‘A lot of good tools just go under the radar because they just do the job in a really quiet, efficient way. And for me, that’s one of the things I really value about Convene.’
Convene sat down with Ashley Day and Blood Cancer UK to talk about how Convene has transformed their meeting process, and how the best software and tools are oftentimes the ones you don’t even notice are there.
Please describe your Board and management structure
So we are a registered charity in the UK. We have a board of 12 trustees, and then we’ve got a series of subcommittees which sit underneath that where a lot of the bulk of the Board’s work is carried out.
Some of those Boards have some co-op members on them as well. And we’ve then got our executive team who attend the Board meetings and various elements of the subcommittees.
What was the situation like before Convene was implemented?
We used Dropbox previously, which just wasn’t as professional or as secure for us. It meant that we were really just using it as a file storage space rather than having the built-in functionality that we now rely on, like resolution signing, for instance.
We’ve been using Convene for over five years now, so it’s fairly well established in the organisation. I think it’s one of those tools that we really just take for granted because it feels like such an integral part of the way that we now run our board of trustees.
I think if we didn’t have it, we would need to have something that was like it.
Why did you decide to go with Convene?
The CEO and I basically agreed that we needed to go with something.
So we then went back on another trial with Convene to make sure that we were happy with it. And we definitely were. So it felt like a bit of a no brainer really.
Convene is one of those things where it’s become like such a way of working for us now where the value of it is that it is a completely entrenched process.
I think a lot of the time that you can talk about these wonderful moments where software makes life easier, but I think the real sign of success is when something is so embedded, you can’t imagine actually performing your function without it.
Which Convene features do you find most useful?
I really like the board’s planning tool. I really enjoy being able to play around with agenda items and move them and being able to have that long term view of what is coming up on the agenda. I find that really useful. And it’s great for resolutions as well.
We don’t have a huge number of resolutions, but when we do have them it’s good to have an ability for people to input their votes and get things signed off electronically.
I like the document library as well because that’s a really good place for storing stuff where it doesn’t necessarily need to go into a board meeting packs. It’s not tied to a meeting, but it’s useful context for people. So things like induction papers for trustees, that sort of thing.
I think it’s also really good for stuff like version control, making sure that everybody’s looking at the correct and final versions of documents. It’s really handy to have everything in one place as well so that we’re all clear that we’re looking at the same thing.
What features do your Board members find useful?
I think for Board members they really like being able to just have it in the meeting, scroll through papers and be able to say let’s have a look at that page etc, on Convene.
They enjoy just having a really simple interface where they can all be in the same place and run the meetings in a more efficient way.
How is Convene performing for you as far as security is concerned?
I’m much happier now that I know that everybody has their own Convene accounts and can log in to view papers. And we’ve got a limit on the number of licences that we’ve got rather than having a Dropbox flying around, which was much less secure.
It’s added peace of mind knowing that you’ve got that professional rigour and the structure around something. I find that really, really beneficial.
Having that one stop shop for committee papers and minutes is just so useful because our trustees don’t have Blood Cancer UK e-mail addresses.
So for us to be able to basically say to them this is the stuff you need to have access to, it’s all in one place, it is secure, go away, annotate it, do what you need to do to it is really, really useful.
How often do you use Convene in your day-to-day?
I would say I use it every day because I’m always going on there replanning agendas, making sure that right, people are accessing things, adding old minutes onto the document library, checking on resolution status.
It’s just become part and parcel of the tools I use to do my job as a governance professional.
I think if we didn’t have it, we would need to find another way of doing it and that would involve more work for me. So I’m really glad we have it. It’s such a save on my time that it makes things a lot simpler.