The virtual board software is a great tool to simplify or streamline your board document management and communication. The boardroom users can easily upload, view, edit, share, overwrite, copy, download, annotate, or print documents in real-time.
It is specifically developed for corporate leaders, company directors, CEOs, CFOs, chairpersons, union leaders, and governmental agencies. Board portal software combines data management tools with meeting management tools, making it a top choice for effective corporate management.
However, the effectiveness of a virtual boardroom also depends on how you set up your boardroom. The objective is to simplify the document management process. You need to set up your board portal in the right way to avoid creating more trouble.
Following are some handy tips for setting up your online boardroom, but before that, here is a brief introduction to board software technology.
What is board portal software?
Board portal software is a digital cloud-based platform and document repository for corporate boards. Broadly, board software is a combination of multiple technologies that simplify:
• Board document management
• Board meeting management
• Inter and intra-board communication
• Collaboration between boards, investors, stakeholders, and managers
• Financial deal-making
It is easily accessible that board portals are complete solutions for companies, unlike traditional meeting solutions that offer minimum to no data storage. Virtual boardrooms are also different because of their supreme security features and meeting management tools like agenda builder, notes makes, electronic signatures, voting tools, task managers, and board books builder.
Important things to consider when setting up a board portal
Generally, all good quality boardroom vendors like BoardPac, Boardable, iDeals, Boardvantage, etc., provide video tutorials and live support. The following tips will make setting up the process more efficient.
1. Choose the right board portal vendor
The boardroom setting up process begins with finding a high-end board portal vendor that can give you everything you are looking for. Every company has unique requirements, and the technology is only useful if it can fulfill those requirements.
Therefore, take time to search for board software that has maximum features according to your needs. You can also read the board of directors software comparison guide from experts or compare multiple vendors on websites like G, Software Advice, Capterra, etc.
Anyways, always look for the following elements in your boardroom:
• High document storage capacity
• Flexible pricing plans with no hidden charges
• Security features for documents such as digital watermarks, document access settings, fence view, document shredding, etc
• Board meeting features like agenda/minutes builder, audio or video conferencing tools, screen sharing features, voting tools, electronic signatures, etc.
• Easy integration with your operating system
• 24/7 customer support via different channels like email, live chat, forums, etc.
• Dedicated mobile or tablet apps
• Document management features like smart or full-text search, bulk uploads, and drag-n-drop.
• Positive online customer reviews
2. Select and upload documents
Choosing a reputed boardroom vendor solves half of your problems as you don’t have to worry about the technical part. Now, it is time to select the documents that will go into your boardroom. At this stage, it is crucial to understand that not every document needs to be in your boardroom.
Adding unnecessary or minimally used documents will:
• Create more clutter and make the folders look crowded
• Waste the time of the board members and the management
Besides, it will consume more space unnecessarily which is not cost-effective. Features like bulk upload and drag-n-drop will make the document uploading process much easier.
3. Organize your board documents
How efficiently you organize your boardroom will define its effectiveness for your board members. Accurate segregation of the documents will not allow you to control and manage them easily, but board members will be able to locate them quickly.
You can create folders for past meeting minutes or subfolders for year-by-year meeting minutes. Similarly, the financial documents, meeting agendas, board packs, proposed resolutions, etc, should be segregated into folders.
4. Set access permissions
This is probably the most important stage in the board software setup process. You don’t want your important documents falling into the wrong hands, especially if you intend to use your boardroom for external dealings.
For example, you can categorize users who can only view watermarked files. Similarly, you can create a user group that can download watermarked files but cannot edit them. In a nutshell, you should define document access settings for regular and temporary users.
5. Recheck your settings
It goes without saying that security restrictions and access settings should be checked and rechecked. The best way is to double-check them on your own or ask your associates or colleagues to verify the settings.
Final words
The virtual boardroom setup process starts with choosing a suitable board vendor and identifying important documents that you want to add to your board software. Then, upload and segregate them in appropriate folders, define access settings, and recheck those settings before going live.
As you can see, the board portal setup is convenient, easy, and takes little time. Even people with no tech background can start using a directors desk in a matter of minutes.
