The hallmark of truly disruptive technology is that it changes our day-to-day workflow. At Prysm, I see this happening all the time. A case in point is how we use Prysm visual collaboration software to help us prepare for, conduct, and follow up after board meetings.

Board meetings require the collection and organization of a lot of rich content — PowerPoint presentations, minutes from the last meeting, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more — all from multiple departments. At most companies, the workflow goes something like this:  Each content author emails their documents to the team for review.  Revisions and iterations are sent around again and again (which inevitably presents version-control game challenges). Someone must be appointed as the “keeper” of the final versions of each document. If I want to refer to these materials before or after the board presentation, I have to do an extensive search of my email to find the right version of the right document from the right meeting. It’s an organizational nightmare.

Meeting prep, redux

Here’s how it’s done these days at Prysm: We upload our meeting content to Prysm project workspaces, which are organized by date. There are no endless rounds of emails with attached documents. At my convenience, I can go to any workspace in the project to look at all of the content. I can annotate, redline, then save it back to the workspace. We don’t need someone to “own” a list of the latest revisions. Content authors respond to comments, revise their documents and save them back to the workspace. When I need the latest version, I just log on, and there it is. Simple.

Making every minute matter

One challenge inherent to every working group — and boards of directors especially — is how to maintain forward momentum. Board members are very busy folks. They’re often on more than one board and are sometimes running companies, as well. They may travel a lot. So, each time I start a board meeting, I log on to the workspace from the last meeting, so we can revisit what happened. Board members don’t need to rely on notes or on their memories of the meeting. Prysm's software even saves the screen positions of the content we were reviewing. So, right away, we’re up to speed and ready to contribute to the current meeting. I can also instantly refer to a board meeting from a year ago, without an intensive search. It’s a much better use of time.

Follow up and follow-through

During board meetings, we make decisions, assign action items and promise follow-up.  In most companies, someone keeps detailed minutes and emails then to participants, where they’re usually instantly buried in their overflowing inboxes.

Prysm's visual collaboration software is a much easier way to keep track. No sifting through endless emails for the right meeting minutes. I just log on to the workspace, and there it is. Because it’s cloud-based, it’s accessible from anywhere, and I can access my content from my mobile devices, as well.

Leverage and repurpose

A great perk of using Prysm software for board meetings is that it makes it easy to re-purpose the content we put so much time into creating for these meetings. Prysm, for example, has investors all over the world. Instead of having to prepare new presentations from scratch for our investor meetings, I often go to the workspace from our most recent board meeting, pull up the content, and I’m ready to go. It’s a better utilization of my time and maximizes the investment we make in compiling reports, creating presentations, and so on.

I remember when email was something that only forward-thinking companies had adopted for everyday work. At that time, we had no idea how it would change the way we communicated. That’s how I feel about Prysm visual collaboration software. Changing the way we “do” board meetings is just the beginning. Interested in learning more? Contact us to get a demo.