The online board portal can be a powerful tool for askboardroom.com improving governance and efficiency. Choosing the right solution can be a daunting task because every company has its own requirements and budget restrictions. If you’re thinking about purchasing an online board portal security and efficiency are two major areas you should be focusing on. During your discussions with potential vendors, you should ask the following key questions to determine if they are able to meet your needs.

Security

The primary goal of a portal is to safeguard sensitive information and prevent unauthorized entry. It’s essential that the portal is built on a solid framework that can provide security features that are high-level such as customizing end user permission settings and unique encryption keys per customer and two-factor authentication, third party penetration tests, managed and certified data centers, and security audits like SOC2.

Efficiency

Any board management system should streamline three main phases – the pre-meeting stage, the meeting itself, and the post-meeting stage. The best board management systems provide efficiency by allowing for easy communication. This will encourage directors who are willing to contribute to the meeting, and update materials in real time prior to meetings, and reduce the time required to prepare documents.

During your demonstrations make sure you pay attention to how user-friendly the software is. Your team should be able to navigate the portal quickly and therefore, choose a program that has easy navigation, document uploads and search. You can also test the customer support of the vendor by calling their helpline and seeing how responsive they are.