Board portal: Go digital with your board meetings

The digital revolution is in full swing in businesses, stepping up a notch with each day that goes by. The pace of this major transformation depends on the sector or level of hierarchy. At board level, digitalization is now a top priority. From facilitating exchanges between board members to improving access to information and protecting confidential corporate data – the benefits for boards going digital are bountiful. In this article, we analyze the expectations and concerns of management boards and see how they can easily adopt a board portal for their strategic meetings.

A study conducted by EY asked 2800 companies in France, Germany, the UK, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and the Benelux what the major concerns are for their management boards when it comes to digital transformation in their business.

The survey revealed that boards are primarily concerned about the implications of digitalization on products and innovation (58%), cyberattacks (55%), digital skill requirements (53%), and data protection (48%). This same study highlighted that only 10% of management boards in Europe have a digital committee.

How dedicated are board members to going digital?

While digital transformation has become one of the top priorities at a board level, how does this translate into action? According to the study conducted by EY, barely 24% of management boards have a member dedicated to digital transformation. For 56% of boards, the CEO is responsible for this.

Although boards are keen to broach the topic of digitalization, little has actually happened in European companies in practice.

When boards start talking about going digital, it is only natural to talk about using a board portal. But if a tool like this is going to be rolled out, it needs to ensure company data is secure. After all, boards often deal with highly strategic and confidential matters. The prospect of such information being leaked is unthinkable.

Board portal: how do you ensure critical data is secure?

Executive, management, and supervisory boards are the backbone of any organization. They discuss vital information that helps a business to decide what direction to take, including commercial strategy, investments, and even financial and organizational decisions.

There are solutions specially designed to support the entire process for boards, streamlining meeting preparation by reducing the need to share emails and paper documents. These provide a crucial secure framework allowing you to send and receive files and messages – from setting the agenda to sending the minutes – without any risk of them being intercepted by a third party.

Companies in Europe are gradually moving to board portals, or at the very least plan to do so in the near future. Among the most sought-after features are access to documents, encryption, auditable evidence of activities, and the ability to add comments to documents.

The benefits of a board portal

Going digital in your board meetings by deploying a board portal brings clear-cut benefits:

• Efficiency: store documents in one place, add and share comments in the run-up to meetings
• Simplicity: access from different devices at any time, make documents easy to read, vote electronically, set the agenda, publish minutes
• Compliance: archive the minutes, view access history
• Security: manage access to confidential documents

Preparing your board to go digital

With a board portal, you can make organization simpler for your board meetings. But by following certain steps in preparation for a meeting, you also can anticipate any problems in advance and leave plenty of time for discussion, so you can make the decisions you need to.

The steps to follow:

• Invite the attendees early enough so that they can get prepared
• Set the agenda
• Determine the priorities
• Gather the documents needed to make decisions and provide them to all attendees
• Allow attendees to communicate before the meeting, to clarify anything, make preliminary decisions, or resolve urgent problems

Board meeting attendees all need to have access to the same information, whatever the circumstances. This isn’t easy if using traditional means of communication such as email or hard copies. One-third of companies still rely on paper documents in board meetings, whereas 40% use email.

Take the stress out of meetings and boost efficiency, while keeping your sensitive data secure, with a board portal. With Oodrive by your side.