Managing a board of directors and your board meetings is not that easy as it sounds, especially if the board members and support staff are frequent flyers traveling all over the globe on any given day.
At the very least, they’re sure to be very busy people located in different parts of the city.
Herding them all into one place at the same time is not an easy scheduling task, and then there’s the matter of agreeing on the meeting agenda, voting on issues, and coming up an implementation plan that everyone can agree on.
It may not be visible to the curious bystander, but a lot of heavy backstage spade work is involved in making these board meetings a success.
You can make it easier using tech tools that bridge this distance between the board members and enable you to present, review and share relevant information.
Different boards have different needs. But they all share some common tasks. Listed below are 4 tech tools to manage board meetings, and all of them will help you address these common traits.
One of the most important aspects of a board meet is creating, presenting and tracking the numerous board meeting documents like agenda, minutes, by-laws, policies etc.
Prezi is a next generation presentation tool and is more than an alternative to the traditional slide-based presentation. Instead of slides, Prezi uses one big canvas which enables you to easily emphasise the data and ideas presented there.
Diligent Boardbooks is designed specifically to assist support staff to create board information and to facilitate board members to share, read, and collaborate on that information through an easy-to-use interface.
It is a user-friendly and secure tech tool that offers complete control to your organisation, along with flexibility and productivity.
BoardEffect is a portal system that delivers efficiency and productivity by allowing easy management of board information. Offers from the most basic online board books and event scheduling to the complex information collaborating and reporting features.
Coming out of the dedicated portals segment, it is time now to deal a little with the subject of a tech tool that will complement all the aforementioned tools.
The board needs to confer extensively on the information received, on the board book and other relevant documents before a board meeting can be scheduled and called to order.
Hangouts enables just that. It facilitates real-time discussions through instant messaging, SMS, video conferencing, VOIP, and online presentations.
With Google Hangouts, you can:
Conclusion: Custom made and dedicated tech tools to manage board meetings are less likely to be practical and affordable for a small organisation such as a startup or SME.
At the lower end of the scale, it will be best for these organisations to find their own solutions using some of the GSuite tools like Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Calendar for creating, sharing, and scheduling a board meeting.
This sort of solution, though lacking in the features that premium solutions offer, is a great way to get started and meet some of the most basic board meeting requirements.