Overview, Key Advantages, Pros & Cons

About OnBoard

OnBoard is board management software for securely storing meeting materials, facilitating time-consuming processes, and speeding up decision-making. It is a subsidiary of OnBoard Passageways, founded in 2003. Since then, the platform has supported business leaders worldwide working in various industries, including associations, nonprofits, government, higher education, healthcare, credit unions, and banks.

The distinguishing features of a provider in the board portal industry include world-class security, protected multiple data centers, and tools for effective meetings and workflows.

Finally, to learn what features OnBoard offers for board meetings, to ensure that it’s the right fit, check our trustworthy overview below. Thus, users can explore the provider’s benefits, features, services, cost details, and disadvantages.

OnBoard advantages for board directors

One of the best ways to evaluate a product is through customer reviews. Therefore, here is a summary of testimonials from clients that OnBoard serves across various industries. 

• Ease of use

The OnBoard software solution is commonly described as easy to manage regardless of technical ability and device. Thus, organizations can effortlessly organize meetings online, manage teams, create agendas or minutes, and build or update board books. Additionally, users can work without an internet connection thanks to its offline access feature — it syncs when reconnected.

• Efficient team governance

OnBoard greatly simplifies governance helping teams to stay informed and communicate during the deal process conveniently. For instance, directors can assign tasks, track deadlines, and measure progress.

In addition, secure messenger allows boards to create individual or group conversations. Zoom integration, in turn, enables face-to-face meetings without switching between tabs.

• Great customer service

Customers often highlight the value of OnBoard’s 24/7 technical support via online chat and phone. Specifically, experts are responsive, helpful, and quick to find solutions. Equally important is the OnBoard resource library, which contains detailed instructional articles, getting-started tutorials, troubleshooting techniques, and FAQs.

So, customers can not only contact the technical support team around the clock but can also receive additional information using resources for a better user experience.

• Unparalleled security

The OnBoard software delivers a high level of security for protecting sensitive data on a user’s device. In particular, Microsoft Azure is a great tool equipped with disaster recovery and geo-replication, two-factor authentication, granular permissions, remote wipe, idle wipe, RSA 4096-bit encryption for data centers, and biometric security. 

This set of security measures eliminates the risk of breach, no matter what devices a company uses. Finally, the provider stores material in compliance with GDPR, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and HIPAA. 

• Fast agenda builder

For flexible and efficient agenda creation, OnBoard’s Agenda Builder offers teams a drag-and-drop tool, PDF support, PowerPoints, spreadsheet documents, file organization, cloning, attaching votes and polls, live co-authoring, agenda time management, and more.

Other Onboard capabilities

Apart from the functions mentioned, it is worth noting a few more examples of OnBoard tools for meeting analytics, multi-board management, intelligent meetings, and remote work of organizations.

As an example, for meeting analytics, a customer can track total meeting views, what was read, when board books were viewed, and where notes were taken.

Multiple board management allows executives to run numerous boards seamlessly with granular access controls and access materials of each organization they serve with one click and jump from one committee to another without logging out.

For intelligent meetings, board members benefit significantly from engagement analytics, automated meeting briefs, and rich data for analysis derived from the platform. 

Finally, with OnBoard for remote work, teams can submit documents for e-signature and track them. Thus, the eSignature dashboard provides workflow visibility, letting admins know who signed the document and when. 

OnBoard board management software adoption

OnBoard Passageways focuses on maximizing compliance to deliver the client’s needs efficiently. Therefore, whichever software features admins choose, the provider delivers a good experience for board meetings and workflows. In addition, the provider offers a free trial and a free demo to test their product.

As for the pricing policy, users say the product is good value for the money. Although there is no pricing information on the official site, companies can request a customized quote by contacting a sales representative. That way, they can discuss needed team features, choose a subscription, and start seamless and quick software implementation with OnBoard managers.

And finally, thanks to many training options from the provider, boards quickly master the platform and efficiently manage its tools. Users can gain knowledge by taking advantage of the online training content and videos, community and private training webinars, and one-on-one training for executive administrators and board directors.

OnBoard pros and cons

Here is an overview of what users like the most and where they would like this board management software to improve.

