If any organisation were to calculate the cost of manually producing paper packs for board meetings, they would be shocked. For organisations that have four or more board or committee meetings a year that require a meeting pack, an online solution is far more efficient. Recent research conducted by eShare has shown the substantial amount that businesses can save by switching to an online board portal.
If you assume the administration required for each board meeting includes; booking the meeting date, assembling the relevant papers, putting the pack together, drafting the agenda and managing meeting actions and historic papers – you’d be looking a minimum of 20 hours per meeting. Added to this is the fact that more often than not, there are complications of one sort or another. So if we include another two hours to the existing total for chasing missing papers, making last minute amendments or fixing something that has gone awry and average cost for the person doing this is £55 per hour , the data suggests that’s quite a significant total of £1,210 per meeting. Once multiplied by the number of board meetings held annually, the total cost for a large company is substantial.
According to one report, a large corporation attested to spending almost $US 1.5 million per year on the production, assembly and delivery of board packs. Another source has estimated it at as much as £40k per year. So, though reported savings may indeed vary depending on company size and structure, eShare data has shown that, for a variety of medium sized organisations, the number of meetings per year is 12, which still amounts to an annual cost saving in preparation time alone of £14,120.
If the board packs are then sent out by courier, you can then add roughly £20 for each pack. 12 packs sent out 12 times a year, would be another £2,880… not to mention the unquantifiable cost of a board pack going astray, or just not being filed securely enough and ending up in the wrong hands? If being sent via email, then the amount of times someone accidentally sends an email to the wrong address, or how often big email providers like Yahoo and file managing services like Dropbox are targeted by hackers will also need to be factored in. What kind of monetary figure could be placed on preventing that from happening?
Moving to an online solution not only greatly reduces administration time, heightens security and promotes collaboration, but it is also invariably more cost effective. If you’d like to learn more about how BoardPacks can benefit your company financially, visit our website or feel free to contact us for expert advice.
