A comparison of Board Meeting Software

Instead of traditional Word documents and emails etc. there are several board meeting software available that allow you to prepare more efficiently for your board meetings. In this article we will be reviewing software specifically for board meetings (BoardPad, Dilligent and Board Vantage) and meeting management software developed for a broader range of meetings such as board meetings, committee meetings and management meetings in general (Lucid and MeetingBooster).

When choosing a board meeting software you should consider if the software enables you to be regulatory compliant and facilitate internal compliancy as well. Here is an example for a company’s rules for board meetings on SEC web site: Taiwan Semicondutor Manufacturing Company Limited Rules and Procedurefor Board of Directors Meetings

Board Meeting Software Comparison Chart

Rating Scale:

Email Platform Integration

When providing the Board and Committees with a new way of working, or replacing an existing board meeting software for a new one, it is important to consider the ease of use for the end users, both meeting attendees and organisers.

Integrating a board meeting software into existing email platforms, such as Outlook, Google and I-Calendar is one way of reducing disruption during change and increase the overall usability of the tool.

Dilligent and Board Vantage allow you to manually save existing meetings to Outlook by saving the meeting as a .ics file. MeetingBooster had seamless integration to Outlook with meetings and tasks being synchronised. Since MeetingBooster is meant for internal management meetings synchronization with Active Directory is an option for deploying the software.

Platforms

BoardPad, Diligent and BoardVantage have developed dedicated apps for Apple, Windows and Android. They have comprehensive interfaces and make it easy for meeting attendees to access meeting papers, make annotations and review meeting information on the go. The app versions allow users to review agenda off and online, even from different board meetings in one interface.

Unfortunately, the apps have no functionality for meeting organisers. The apps will not allow the user to schedule, edit meetings or create meeting agendas. The apps are inconsistent and feel more like a read only tool than a comprehensive board meeting software.

MeetingBooster’s approach is to have full functionality in HTML and on the Tablet. The access to all of the functionality on the tablet is a definite advantage for MeetingBooster. It is an effective tool for notetakers who can utilize a tablet with MeetingBooster to run meetings, take the meeting minutes, assign meeting tasks and have access to all meeting tools. No off-line mode available.

Creating the Board Meeting Agenda

Apart from Lucid meetings, all software’s scored highly when it came to preparing the meeting agendas. They all have a dedicated meeting agenda platform. Board Pad and Diligent utilizes the meeting documents to compile a single pdf document as an agenda for the meeting, whilst MeetingBooster had more functionality that enables you to create and agenda, use agenda templates for each meeting series and attach the relevant files, again making MeetingBooster more versatile to handle all internal meetings.

Running the Board Meeting

Boardpad has a meeting minutes module that allows you to take notes during the meeting and easily converts them into meeting minutes. This was not the case for Diligent, Board Vantage and Lucid. MeetingBooster offers a live meeting notecard, which makes it easier to capture meeting notes, assign meeting tasks on the fly and built-in meeting tools to help with decision-making.

All meeting software have the ability to vote on resolutions. This can be done during the meeting. In Diligent, BoardPad and Board Vantage vote requests are pushed out to each director to submit their vote.

Finalizing Minutes and Archiving

BoardPad allows you to add notes to the agenda thereby creating the minutes within the meeting minutes module, but neither diligent nor Board Vantage have such features. These board meeting software allow your electronically to sign off on minutes and resolutions using e-signatures.

MeetingBooster was the only meeting software that automated the full post meeting process. The meeting minutes are archived and distributed automatically, permissions on meeting minutes are automated as well as approval and version control options. Further, MeetingBooster automatically send out task to tasks owners.

User Permission System and Hosting

Security is essential when dealing with meeting management software and it is crucial that the right people have accurate visibility of meeting information.

Board-Pad and Diligent separate the users into two roles; meeting attendee and administrator, with the ability to lock out users access to specific meeting documents. MeetingBooster’s system comes with a customizable security system and Active Directory synchronisation to define user permission and hierarchy. MeetingBooster’s permission system seems optimized for scalability, which is optimal if you are looking to expand the software into other areas of the business.

MeetingBooster, Board-Pad, Board Vantage and Diligent all have on premise and cloud hosting options. Some larger organizations may want host the software On-premise to be meet regulatory compliance.

Conclusion

The traditional board meeting software such as Dilligent, BoardPad and Board Vantage offers an efficient way to prepare for the board meeting on tablets on and off-line. You are even able to view several board meetings agendas from various companies. These board meeting software seemed very good for preparation and not so much for note taking and minutes generation. However, the voting and e-signatures came in handy.

The meeting management software such as Lucid Meetings and MeetingBooster offers effective ways to handle the board meeting, but are suitable for internal management meetings across the entire company to get things done.

You could consider using both a board meeting software and a meeting management solution within your organization.

Note: While writing this article we have been informed that Diligent has acquired BoardPad and will no longer be selling BoardPad to new customers.

Comparison Results