In late 2011 one of our clients, Qantas Superannuation Limited, formally shifted to electronic delivery of its board papers via iPads.
I interviewed QSL chairman, Anne Ward, about why the directors wanted soft copies of the board papers, what was involved in purchasing the technology and the software and whether directors needed training.
"We also wanted to reduce the cost and time involved in preparing hard copies of board papers and then couriering the papers to our directors wherever they may be in the country.”
QSL believes the cost of purchasing iPads and software programs for all its 10 directors will be recouped within 12 months. The savings in the time taken to prepare Board packs and the speed of delivering the papers are already apparent.
“At least half the directors were familiar with iPads and were using them in other environments so the implementation was relatively easy,” says Ward. “The tablet and the software are very intuitive so it only takes a few taps on the screen to locate the board papers, convert them to PDF expert format and have them ready to read and to annotate.”
Board members received individual training sessions with QSL company secretary and head of operations. The sessions lasted between 15 minutes and an hour depending on how familiar the director was with the technology.
“For the first meeting in which the iPads were going to be used we delivered the papers electronically as well as in hard copy to help us make the transition,” says Ward. “This year we are only using the iPads but directors can request hard copies of individual papers or the whole board pack.
"So far no-one has taken up this option, however; everyone is trying very hard to familiarise themselves with working in soft copy which is what we all agreed to do.”
Many of the members of the QSL board travel frequently – one is a pilot and another is a flight attendant - so the directors are pleased to be able to have the papers delivered to their iPads.
“Tablets are light and easy to carry so the convenience of using an iPad to receive and read board papers is much appreciated by our directors,” says Ward.
We recently introduced iPads in to the Board Room as well, surprisingly it has been adopted very well by the Directors.
ReplyDeleteThis has enabled us to efficiently produce and wirelessly deliver the paper to the Directors to Sync to their iPads; the projected cost savings for each year were very substantial.
The model we implemented allows the Directors to use the iPads as traditional Board Papers by allowing them to annotate, bookmark, draw, mark up changes, etc; Once they have completed their annotations the papers are saved and synced back to our secure corporate server providing backups of all papers as well.
Each iPad is also controlled by our MDM (Mobile Device Management) software, allowing us to remote support and track the device; in the event of the device being lost/stolen we can issue a command to tell us were the device is and also wipe its contents removing any sensitive data stored on the device.
Congratulations on publishing this article.
ReplyDeleteWe manage the Australian support for Boardeffect which is a portal specifically designed for Nonprofits. We have seen how Nonprofit Boards can save substantial funds for their real mission and purpose by just switching their board to e-governance.
Once Board members learn how secure, simple and efficient this can be (especially compared to their emailing, posting, printing, etc of Board and committee papers), they cant believe they did it the old way.
And congratulations to the QSL Board for showing this kind of leadership.