Beyond Blue is Australia’s leading mental health non-profit organisation. They have supported people dealing with anxiety and depression for over 20 years. Beyond Blue has been using Convene since March 2020.
Leanne Mansfield, the Company Secretariat at Beyond Blue, shares their process on looking for the right solution for their needs, and how they have experienced better board meetings since choosing Convene.
Beyond Blue were using a not-for-purpose product for storing board papers that was not user-friendly. They then started looking for a product that was secure, was intuitive to help the administrative team easily create a board pack, and not costly. Beyond Blue evaluated many solutions but Convene proved to be the best solution that fit their needs
As part of the project team, Leanne was tasked to evaluate different software to assist them in preparing for board meetings and storing their board papers for their boards’ perusal. Upon their research, Convene was one of the prospective solutions that left them thoroughly impressed.
“We would discuss the software and say, “Convene seems too easy. What’s the catch? It looked intuitive and straightforward from the start, which was exactly what we were looking for.” Convene’s complete set of features for administrators and directors, coupled with its competitive pricing made Beyond Blue choose Convene as their board management software of choice.
Save Hours on Board Meeting Preparation
Leanne explains that Convene has cut a lot of administrative time for their team, “It’s been life-changing on the day the papers go out. I love that you are not reliant on the last paper coming in to finalize the board pack before sending it out. You can start to build the meeting and add documents from the get-go. It takes away that last minute stress of forgetting something because you’re already building the meeting.”
An Intuitive Way to Schedule, Meet and Communicate
Leanne shared how vulnerable their system was beforehand, and how Convene helped solve those access concerns. Their previous solution only required a password and was accessible via the web, with no need for an app. However, with Convene, Beyond Blue now enjoys strong application security and fine-grained access control over their information, making document security management an easy, error-free task for Leanne. She says that, “I’m responsible for a number of committees who all have different levels of security access, so it’s great that I can double-check everything.”
It’s not only the security that is great with Convene, according to Leanne, but also how easy it was to implement, “Our directors are busy people and we only needed to give them a simple tutorial and offer some training. Once we had the software installed, they didn’t even need the training, because Convene was so intuitive.”
Excellent User Experience
With Convene, there has been little stress for Beyond Blue. The 24/7 support has helped deal with concerns they encountered. Leanne praises how beneficial Convene has been, not only for her, but for the whole Beyond Blue board. Leanne ends the interview saying that, “Certainly, from the end-user perspective it’s been extremely easy. There’s nothing better than hearing the board say they’re happy with the system. I do not want to understate what a success it has been.”