Pros:

• OnBoard offers extensive opportunities for creating, updating, and managing board books.
• Along with an intuitive interface, interactive elements and cross-platform design also add value.
• OnBoard’s automatic reminders alert members of upcoming meetings.
• Technical support is professional and fast when addressing customer questions.
• OnBoard offers easy yet secure access to structured agendas, meeting minutes, reference materials, and other important documents.

Cons:

• Despite the portal’s ease of use, some administrators have found it difficult to create groups and assign roles.
• Users may encounter lag times when entering text in some fields.
• There could be more integrations — not just Zoom.
• It is impossible to create recurring meetings, which are inconvenient for regular board meetings.
• Documents cannot be attached in chat.

As technology has increased the speed of communication, it has also raised expectations for boards of directors to conduct their business differently. With the rise of cloud technology and digital access to important documents, boards cannot only rely on printed board packets before meetings to stay up to date.

As more and more boards of directors realize the challenges of keeping information updated and accessible, they have turned to board management software to streamline administrative work and help board members find information more easily.

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1.   Quickly Access Important Board Information

With board software, board members can access all the important information necessary to effectively deliberate and make decisions.

Traditional boards are typically limited to the printed information that is provided for specific meetings. The transition to board software allows board members to have secure, remote access to important documents, such as:

• Past meeting minutes
• Strategic plans
• Policy manuals
• Orientation materials
• Audit reports

In the context of a meeting, board members are able to quickly search through past documents to find answers, instead of raising questions or requesting additional documents from administrative staff.

2.   Streamline Board Administration

With board management software, meeting preparation time is reduced from hours to minutes. Instead of printing, assembling, and shipping paper copies of materials, all documents are instead uploaded to the cloud. Files automatically convert to PDF as they are uploaded.

Administrators can save draft meeting books until a final version is ready to publish.

Board software also allows administrators to organize committees, set meetings, request votes, create surveys, and share files. Meeting agendas can be created once, and saved as templates for future use.

Additionally, board software removes the concern about last minute revisions to meeting materials, since updates can be made quickly and shared instantly.  With board software, board members always know to look to the software – not the board secretary – for the latest version of a board packet.

3.   Increase Board Member Engagement

Member collaboration is no longer confined to the boardroom.  Votes, survey tools, and discussion boards allow committee members to provide feedback as their schedule permits, while keeping to firm deadlines.

Instead of relying solely on meetings to create urgency behind decisions, board software can allow administrators to keep projects on schedule, and can even reduce the need for frequent meetings.

Also, going back to our first point, members can access relevant documents from anywhere. That means that, as time permits or conversations require, a board member can reference materials from their mobile device, and quickly relay information as needed.

Instead of waiting for a policy manual or bylaws to clarify an issue, board members can simply reference the materials at their convenience.

4.   Control Access to Information

Board software provides specific controls over who has access to what information.

Administrators can easily add or remove members, edit profiles, and assist with forgotten passwords. Members can be assigned to one or more committees.  Committee information is private and can only be viewed by the committee’s members.

Meeting materials can be scheduled for automatic archival or deletion.  Permissions can be set at the document level, allowing administrators to share documents with specific individuals within a committee.

Administrators can configure settings to suit their organization’s security requirements; such as enabling or disabling printing, emailing, and annotations.

5.   Reduce Board Administration Costs

As we mentioned earlier, boards typically spend valuable time and money on printing, assembling, and shipping board packets before meetings. With board software, information is shared instantly and securely with members, significantly reducing costs and speeding up the distribution process.

Organizations using board software experience a substantial return on investment from materials and labor savings alone.  Additionally, with the current trend toward green initiatives, reducing the use of paper helps the environment and generates goodwill among key stakeholders.

The advantages of board management software are clear. Board software streamlines administration, eliminates key pain points, improves communications, increases engagement, and enhances organizational governance.

With these benefits, it makes perfect sense that the majority of Fortune 500 companies and other progressive for-profit and non-profit organizations are adopting board management software.

With a diverse, global, client base ranging from international public corporations to small non-profits, Directorpoint is an established leader in the rapidly growing board portal software market.  You can learn more about Directorpoint’s board software features here.