We had a board portal in place before switching to Convene. The reason for the switch was that BoardPad didn’t support Android. We had just released a device that was made by us and ran Android, so obviously, the board wanted to promote using it within Tesco. It was a case of ‘eat your own dog food’ so we needed to find a solution that could continue to fulfil the need as well as work on Android.
We did a comparison with other board portals like Diligent, but Convene impressed us the most. Feedback from our board members has been positive. They can use Convene on any device from iPads, our Android tablets, to the corporate Windows machines. They were happy to be able to use it flexibly and not have to carry around paper meeting packs.
Before Convene, our admins had to print out meeting packs and use the old software. It defeated the purpose of going digital and just increased the workload for them. The Convene app is so good at what it does, they don’t have to print anything anymore. It works on every platform so every user can access it.
That in itself has made our admins’ lives easier. They don’t have to print ridiculous amounts of paper and packs for the users and then set up the meeting and presentations within an application as well. It has saved them time and increased efficiency when it comes to organising meetings.
There was an internal study done a while back. We used to print hundreds of pages of PowerPoint presentations, pictures, etc. for 20-30 people per meeting, plus backup copies. And it had to be done every other week or so. Once they switched over to Convene, our board stopped using paper. Now the only cost left is the license per person, per year. The study found that we save so much money on printing and paper alone that Convene has almost paid for itself every year, which is quite impressive.
Since we started using Convene, we’ve made virtually zero calls to the Help Desk. That is a good measure of success, I suppose. There’s been good feedback about the user-friendliness of Convene and its ability to completely replace printed packs, which was one of the main drivers for procurement to begin with. Once meeting participants have been authorised, they just log in and it’s pretty self-explanatory to them. It’s the same for advanced users or admins. New users seem to pick it up fairly well after the standard 30-minute demo.
When Convene was reviewed by our InfoSec team and I remember them being happy and impressed by the security standards and certifications.
From what they were saying, I believe it was a step above from what we had before. The fact that it can use ADFS authentication is useful for us because we use AD authentication. Convene also has the necessary security compliance standards and that was a prerequisite for us because of the people who use it (board members, directors, etc.) and the sensitive nature of the information discussed.
I particularly like the ability to annotate presentations in real-time, during a meeting.
I can do that privately, so only I can see it, or I can share my comments with anyone who is part of that meeting. That really comes in handy when you’re leading a meeting.
