St Kilda Football Club aims to become an elite professional sporting organization, dedicated to performing excellently in the field and contributing to its community. They have been using Convene to streamline their meetings since August 2018.
Kerry Hann, Executive Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer of St Kilda Football Club shares that shifting to Convene allowed them to cut back on time and expenses while effortlessly increasing their organization’s productivity and efficiency.
As decision-makers of an organization playing in the Australian Football League, St Kilda Football Club’s board holds regular meetings to further pursue their exceptional commitment to both the sport and their members. Kerry, whose tasks include meeting preparation and organization, shared that the board portal they were previously using became obsolete over time, thus prompting a search for a new board portal solution.
While they explored several other options including Diligent and BoardPAC, St Kilda Football Club ultimately chose Convene for offering a cost-effective, but complete solution suitable for their needs.
Seamless Transition
Because of their experience with a previous board portal called BoardPad, the organization was already familiar with the basics. However, transitioning to another product is another concern. They were unsure if the board would be able to easily adjust to the new board portal’s interface and features.
A demo with Convene cleared their hesitation immediately. During the session, an on-site comparative demo was conducted for both board portal solutions BoardPAC and Convene. They instantly noted that Convene had a solution for all their meeting needs, while having a more user-friendly interface. Even after being offered large discounts by the other competitors, St Kilda Football Club ultimately chose to partner with Convene.
Though conducted online, the succeeding training and onboarding sessions with the administrators and directors were no different from the demo: extremely helpful and easy to follow, as Kerry and her colleagues were happy to report. Overall, their entire process of shifting to Convene was an easy one, from enquiry to current use. “Convene made the transition from BoardPad effortless,” Kerry stressed.
Easy to Use Features
Kerry commends Convene’s intuitive features and ease of use for both administrators and directors. “Not one of our registered users had to contact the administrator for assistance in setting up the application or to ask how to use the application, which just shows how easy it was,” she says.
She also relays the efficiency of adding several participants in a single group list. Not only does it save the administrator time in searching for users individually, but it also minimizes the risk of accidentally sharing files to those who aren’t meant to have access to the information or the meeting.
Cost-Efficient and Productive Meetings
Considering that they are a non-profit, Kerry emphasizes the importance of acquiring a meeting solution that wouldn’t put a dent on their finances. Convene helped them find exactly what they were looking for. “With Convene, we have twice the number of licenses than what we had for BoardPad, but have made a significant annual savings.”
In addition, Kerry notes several features in particular that she believes further boosted their savings, one of which was Convene’s ‘Guest User’ feature. Instead of purchasing licenses for every member—regardless of how frequently or rarely the individual uses the software—the feature allowed temporary participants to join meetings as selected by the administrator. “The option of having guest users gives us the flexibility to assign those seats to internal and external participants who may only require access to certain meetings and don’t need to be set up as an on-going user. They can be activated and deactivated anytime. The fact that licenses can also be replaced with others when they leave is also a key feature.”
Global Support
From inquiry to transition and even up to current use, Kerry shares that Convene’s Support Team was more than happy to provide top notch support to St Kilda Football Club saying that, “Convene’s global 24/7 Customer Support greatly contributed to our seamless transition from BoardPad. They are very helpful and responsive, and consistently provide excellent customer service.”