Directors Desk: Managing Multiple Boards

Corporate Secretaries can often end up managing five, ten or twenty boards that are either related in some way to, or belong to affiliates. It can be time-consuming and difficult to disseminate information to these diverse boards around the world on a timely basis. As boards continue to become geographically dispersed, and as the fiduciary responsibilities of Corporate Secretaries and Directors increase, ensuring you have a board portal solution (like Directors Desk) with ‘Enterprise Management’ is crucial. Enterprise Management comes into play for “joint” meetings across affiliates allowing the portal Administrator the ability to centralize all distributions and communications to multiple affiliate boards.

It is common for organizations to create committees comprised of members of the parent board as well as one or members representing each subsidiary board. For instance, one may have a parent-level board and nine subsidiary boards and a Compensation Committee made up of members from across ten accounts. All boards require information in a timely manner, and all need to be notified as new documents are created.

Without a board portal that has enterprise management, the issue of duplication of effort exists when distributing materials.  A board portal without enterprise management requires the Corporate Secretary to create multiple copies of the materials, one set for each “company account” that exists in the portal. This means logging into ten separate accounts, creating ten copies of the agenda, uploading the documents ten times, and making ten separate announcements. Should there be any last-minute changes, this means repeating the aforementioned process, eliminating the efficiency a board portal solution should provide. When enterprise management is provided, the Corporate Secretary is freed from having to duplicate efforts.  He or she only needs to create one copy of materials and distribute it across all of the company boards in one click!

Lastly, enterprise management for document and report distribution allows you to post all of your documents to a new location within the parent board account, where you can then flag documents so they appear in the subsidiary accounts as well. All users – across all of your boards – can be notified instantly with one click of an “announce” button. Enterprise management ensures improved board communications and effectiveness while relieving corporate executives of the paperwork and time involved in keeping boards informed.

To learn more about NASDAQ OMX Directors Desk’s Enterprise/Subsidiary Management System patent-pending technology, contact us today.