Agenda Management Practices for Board Meetings in the Era of Digital

Oct 21, 2024

Introduction:

A recent study on board meetings practices by the Institute for Law and Economics of the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School analyzed that while the advent of information technology has the potential for improvements in efficiency for enterprises and boards of directors, the challenge remains for organizations to optimally capitalize on the significant benefits of technology and to reduce any risks.

The transformation of business processes in the era of digital has been leaving its mark in every area of the workplace. It is a natural advancement for organizations and their board of directors to also boost their board-level operations with the finest technology, especially considering the board’s importance in providing direction to an organization.

For the Board of Directors and Corporate Secretaries, all work activities come with a requirement for efficiency, record-keeping, ease of use, and confidentiality. Due to tight agenda compliance deadlines and hectic board meeting schedules, age-old manual activities have led to human errors, ranging from typos to more significant errors like circulating wrong agenda papers to meeting participants. Additionally, apart from maintaining data related to board meetings in an accurate manner, the compliance requirements related to board meetings are an additional set of meticulous activities, also prone to manual errors. To achieve optimal board automation, it is crucial to know what an agenda management system is, how it contributes to the overall meetings management, and how it fulfills your organization’s needs.

The “Pinpoint” Answer to Agenda Management:

Meetings may be made more productive with the help of Dess Digital Meetings which provides a robust paperless meetings solution. It ensures that end-to-end electronic meeting requirements of organizations are fulfilled and allows you to save time and resources on agenda and meeting preparations as well as accommodating last-minute agenda changes.

Concentration on Goals:

The Dess board meetings solution uniquely covers all activities which impact board meetings. It helps the corporate secretary finalize meeting dates, prepare and circulate meeting notices to selected members, and finalize and circulate the meeting agenda among other disparate pre-meeting, during-meeting, and post-meeting events. For Directors, CXOs and Management, it provides comprehensive reports in an intuitive nut-shell and provides timely access to critical information. Therefore, one can achieve better concentration on goals by focusing more on business activities and delegating operational activities to the Dess solution.

An All-Inclusive System for Managing Board and Committee Meetings:

For Dess Digital Meetings as a holistic board portal, agenda management is just one part of the comprehensive meetings solution. The events of board meetings can be facilitated by using an enhanced approach adopted by Dess Digital Meetings. Agenda preparation, meeting schedules, minutes management, workflow management, digital signature approvals, performance evaluation, action tracking, compliance, and intuitive reports among other benefits nurture better decision-making and completion of tasks which in return contribute to more effective board meetings.

Opening the Door to Teamwork:

The content for board meeting agendas is typically derived from department-level supplementary materials (such as reports) that give detailed background information. The Company Secretary and their team in coordination with other departments work together to produce the final meeting agenda. . Therefore, to harness the benefits of teamwork, Dess Digital Meetings provides features such as flexible workflows, collaborative editing, version management, online approvals, version management among other benefits. . Using Dess, you can ensure that disparate teams, even if based in different geographies, are able to contribute to meeting preparations in a consistent, coordinated and a timely manner.

Learning from a knowledge base:

An in-built knowledge base in the Dess Board Portal software helps board members and corporate secretaries refer to glossaries and web pages on the go. With multiple different sharing features, board members can collaborate efficiently by sharing desired portions of content as per their preferences. As an intelligent meeting management system, Dess also promotes efficiencies in collective decision-making through multiple types of electronic voting, action items voting, and workflow management features, as well as through seamless external automation, such as video conferencing integration, streaming and captioning, and access to past archives.

Meeting ESG and Corporate Governance goals:

With a growth of over 40% in investments into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategies between 2018 to 2020, corporate boards are prioritizing their focus on meeting ESG goals, especially considering the growing client demands. In addition, corporate governance objectives for the board always continue to exist. With various different reporting and compliance tracking features, the Dess paperless meetings solution gives tools to boards, management, and corporate secretaries to plan for documenting and managing uncertainties, extensively tracking progress as well as capitalizing on future opportunities.

Board and Organizational Culture:

With every day changing dynamics in the era of digital, it is important to maintain functional flexibility and consistency which in return helps meet the organization’s long-term goals. This liberty becomes even more important for the board of directors in order to ensure operational efficiency. Hence, to ensure that the Dess Board Portal solution adapts to every board having different priorities and cultures, Dess provides a completely configurable solution that adapts to the culture of the board and the organization. With multiple levels of scalability and customizations, it makes the implementation and adoption of the solution very easy.

To know more, visit: https://www.dess.digital/ or write to [email protected]