Streamline communications and improve decisions with boardroom software

Boards work hard to recruit qualified members but it’s easy to slip up keeping them engaged. Boardroom technology can help make board communication, meetings and board decisions easy to access and actively participate in. And cut hours of work for board admins.

Board directors want to feel like their time on a board is making a difference. How can you do that? By ensuring that board communication, meetings and board decisions are easy to access and actively participate in. This doesn’t have to be more work for board administrators, in fact with the right technology, it can be less.

Boardroom software is purpose-built to reduce the effort to prepare for in-person or online board meetings (for directors and admins) to keep board members informed and to support board members’ governance roles. Board management software also serves to make board activity transparent and support updates in real-time and share documents securely. That’s important for corporate boards, nonprofit organizations, and even government oversight agencies.

If you’re considering using software for board management or reassessing if your board management system in place is effective, consider how the software could help with common board goals to:

• Streamline board operations
• Enhance board collaboration and communication
• Boost productivity and decision-making effectiveness
• Simplify board meeting management
• Ensure security and document management

The first thing to consider is what technology can do to improve board operations.

Streamline board operations with the right boardroom software

A common frustration among board members is that how board meeting packages are shared can make meeting preparation difficult. If board documents are hard to access or updates are emailed causing version confusion, or there’s a login and password that’s hard to reset – all these obstacles can get in the way of arriving at the meeting prepared.

The bigger hassle though can be on the board administrator or corporate secretary’s side. Gathering board documents from various executive team members, firming up the meeting agenda, and ensuring last-minute document updates get included – all those steps can delay getting board documents out in a timely manner, and lead to director frustration.

It’s up to the board chair and administrator to develop a way of operating the board that supports good governance. Board meeting software, like Aprio’s board portal software, can be a big help as it equips board administrators to:

• Save hours and efforts in preparing board meeting packages
• Save time building agendas with convenient links to relevant documents
• At meeting time – connect seamlessly with video conferencing for virtual board meetings, help everyone follow along with the agenda
• Auto-generate an outline for meeting minutes- add activities, track decision resolutions, for faster prep and circulation of minutes
• Survey board members on convenient meeting times and show a calendar of board dates
• Provide self-serve task management and access to commonly used board documents like strategic plans, bylaws, committee roles
• Automate an audit trail of board activity in real time

Enhance board collaboration and communication with board software

Some of the most important work of a board is done between meetings, where board members connect with one another to collaborate on strategic conversations, or do committee work.

Modern board meeting software supports these conversations with collaboration tools to keep discussions confidential. Board members can use:

• Shared annotation in documents to discuss topics and decisions
• Discuss topics using online chat tools
• Conduct committee work, sharing select documents with just relevant board members
• Find current board member contact information to keep directors connected.

Boost productivity and decision-making with boardroom software

Most board members have busy schedules beyond their board work. They may have a professional career, be on other boards, have kids to get to soccer – point is, whatever you can do to make it time-efficient to contribute to your board will help you keep and recruit quality board members.

The biggest time savings for board members in using board meeting software is in getting “no confusion” access to board meeting materials – including the latest version of documents and latest agenda.

There is no email swirl, and no login issues if you choose boardroom software like Aprio with secure self-serve password reset and 24/7 support from qualified people who have walked miles as board administrators.

Consider how a credit union saw productivity gains with their board:

“The biggest win with Aprio is how much we’ve improved pre-meeting engagement, which has led to more productive meetings and better attendance. The way Aprio pushes out our agenda and meeting reminders right to people’s inboxes, prompts directors to prepare more thoroughly, in advance, resulting in informed, succinct, and decisive discussion at meetings.” – Point West Credit Union CEO, Amy Nelson

Simplify meeting management with intuitive boardroom software

While a key focus of a board needs to be on recruiting and engaging qualified and high-contributing board members. The way a board operates also has to work for the executive team members and board administrators.

Board meeting software addresses these common obstacles of board corporate secretaries, executive assistants, or board governance leaders:

Non-board purpose-built tools, like Adobe for PDFs, are time intensive to build a board package. When there’s an update – the whole thing needs to be rebuilt.

• Communicating updates via email can lead to board member confusion on “which is right” board package to review, or risk some members reviewing an outdated version and frustration at the meeting at people feeling out of the loop.
• Trying to set up and manage meetings using multiple tools like Zoom or Teams for virtual meetings and document management or file-sharing systems can consume time.
• Board members often do board preparation after common business hours and it’s hard to support them.

Regardless of how hard the board governance team works to arrange meetings, prepare board materials, and respond to directors, if the technology in use and support offered falls short of member expectations, that hampers board engagement.

The reality is, the technology we all use today makes us expect self-serve task management, searchable access to information and access on our mobile devices, with support whenever we want it. Board administrators and chairs need to deliver on member expectations for board information to be delivered in a modern way.

Enhance security and secure document management with boardroom software

Protecting data has become one of the important risks a board manages. Consider discussions around loans for a financial institution, around CEO compensation, or around crisis management – those board discussions and many others must be kept confidential.

Many IT teams tasked with data privacy set up solid systems for organizations that fall short for boards. Consider the needs of a prominent healthcare organization:

“We had two issues to address: ensuring data security and providing our board members easy access to information. Prior to choosing Aprio, we were using SharePoint. Our internal team liked it. It was secure, and had lots of functionality.

On the access side though, directors had challenges. We need very strict confidentiality with patient records and health information and the way we used SharePoint with external board members led to access issues. They would forget their password or not be able to find documents.” – Island Health Board Liaison, Louise Carlow

Elevate your board with powerful, purpose-built boardroom software

If your board is seeking to elevate how your board operates, it’s wise to consider all the needs of the board, executive team members and those running your board administration. The Aprio team would be glad to help in your evaluation. Our board portal is the most helpful board meeting software that takes the stress out of board meeting preparation and helps increase engagement among the board.

Aprio helps organizations large and small efficiently run board and executive meetings, keep leaders up to date with governance processes and keep data secure. Governance features we hear that set us apart include reports to track board and executive task management, online voting tools, and the ability to assign granular user permissions for advanced document control.

“Aprio has made our governance practices so much easier and more efficient. The efficiency of providing board information to our directors has improved immensely using Aprio.” – Elaine Hasemore, Board administrator, BlueShore Financial

Whether you’re looking to make a switch in board management software or are considering getting started with board management software for your organization, assess the fit with Aprio. Get in touch with our sales team. We’d love to learn more about your organization and how we can help support your board goals.