Board Communications
Over 80% of "Fortune 500" corporations trust iDeals to host and distribute corporate documents securely
Challenges of modern corporate boards
Board communications involve managing and distributing large amounts of confidential documentation, which can be complicated with board members spread around the world. There are some typical challenges that board members are normally faced with:
- Enterprises need to quickly and securely exchange documents relating to key activities
- Governmental compliance requirements are becoming more complicated
- Email and personal file sharing services do not meet enterprise data security requirements
- The risk of data security breaches represents a serious issue for corporate compliance
- It is time consuming and expensive to collate, print, and dispatch paper-based board meeting packs with hundreds of pages
Board portal for managing and conducting board meetings
The iDeals Virtual Board Room which is powered by iDeals Virtual Data Room which is a cloud-based secure platform that provides a highly secure yet easy-to-use environment to manage boardroom communications. Moving from a paper-based system to an online boardroom portal can deliver numerous benefits to an organization.
- Provide access for boards of directors to board materials and other important corporate documentation both online and offline from any location
- Distribute pre-meeting board materials and update the board between meetings
- Provide updates on activities of board committees
- Facilitate communication between the board and management
- Improve corporate governance and accountability
- Spend less time on administrative work and let assistants focus more on meeting content and needs of the attendees
Which documents can be shared through a board portal?
The board portal has been long considered as a one-way communication tool. However, with the introduction of new interactive technologies, the possibilities for two-way communications have emerged as well. The iDeals Virtual Data Room allows to communicate through Q&A section as well as share highly sensitive documents, such as:
- Investor presentations
- Risk management reports
- Operational and growth plans
- Remuneration policies and incentive schemes
- External audit results
- Agendas and resolutions, including the following: show more hide
- Corporate performance
- Strategy, budgets, capex, and R&D
- Long-term vs. short-term considerations
- Acquisitions, divestitures and other business portfolio adjustments
- Executive compensation
- Risk management, including financial, safety and other risks
- Regulatory and legal compliance
- Shareholder relations
- Government relations and policies, including relations with trade associations
- Employee and community relations
- Director recruitment
- Annual shareholders meeting
- Crisis management preparations
- Takeover bid and proxy fight preparations
- Board and committee structure and policies, evaluations, governance guidelines, committee charters
Get started with iDeals Virtual Data Room today
Access your board materials from anywhere
With iDeals boardroom portal, users can access board packs any time, in any place. This is especially beneficial if one or more board members is travelling. With more time and flexibility on their side, directors are better prepared to make important strategic discussions.
- Board members can conveniently and securely access high volumes of information from any location
- Board members can work online or offline to review the board pack, engage in Q&A discussions and make notes wherever there is an internet connection
- Full-text search provides quick access to information and documents
- Our robust Q&A system helps board members discuss sensitive corporate information
- A SOX-compliant audit trail reduces the risk of data security violations
Improve the efficiency of board communication management
The production of physical board meeting packs is an anachronistic nightmare that can take days or weeks, with the updates sent out to board members by courier to make sure that all the participants are using the latest version. Our virtual board room software can cut this down to hours and solve other problems along the way.
- Any changes are implemented quickly and easily: the latest document versions are uploaded to the central portal and automatically synced to all board members’ devices
- All parties are working from the same page, regardless of the location
- Apply eight-plus levels of role-based document permissions to ensure appropriate access to corporate information
- Access the board portal from all mobile devices using our dedicated apps for iOS, Windows and Android
Military-grade document and infrastructure security
The security of your corporate documentation is always a major concern. Board materials can be lost in the mail or with a courier. With a digital board room these risks virtually disappear.
- The data center security is ensured with strict access policy and surveillance. Additionally, all our data centers are SOC2 compliant and ISO 27001 certified.
- Tier 3 (2N) redundancy for all components of essential systems, guaranteeing an industry-leading 99.95% uptime
- Data is encrypted using 256-bit SSL/TLS protocol using RSA 2048-bit keys encryption
- Our two-step authentication feature requires a password and a texted code
- Dynamic watermarks and our Fence View feature prevent unauthorized document distribution
- Remote wipe: revoke file access permission across all user devices
- Audit logs document each action in the virtual board portal to ensure compliance with industry regulations and for legal records
Most successful enterprises employ board portals
Many companies are using virtual board portals as indispensable business tools for hosting and sharing corporate information. According to a recent survey by KPMG’s Audit Committee Institute, leading global enterprises are rapidly adopting online boardroom software.
- Half of senior management and directors said their companies currently use a virtual board portal, and another 20 percent expect to use it in the next 6-12 months
- 18 percent of respondents provide their board members with a mobile device to access the portal – and another 20 percent plan to do so in the year ahead
- More than half (55 percent) of board directors agree that the board portal software has dramatically improved the board’s efficiency
- 70 percent said their board portal is updated in “real time” with board minutes, company information, and more.
