Having the ability to organize a meeting regardless of the geographical location of other board members is key to retaining operational stability in crises of all kinds. Digital board meetings are an integral part of successful digitalization efforts designed to help organizations make important decisions swiftly. That level of agility and responsiveness isn’t always possible with in-person board meetings.
In this article we discuss why the digital meeting format is a viable alternative to physical board meeting formats.
Be Flexible and Prepared
As the recent coronavirus outbreak and Australian bushfires show, crises of all sorts can happen. The only variable we can’t determine is when the next crisis of this scale will occur. It’s thus important to have precautionary measures at the ready to minimize the possible impact caused by extreme conditions.
Coronavirus has effectively rendered in-person meetings highly dangerous due to the possible risk of infection. However, organizations still need viable options to hold meetings to remain operational and discuss further courses of action when such disasters happen.
How Digital Meetings Help Solve Problems of In-Person Board Meetings
Whether due to external crises or scheduling issues, companies look to digital meetings to achieve higher levels of efficiency and governance. Board portals offer a safe and intuitive environment for organizing and conducting board meetings, including those during emergencies.
Improved Collaboration and Transparency
During executive sessions or whenever decisions must be made promptly, board portals help board members take appropriate action fast with interactive voting capabilities and instant feedback. The board portal’s system stores digital records of all activities and makes them available for audit. This feature is especially helpful to ensure that boards meet compliance requirements.
Tools facilitating information sharing and collaboration make digital meetings dynamic and data-driven events. Directors can annotate on documents, add files, assign tasks, review completed tasks, sign documents, and answer questions.
Increased Efficiency and Productivity
Board portals are robust management tools for board activities. They let board members store all crucial communication and documents in one secure place. With everything at hand, including pending tasks, budgets, voting results, survey reports, board members don’t get lost in the sea of cascading emails and multiple tracker applications.
Simplified Board Pack Preparation and Distribution
Streamlining company operations requires flexibility and efficiency that stretches across all processes and employees. Board portals facilitate the preparation and distribution of board packs and agendas. Meeting administrators can easily update and change documents, even minutes before a scheduled board meeting.
Board portals aid in board pack creation by providing an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for compiling packs with crucial documents and reports.
Automated Minute Tracking
Minutes play a crucial role in board meetings, helping track progress, adhere to compliance regulations, and store important meeting data. Board portals are often equipped with automatic minute tracking tools. These work to streamline the whole process, freeing the corporate secretary to focus on other in-meeting responsibilities.
Reduced Administrative Time
Traditional meetings take a lot of time to prepare. Creating board packs, collating materials, and shipping them to attendees amount to hours spent on administrative tasks. Board portals help reduce that time to minutes while decreasing the manual steps necessary to organize in-person meetings.
Less Money Spent
With paperless systems for board packs, there’s no need to print the books that often go into hundreds of sheets of paper. Automation of processes decreases the cost of manual operations by more than a half.
The Importance of Having the Digital Board Meeting Alternative
Even if you don’t want your board meetings to shift entirely to digital meetings—there are industries and scenarios where face-to-face meetings are the preferred contact method—having the option to meet digitally is an indisputable asset.
Instead of canceling, boards have the alternative to hold their board meeting digitally. To ensure all the important decisions are made without time delay. This flexibility is particularly useful for boards that consist of many members scattered geographically, e.g., nonprofits with large boards, or during crisis situations where it’s a challenge to travel and meet safely.
Being able to steer your organization in the right direction, especially during unforeseeable circumstances, can help your company retain its market position and decrease possible losses caused by adverse conditions.
Why Your Board of Directors Should Embrace Digital Meetings?
In a dynamically evolving world, board members have to be flexible and efficient. Being highly adaptive to changes keeps organizations on track to meeting their goals.
By incorporating technology into key activities, companies can decrease the time necessary to organize and conduct board meetings, while saving money for paper and increasing governance through automation. In the global interconnected workplace, remote board apps and tools have become an integral part to business and boardroom operations.
Darren is the Content Director at Convene. Driven by his passion for content writing and knowledge of digitalization, he takes pride in providing content that helps drive digital transformation. Over the years, he has written blogs related to digital meetings, board management, and modern governance.
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