Amadeus Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in European high-technology companies, founded by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser in 1997. They have been using Convene since December 2018.
Rob Butterworth, Head of IT, to find out more about how Convene has rung in the changes when Amadeus Capital Partners identified the need to streamline their Board meetings and to find alternative ways of handling vital data.
Rob talks about how Amadeus decided to start looking for a digital board solution, “Our CEO is on the Board of the Bank of England who uses a digital board solution. She had heard about the benefits that digital board meetings can bring, so the decision to implement a solution came about largely as a result of her recommendation.”
Pre Convene Meeting Process
Being a financial institution, meetings are extremely data-heavy which in turn required extensive printing. Unfortunately, according to Rob, the organization were disposing of approximately 98% of the printed material post meetings, and this was something they wanted to change from an environmental standpoint.
He notes that, “It can take a while to get data ready for meetings, and there were often a large number of last-minute print runs that had to be outsourced due to their volume and the obvious time pressure. We were incurring a spend of close to eight thousand pounds per annum in printing costs, so that was another key driver for change.”
Another factor for them was that before Convene, data needed to be printed and sent to anyone based remotely. This was exemplified with the case of one of their Board members relocating to New Zealand.
Rob states that because of Convene, the relocated director was able to participate effectively in board meetings, “Convene was already up and running before his move, and when we held a board meeting with Convene, it was easy for him to follow the meeting. The Chairperson who ran the meeting turned the pages for the other attendees, which made the process run smoothly, and it also removed the need for any attendee to spend time flicking through pages to find the specific information they needed.”
Security is Paramount
Rob also talked about importance of the organization’s security, “Information security is paramount for us at Amadeus. We use iPads during meetings, and these can be wiped immediately after meetings, so sensitive data can be securely contained. This was always a risk with printed information in paper-based meetings. The move to Convene has heightened security.”
“The fact that Convene can be integrated with the existing systems (Octa) in place here is highly beneficial. Once the user accounts are added, nothing further needs to be done. We also find the Agenda and Scheduling features very useful,” he adds.
Smooth Transition & the Value of Convene Over Competitors
Rob then mentioned how his board members reacted to Convene, “The initial uptake was good. One or two Board members were a little skeptical, to begin with, however, after the first meeting with Convene, there was a big thumbs up!”
“We did consider a couple of other products because we are made up of 30 people, we are always aware of the need to balance costs. We did not see the value of expensive pre-sales consultations that were mandatory with the other providers. With Convene, we were given time to evaluate the solution without an upfront commitment to financial investment,” he states when discussing other competitors they considered.
Happy with Support from Convene
He further adds that, “We haven’t had to open any support tickets for a while, but we have been happy with the support we have received from Convene.”
“We are quite a self-sufficient customer and Convene has understood and worked with this. Users have found Convene to be an intuitive system, therefore there has not been a need for significant IT involvement. We could definitely make better use of the full range of Convene features, so this is something we will be doing as things progress,” he ends when talking about the benefits of the support they received from the Convene team.