This software, which is sometimes referred to as meeting portals, or board portals is designed to ease collaboration among directors and to provide digital access to materials used in meetings. It also can help reduce the expense and inconvenience of distributing and filing paper-based documents. Any group that needs to communicate regularly and make decisions must come up with a method to ensure that their meetings are productive, efficient and secure regardless of how large the group.
A well-designed and efficient board management system provides features that allow board members to create and share agendas for meetings as well as schedule meetings, send reminders, and upload meeting documents all in one easy online location. Some solutions support polls and voting to allow board members to express their opinions on resolutions or issues that can affect the organization.
A successful board meeting also includes the preparation and follow-up after meetings. Some of the best tools for managing boards include task tracking tools, which let you create lists of tasks that you can track their progress and even assign people to specific tasks. This helps increase accountability and transparency between board members as well as between the executive team, the board and the board.
In the end, the most important characteristic of a good board management system is a document center that allows board members to access all meeting materials, messages from other board members, organizational policies and their duties all in one place. Once a board member logs into their portal, they’ll have all the documents they need for their meeting. This will significantly increase efficiency for both boards as well as administrative support staff since it eliminates the need to manually sort and distribute meeting materials prior to each meeting, as well as reducing time spent on administrative tasks after meetings.