The Complete Board Portal Buyer’s Guide
by Arnab Dey Business Intelligence 24 August 2022
Every business can be run much easier if it is timely and competently automated. A lot of programs make it possible to facilitate various tasks for both the owner of the company and employees, for whom the program performs the main part of the computing functions.
What Is Software And Why Does A Business Need It?
Board management software is when a program or service performs routine tasks instead of employees. For example, it issues invoices, processes requests, purchases goods, or monitors security.
At the same time, the idea of automation is not to replace employees with robots, but to free them from monotonous work. This helps to assign more important tasks to team members, remove the human factor in important business processes and use company resources more efficiently.
A modern solution will help you bring your activity to a qualitatively new level. Read the boardable software review to know more about board portals and choosing them.
Criteria For Choosing A Board Portal System For Small Businesses
In order to select the ideal software, pay attention to the following points:
1. Automation and optimization of tasks
The board portal has a wide range of features. Before choosing board room software from the offers in the market, determine which functions you want to automate:
- maintaining work with current and potential clients (transaction management);
- setting tasks for managers (calling, boosting, reminding clients);
- collection of documents from board portal entities (commercial offers, invoices, and acts, are generated from client data);
- keeping records of accounts receivable of counterparties (budget planning);
- communication with clients from a single place (the managers do not need to track messages in instant messengers, social networks, or email apps – they see all news in the board portal);
- control by the manager of the fulfillment of tasks and the achievement of KPIs for sales (transparency of goals for managers and ease of assessment for the manager).
2. Branch of business
There are board rooms on the market tailored for a specific business area. This is how industry solutions for fitness clubs, restaurants, food delivery services, online stores, medical centers, real estate agencies, and other areas have been developed.
These systems take into account the specifics of businesses and require much fewer modifications and settings. They should be considered first.
3. Integration with other applications
Small businesses often already use instant messengers, work mail, and a website to communicate with customers, and send email and SMS mailing lists. Integrations are used to connect these functions with the board portal.
There are ready-made integrations. They can be connected in a couple of minutes in the board portal settings and charged separately.
If the boardroom software does not have integration with the desired service, you can contact the developers and combine the two platforms via API.
What to look for:
- does the board portal have an open API;
- what integrations does the board of directors software offer? Consider those services that you need now or will need in the future.
4. Easy to set up and implement
The choice of a board portal depends on how quickly the company will master the new tool. A simple interface and online support make this process easier for users.
5. Development
Consider the development and growth of your company when choosing. For example, if in a year you want to launch delivery by a transport company, how will the board portal need to be adapted in connection with the new conditions?
Here are a few needs that may arise as your business grows:
- connecting more managers to the boardroom software;
- connection of additional integrations;
- introduction of new goods or services with other stages of sales;
- mobile board portal or offsite meeting app;
It is better to look at how often the board portal introduces updates and develops the product.
6. Cost
You should not consider cost as the main factor when looking for an online board portal. Sometimes it’s better not to save money if the solution you are looking for can greatly help to deal with your tasks or can offer you some useful additional features.
Conclusion
There is specialized virtual boardroom software on the market for each business area: associations, government, real estate, healthcare, technology, etc.
There are both separate software products, for example, accounting systems, and CRM. At the same time, complex ERP systems can solve any business issues, but cause a lot of controversy due to the cost of implementation and settings. Based on all of the above criteria choose the right software for your business needs.
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