Engaged in overseas mining and resource trading, Jinchuan Group International forms partnerships, creates opportunities, and nurtures a safe and healthy environment for the benefit of its shareholders and employees. They started using Convene in June 2015
Alison Wong, CFO and Company Secretary at Jinchuan Group International Resources Co. Ltd (Jinchuan Group International) shares the reasons why they went paperless with Convene.
She first states that, “Jinchuan Group International have at least nine board members and four to six board meetings per year. They started using Convene in June 2015 because they wanted to streamline the way they prepare for, and hold board meetings.”
“Our board packs used to be at least 200 pages long and exceeded 400 pages if an Annual Report was included for approval. Before using Convene, it normally took us more than three hours just to print these board packs the night before the board meeting. Back then, we would have to carefully choose which pages should be printed in color to save printing costs. We had to stay late in the office to make sure we printed the materials in time for the board meeting the next day,” Alison mentioned when talking about the difficulties they had preparing for board meetings.
She then discussed how they discovered Convene, “We never tried any meeting software before, but considered different options. When we found out about Convene in a magazine ad, we quickly adopted it because its many features appealed to our needs.”
Interactive Remote Meetings
She then discussed how their remote meeting are being held, “We have board members in Mainland China, Brisbane, London, and Hong Kong. Given our different locations, we really like Convene’s live presentation feature. Our board meetings, especially our remote meetings, became more interactive. Communication among board members has improved overall after using Convene.”
She adds with an example of how Convene has really improved their board meetings, “In our last board meeting, the directors raised comments on some financial figures; then they asked the staff to immediately update the figures and upload the files. A few moments later – roughly the same time it took them to sip their coffee – they were able to see the updates. This enabled the board to continue the discussion without any interruption. We were impressed with this feature.”
Intuitive and Easy to Use
Alison then discussed how they started shifted towards using Convene, “To transition to Convene, we had a preparatory board meeting where some of our board members tried the product – without any training. We didn’t need long training sessions as we found Convene very intuitive and easy to use.”
“In our first board meeting using Convene, we tried simultaneous page-turn, voting, change presenter for different agenda, instant distribution of updated documents, and other features. We didn’t use Convene just for reading documents,” she adds when discussing how they have come to use Convene.
Excellent Multilingual Support
She further applauds the Convene team for their help when conducting board meetings, “We appreciate the effectiveness of Convene’s local product specialists in conducting presentations and providing timely support to us. Convene’s support team provided a prompt response to urgent matters raised the morning of our board meeting.”
“Another positive is Convene’s multilingual support. Convene also provides verbal support in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. Its user interface in English, Traditional, and Simplified Chinese caters to the needs of our directors from different countries. All these services and features were highly appreciated by our board,” she adds when talking about how Convene has helped create collaboration between the multi-national members of the board.
She ends the discussion saying that Convene was easily the easiest and most professional web portal in the market.