Board meetings are an important business management method, but their effectiveness is not ensured. To a large extent, the efficiency of meetings can be improved with the help of modern digital tools. This article will highlight the basic points to consider when choosing a board software.
How can board software help board members?
A leader sets the tone for the rest of the crew. For this reason, senior management (board of directors) is key to developing a positive and influential organizational culture. Board members are the ones who can make or break an organization because leadership is very important. Continuing on this point, it is also important for the organization to support and integrate board members at all levels. For this reason, board management software was designed. It is a very handy tool that allows board members to coordinate and communicate easily.
Board management software can be helpful in many ways:
- The board portal provides a platform where board members can easily communicate with each other. The board software is a highly secure platform where board members do not have to worry about data leakage.
- A virtual boardroom allows board members to share, download, view, or edit any document, depending on their authority.
- The board portal effectively streamlines most board-related activities, such as meeting preparations, distribution, and adoption of action plans, meeting minutes, etc.
- A board displays issues from one or more projects in columns reflecting team progress. It gives the team a common overview of all tasks that have not yet started, that are currently being processed and that have already been completed.
So, the software includes the most popular modules supporting the main board management processes.
Guide on choosing the right board software vendor
The market for board management solutions is large and fragmented. There are no obvious leaders, as, for example, in the case of text editors. Dozens of services and applications are fighting for every percentage of the market. They are designed for organizations of various sizes and are radically different in functionality. Some basic task management capabilities are added to related products like CRM to make presenting yourself as a single solution for all needs easier. However, it creates even more confusion when finding a tool for your workflows.
There are countless criteria for choosing a board portal since each industry they have its specifics. Let’s talk about those five criteria considered universal for all sectors.
- User-friendly interface
The user interface is the main tool for interacting company employees with the system. How convenient it depends on the time for training employees to work with the board software, the number of errors in the future, and the time spent on correcting them.
- Setting up access to different levels
As a rule, documents in the company have different levels of confidentiality – from public to super secret, which contain financial and other important information. Therefore, the software should provide the ability to configure roles and access levels for individuals and groups, such as departments.
- Remote collaboration
The larger the company, the lower the likelihood that only one person will work on the document. Collaboration makes it easier and faster to create critical documents and get them approved by management.
- Creation of an auto-updating archive.
The average retention period for an important document in a company is three years. The most important documents can be stored indefinitely. Thus, the board portal must provide the ability to create an archive, configure personalized access to it, and automatically create a backup copy after a specified period.