Convene Customer Success
Picture: General Secretary, Dr Mary Bousted
Two weeks before each meeting we would prepare the meeting packs and send them to our dispatch office. They would then collate them, print them off and then post them to our 35 executive members. Then when they arrived to the office, they would often want another copy.
These were big packs too! We’re not talking about something you can put in an envelope and send through the normal post - we had to send them as a package. The number of pages varied, but we printed the packs to A5 paper and the booklets could be 1 inch to 1.5 inches for big meetings.
More often than not, if all the papers weren’t ready, the dispatch office would have to send the rest as a smaller package, sometimes just days before the meeting.
Also when the executive members came in for the meeting, they would ask for another copy, because the packs were too heavy or they had other things to bring. And finally, some colleagues would take additional copies to these meetings to ensure that everyone attending had a copy. We essentially had about three copies running around at any one time!
We’d been thinking about going paperless for over a decade. No one quite took it on board and it never really took off. At one point the meeting packs had been uploaded to the website, but it wasn’t a secure option. People still preferred the paper process described above, so we didn’t save anything, we just added a new process.
Our recently appointed General Secretary asked us to find a digital solution to reduce paper usage. After the initial online demo, my first thought was that Convene looks a lot simpler than everything else. Our Account Manager then held an onsite demo for a group of staff who, I would consider my champions, because if they say that it’s not going to work for us then I trust them.
"They thought it was straightforward and it delivered."
We set a hard deadline for our executive members to stop using paper by Easter. We had to push it back from December, because we were quite busy with our merger.
We’ve managed to convert at least 90% of the executive team. There’s still two or three who are hanging on. It’s not so bad printing a meeting pack for two or three people. Sometimes we have to remind the administrative staff to continue using Convene. A transition period is tricky as we are technically running our old and new processes side by side.
It does take time to get used to change yet sometimes it can make certain processes so simple right away. When we went about the procurement process, we mainly wanted to get rid of paper in meetings but Convene solves a number of other problems. For example, when we had information that was deemed private or confidential, we had to distribute those papers right before the start of a meeting and collect them right after.
Distributing confidential information is far more straightforward and less time consuming with Convene. It’s as simple as uploading the document then taking it off the system when the meeting is over, and that’s it.
I’m sure that all the other products could do the same thing but it’s simpler and more manageable in Convene.
Fill out the form to start a Free Trial of Convene. We will even send you relevant case studies, just make sure to enter your company email address.
Free TrialIf you’re considering using Convene, or just want some more information, simply fill out the form below or give us a call on:
United Kingdom: 0800 088 5517 France: +33 186262736 Belgium: +32 38 08 01 22 Greece: +30 2111 988 980 Romania: +40 316300283
If you are a Convene Customer, please visit our dedicated customer support page.