakeholders.

1. The Company: The Business Organization

A company is an organization established to carry out business activities. It brings together people, equipment, buildings, technology, and other resources needed to provide goods or services.

Companies range from individuals operating small businesses to large corporations operating in multiple countries.

How does this relate to software development?

Imagine a restaurant that wants to replace manual sales records with a Point of Sale (POS) system.

The restaurant is the business organization that will use the software to manage its operations.

The system might include:

• Sales and order management.
• Inventory tracking.
• Menu and product management.
• Employee accounts and permissions.
• Financial reports.
• Customer records.

The software should support the company's actual business processes rather than introduce unnecessary complexity.

Before writing code, developers should understand how the company operates, what problems it faces, and what it expects the system to achieve.

Key takeaway: The company provides the business environment in which the software operates. Understanding its processes helps developers build practical solutions.

2. Owners: The People Who Invest in the Business

Owners are the individuals or organizations that own a business and have a financial interest in its success.

They may provide the initial capital needed to start the business. Entrepreneurs often develop business ideas and take risks, but they may invite other investors to contribute funding.

In companies, shareholders become partial owners by purchasing shares.

Owners generally want the business to remain sustainable, grow, manage risks, and generate satisfactory returns.

How does this relate to software development?

Suppose a business owner invests in developing an e-commerce platform.

The owner may want the platform to:

• Increase sales.
• Reduce operational costs.
• Reach more customers.
• Protect business information.
• Provide useful sales reports.

As a developer, you need to understand these business goals because they influence project requirements and priorities.

For example, if the owner's main objective is to increase sales, improving the checkout process may be more valuable than adding a complicated feature that customers rarely use.

However, technical decisions should balance business goals with security, reliability, accessibility, and long-term maintenance.

Key takeaway: Owners provide resources and direction, while developers help turn business goals into working software.

3. Customers: The People Who Buy or Use Products and Services

Customers are the people or organizations that purchase a business's goods or services. A group of customers served by a business is known as its market.

Businesses attract customers by offering quality products, useful services, reasonable prices, and a positive customer experience.

Customers can also be classified as internal or external.

External customers

External customers are people or organizations outside the business who purchase or use its products and services.

Example: A customer ordering food through a restaurant's mobile application.

Internal customers

Internal customers are employees or departments within an organization that depend on services, information, or outputs provided by other employees or departments.

Example: A restaurant manager using sales reports generated by the cashier's POS system.

The concept of internal customers reminds businesses that employees also need effective tools, information, and support to serve external customers well.

How does this relate to software development?

When developing an application, understanding customer needs is essential.

For example, customers using an online shopping platform may expect:

• Simple registration and login.
• Fast page loading.
• Secure payments.
• Accurate product information.
• Order tracking.
• Helpful customer support.

If the application is difficult to use or unreliable, customers may abandon it and choose a competitor.

Developers can gather customer requirements through interviews, surveys, feedback, usability testing, and analysis of user behavior.

Key takeaway: Customer needs should guide software features, usability, and quality.

4. Collaborators: External Partners Who Help the Business Operate

Collaborators are individuals or organizations that work with a business but are not part of its internal organization.

They provide products, services, resources, expertise, or infrastructure that help the business operate effectively.

Examples include:

• Suppliers.
• Banks and financial institutions.
• Creditors.
• Accounting firms.
• Retailers and distributors.
• Recruitment agencies.
• Technology service providers.

Collaborators may also be described as business partners, alliances, or members of a business network.

How does this relate to software development?

Modern applications rarely operate entirely on their own. They often integrate with external services.

Consider an e-commerce platform that relies on:

• A payment gateway to process transactions.
• A bank or financial service to support payments.
• A delivery company to transport orders.
• An email service to send order confirmations.
• A cloud provider to host the application.

These organizations are collaborators because they help the business deliver its services.

From a developer's perspective, collaboration often involves APIs, authentication credentials, data exchange, error handling, and monitoring.

For example, if a payment gateway becomes unavailable, the application should handle the failure gracefully instead of incorrectly marking an order as paid.

Developers should also consider data privacy, service agreements, integration costs, and dependency risks.

Key takeaway: Collaborators extend a business's capabilities, and software integrations help different organizations work together.

5. Competitors: Businesses Offering Similar Products or Services

Competitors are businesses that compete for the same customers or market opportunities.

They may offer similar products, alternative solutions, or services that satisfy the same customer needs.

Businesses study competitors to understand market trends, identify opportunities, improve their offerings, and develop a competitive advantage.

A competitive advantage is something that allows a business to perform better than its rivals in ways that matter to customers.

How does this relate to software development?

Imagine you're building a property management application for landlords and tenants.

Other applications may already offer similar services. To compete effectively, your application needs to provide meaningful value.

You might differentiate it through:

• Easier property registration.
• Reliable rent payment tracking.
• Faster maintenance request handling.
• Better communication between landlords and tenants.
• Clear financial reports.
• Strong security and data protection.

Competitor analysis can help identify missing features and weaknesses in existing solutions.

However, copying competitors is not always the best strategy. A better approach is to understand customer problems and build a solution that addresses them effectively.

Key takeaway: Competitors encourage businesses to innovate, improve quality, and offer better value.

Connecting Stakeholders to a Software Project

Let's bring these concepts together using a restaurant management system as an example.

Stakeholder	Main interest	Example in the system
Company	Efficient operations	Managing orders and inventory
Owners	Profitability and growth	Viewing revenue and expenses
External customers	Convenient service	Placing and tracking orders
Internal customers	Efficient work	Cashiers and kitchen staff managing orders
Collaborators	Successful service delivery	Payment gateways and suppliers
Competitors	Winning the same market	Other restaurant POS providers

Each stakeholder has different expectations, so developers must identify and prioritize requirements carefully.

For example, restaurant owners may prioritize sales reports, kitchen staff may need immediate order notifications, and customers may care most about ordering speed.

A successful system must account for these different needs without compromising security or reliability.

Why Stakeholder Analysis Matters in Software Engineering

Stakeholder analysis is the process of identifying stakeholders, understanding their interests, and assessing how they influence a project.

It is important because it helps developers:

1. Gather accurate requirements: Understand what different users actually need.
2. Set priorities: Focus on features that provide the greatest value.
3. Reduce misunderstandings: Clarify expectations before implementation.
4. Manage conflicts: Balance competing requirements and limited resources.
5. Improve adoption: Build systems that fit real working practices.
6. Manage risks: Identify dependencies and potential problems early.

For example, an owner might request detailed access to all system data, while an employee's role should restrict access to sensitive financial or personal information. Stakeholder analysis helps reveal these requirements so the developer can implement appropriate permissions.

Conclusion

Business stakeholders are essential to understanding how an organization operates and what it needs to succeed.

The company provides the organizational environment, owners invest resources, customers create demand, collaborators support operations, and competitors influence market decisions.

As software developers, we should understand these relationships before building applications. The best software solutions do more than execute code correctly: they support business objectives, meet user needs, and create value for the people and organizations involved.

Remember: Good software development starts with understanding people and their problems, not just choosing a programming language or framework.

Discussion

If you were building a restaurant management system, which stakeholder would you prioritize when gathering requirements: the business owner, the employees, or the customers? How would you balance their different needs?