Convene sat down with Louise Heywood and Stéphanie Chedid of IAG Accounts to share how Convene’s document library helps them with consistency, time-saving and onboarding new Board members.
Could you describe your board and management structure and how you use Convene within the structure?
Louise: We have a board of nine different members who are made up of our shareholders, and they work in nine different countries and use nine different languages, so that’s quite challenging for us.
We have a lot of virtual board meetings, as you can imagine, so to be able to share documents and run the meetings online and then have all of that documentation is helpful for us.The Board members use the system in English, but with Convene they have the ability to download documents and translate them if they need.
What led you to decide to implement a Board portal? Were you using one before Convene?
Louise: No, we were just using our own filing system and we were transferring the documents each month. So it was a little bit time consuming and quite cumbersome. And also then everybody just has their email access as opposed to having somewhere where everything’s together in the one place which we prefer.
How was Convene received by the board and senior managers?
Stéphanie: I think they like the fact that we have one place where they can access all the documents, all the files and all the attached documents to the agenda. So we have the agenda, the documents and later on, once they’ve approved the documents, they can go back on all the resolutions and find them. Before we used to send via email, so they needed to go back to their emails or if they saved those documents locally on their own laptop.
What do you like most about Convene? What features do you find most useful?
Louise: For me, I would say just the ability to upload things as they’re ready and then publish a meeting when it’s complete. Whereas when you’re using documents on your own local drive or SharePoint, you’ve got to remember where they are. I just like that I can put them up there and then and that’s kind of work in progress until it’s ready to go.
Also we can work collaboratively on the portal, so Stephanie and I are both updating agendas or updating documents as we go and I find that quite useful.
Then also to be able to go back and get the history again. We’ve got a good filing system, but it’s never perfect, so just to know where the most recent and correct minutes are and things like that is useful.
Stéphanie: I would also add the fact that we can send the documents also from Convene itself. So you have the other option where you can either export, save it on your own laptop or send it via email directly to the board. That’s also good.
Do you feel like Convene has improved working collaboratively on an international level?
Louise: I think it just reduces that reliance on email because everyone gets so many emails and the Board is voluntary and they have their own day jobs. So when they want to go and find something, for IAG, it’s really easy for them to know where they can find the documentation as opposed to looking through all of their emails, which are mixed between their company business and then this. So I think it does help collaboration in that way.
How is Convene performing for you in terms of security?
Louise: Security is important, because obviously there’s quite sensitive documents on there, but also it’s that internally if in the future someone wants to look back ten years and say, well, why was that decision made, what who voted? How do they vote? That’s all there.
How much time do you think Convene has saved you?
Louise: It saved a huge amount. I think it just made it more streamlined and has that ability to sort of work as you go.
Stéphanie: On the voting process we’ve saved time because now it’s by one click. We just can see what it is, who approved or not in comparison to before where they used to reply via email and then we needed to put it in an Excel spreadsheet.
Have you ever had to use our customer support and what was that experience like?
Stéphanie: Yeah, I contacted them a lot at the beginning to set up Convene and recently also because we’ve had one of our participants who was not able to access the Convene app on their laptop due to internal rules at their company.
They were really helpful, they always reply even if you call or email, they’re always on the phone. So yeah, they are always trying to find us the best solution. In this case for the access, now we have access to your web-based portal for Convene. Now we have access to that we’ve shared it with all the Board members and they are able to connect and login and access information. So yeah, it’s quite a positive note on that job.
What would be the main reason that you would recommend Convene to other organisations?
Louise: I’d just say convenience, really, I think for us it’s a convenient way of sharing documents in a secure environment. I know you could put it on a SharePoint and password protect, but I don’t want to do all of that. Also as Board members change, it’s nice that they have the history to go back on and read if they want to look at anything that’s happened before they became a Board member.
I think that’s the biggest thing for us, the history and the ability to keep everything in one place for a long time, for the future.
Stéphanie: I would say that the same as Louise, the ability to look at the document later on to know that we have all the document plus the additional material in one place for the Board members, not only just the minutes, but the document presentation we share with them too.
Louise: I think even as the Board changes every two years, it gives you consistency, which is helpful. I imagine when a new Board member came on before that they would just not have the history. It was never shared with them unless they particularly asked for something. So I think that is a benefit to a new Board member wanting to update themselves and what was covered by the previous Boards.