BoardPad, the meeting and document collaboration solution from ICSA Software International, is receiving positive reports. The app turns directors’ iPads into highly secure, digital board and meeting packs, eliminating the risks and costs associated with the paper distribution of confidential information.
The app ensures that the right content comes to directors’ attention to help them make informed decisions, which they can then access on or offline, from any location in the word. It provides multi-company access for non-executive directors with full annotation within one application.
BoardPad also streamlines the process of creating meetings and board documentation thanks to its intuitive administration platform that allows users to quickly and easily create board packs, meetings, upload documents, invite attendees and maintain details of appointments to boards and committees.
Accurate and efficient
As well as reducing costs and helping the environment, the app can also increase the productivity of company secretariats. By eliminating the stress of manual collation, companies can focus on producing accurate information quickly, and distributing it in a timely manner to the board, even with last-minute changes.
Over 25 percent of FTSE 100 and 24 percent of FTSE 250 listed companies now deliver electronic board papers to directors using BoardPad. Among them is Carillion, one of the UK’s leading support services companies, employing around 50,000 people. With an annual revenue of around £5bn, the company was one of the first clients to seize the opportunity to take advantage of the cutting-edge technology that the Apple iPad could bring to their boardroom. Their company secretarial team was looking for a cost-effective solution that would reduce the time and resource required to produce board packs, as well as to provide easy and secure access to the board documents that directors could access on the move and offline.
Carillion made the decision to adopt BoardPad, because of its ease of use for their directors, coupled with the fact that it integrated completely with their Blueprint OneWorld package, ensuring immediate accessibility to key information.
“We were already successfully using Blueprint OneWorld together with Blueprint Insider Manager and Blueprint OnBoard,” Ann Williams, Company Secretarial Administrator at Carillion explained. “While we looked at a couple of other products, our experience with Blueprint and ICSA Software made us confident and comfortable with the BoardPad solution. We now have a suite of Blueprint products which improve our processes and use of resource.”
Carillion’s transition from a paper-based board pack to an electronic alternative has proven to be a landmark decision for its secretariat department. Tim George, Deputy Company Secretary at Carillion, added: “BoardPad has exceeded our expectations to deliver and manage effective communication to our board members. We wanted a flexible,
customisable, trusted solution – we have not been disappointed.”
Time is money
Indeed, the process of producing and disseminating electronic board papers removes the hassle of printing 200-300 page long information packs and liaising with directors to arrange couriers. Such benefits have seen board pack apps grow in popularity.
Research by Telkom shows that providing a board of 15 members with iPads every nine months would still work out cheaper, compared with the cost of the paper equivalent. At some stage it may be time to consider introducing the tablet technology to your boardroom to help your company efficiently and cost-effectively produce and distribute board packs.
The company has a strong history in providing the latest innovative technology for business secretaries and the boardroom, which is something that Mike Evans, the Group CEO at ICSA Software is very proud of: “Our experience of developing board portal solutions for clients has provided us with a wealth of knowledge regarding the needs of major multinational companies, large public-sector and government organisations, as well as small businesses.”
For further information visit www.boardpad.com