Board management software can help your board succeed. It increases attendance and engagement, facilitates communication, and gives members access to all the information they need to be productive. It improves board management and corporate governance.
When you’re ready to make the switch from manual processes (or to a better portal), there are many board management software companies to choose from. And modern board portals all have, more or less, the same comprehensive features that are supposed to make meeting planning and corporate governance easier.
What sets board management software companies apart is WHY they built their platform the way they did. Did they design it with users in mind, so members get an intuitive, guided experience? Or did they design it without considering users’ technology comfort level, so the software is outside users’ overall knowledge base? What about onboarding, training, and support? Are they unlimited, and offered 24/7/365?
Finding a new board management software company is easy. Finding a company that understands how boards and board members work—and designs their software with that in mind—is harder.
Keep these features in mind when you’re looking for board management software. They’ll make your board meetings more productive and help your board members stay engaged. Remember that board portal software only helps if everyone uses it, so make sure the software partner you choose is built with the user experience in mind.
Features Your Board Needs to Be Productive and Successful
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Meeting Flexibility. Conduct meetings online, virtually, or both. The board room looks different than it used to, and members need to be able to attend meetings from anywhere.
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Access to Information. Users can access relevant information anywhere, from any device. Keep meetings more efficient by giving members easy access to all the information they need, keeping meetings focused on important tasks and decision making, rather than making sure everyone’s information is up to date.
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Offline Access. Users can work from anywhere, even when there’s no WiFi. Any work that’s done offline is seamlessly updated when you’re back online.
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Minutes and Agendas. Create, update in real time, and share, to ensure everyone is working from the most recent versions. Templates make these meeting staples even easier.
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Messaging. Secure communication between board members is key and helps foster collaboration. Facilitating communication between meetings leads to more effective and productive time in the boardroom.
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Calendar Integrations. Integrations with Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Email, Google Calendar, and Gmail provide a seamless experience for board members, with automatic updates of their calendars for all types of meetings, voting, tasks, survey events, and more.
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Real-Time Updates. Avoid versioning issues by updating documents and information in real time. That way, whenever anyone accesses meeting information, they can be sure they’re working from the most recent version.
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Surveys, Evaluations, and Questionnaires. Templates of common questionnaires and disclosures (including D&O, Conflict of Interest, and more), make it easy for admins to create, deploy, and collect surveys. Plus, members can view past surveys and questionnaires and quickly approve them if the information hasn’t changed.
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Voting and Polling. Boards need to make decisions as quickly and efficiently as possible. Virtual voting and polling features make it easy.
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Secure Repository. Keep all your relevant documents in a protected library, including policies, bylaws, guidelines, minutes, agendas, contracts, notes, and more. Control permissions so everyone sees only what they’re supposed to see.
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Role-Based Permissions. Admins can give each member access to only the documents they’re authorized to see. And members can be given access to edit or only view each document.
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eSignatures. Easy to collect and 100% secure, members a can add their eSignatures to any documents, quickly and easily.
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Sort by Topics. Tag, track, and retrieve documents and information instantly. Link together meetings, votes, surveys, agenda items, and more, to help with organization and long-range strategic planning.
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Member Directory. Get to know your fellow board members and get to work. View member profile information, including contact information, biography, location, group and committee membership, and more.
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Board Reporting. Keep track of board member activity and engagement, to ensure your board is functioning as efficiently as possible.
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Video integration. No need to link to outside platforms—Zoom and Skype integrations make meetings easy.
- News and Announcements. Keep everyone up to date with board developments. You can share updates with everyone, specific groups, or individual members.
Start with the Features, End with the Philosophy
Board management software can help your board be more productive, for improved corporate governance.
Ensuring your new software has all the bells and whistles you need is easy with modern portals. It’s important to choose a software that’s purposefully designed the way users need to use it, not one that’s overly technical or more than users need. It should be able to grow with you, and facilitate your success.
Good corporate governance is hard. Your board management software shouldn’t make it harder.
