Best Meeting Management Software

What is Meeting Management Software?

Meeting management software consists of a set of tools that let you organize various stages and components required to run a meeting. It helps organizers and attendees address issues at the right time. Moreover, it lets you build the foundation for the meeting, set agendas, and organize the meeting calendar of your team members.

Common Features of Meeting Management Software

1. Create Tasks and Deadlines for Board Members

Meeting management solutions let you automate the agenda creation process and send it out much before the meeting. In addition, it streamlines the routing of email notifications to staff members who need to approve agenda items and manage backup approvers.

2. Public Portal Functionality

Saving time is one thing every software solution should do. Most meeting management solutions offer a public portal for storing and sharing documents that answer common customer questions and guarantee a good user experience.

3. Complete Security and Access Oversight

Meeting management software lets you share content while providing selective access. For example, you can choose who has access to which documents and set access levels for individual users. 

4. Support for Multiple File Types

Content can be in various formats. It can be a PDF, image word file, Excel, or a presentation. Meeting management solutions let you share all content formats and integrate with Google Docs and Microsoft. This lets you import files and share them as and when needed.

5. Integrated Bookmarks

Sometimes your supporting documents and agendas can go up to 100 pages. They may also contain confidential information. But, with so many pages, it can get difficult to highlight a particular section. Meeting management solutions let you include bookmarks and links for easy reference and even customize agenda packet versions.

6. Device-Agnostic Access

Meeting management solutions let participants and board members access meeting content from any device. Moreover, they can easily contribute to the meeting via email, board portal, or use Dropbox.

7. Built-In File Search

You already have thousands of agendas and meeting minutes in your system. Meeting management solutions let you create an organized system that makes it easy to search files. It lets you filter the information using file name, date, time of creation, and the document creator’s name.

8. Insightful Analytics

Meeting management solutions offer analytics and reporting tools that help you understand the information participants need from their leaders.

9. Interactive Board Portal

Meeting management solutions let board members access live meetings remotely. This lets them view the proceedings live and vote from any device. Moreover, the collective voting results are viewable to all remote and live participants for convenience and transparency.

10. Automated Recording Procedures 

Meeting management solutions let you record minute meetings and other actions to reduce duplicate processes and free up time and attention during the meeting proceedings.

11. Speaker Management

No one likes to be in long meetings that serve no purpose. To help you keep your meetings on schedule, meeting management solutions come with a countdown timer and an integrated speaker.

12. Live Streaming and On-Demand Video

Live and recorded videos can increase citizen engagement and participation. Meeting management software lets you integrate these functions and allow video segment bookmarking that enhances user experience.

13. Social Integration

Social media is a great platform to reach your target audience and spread the word about your initiatives. Meeting management solutions let you subscribe and receive updates. This, in turn, can help you share updated agendas, videos, and meeting minutes via platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

14. Information Storage 

Meeting management solutions let board members imbibe all the essential information. This is possible as it lets them documents, save and refer to key discussions and action items. In addition, most meeting software offer integrated notes and comment functionality that can stimulate further discussions and keep initiatives moving forward.

Benefits of Meeting Management Software

 Here are some of the advantages of using meeting management software.

1. Paperless Meetings

Less paper means more storage space and cost savings—a win-win situation for any office. Meeting management solutions let you access a digital pile of documents that you can further share with your attendees. It also lets you conduct meetings and go and ensure no work is hampered and your team is informed at all times.

2. Increased Security

With cybersecurity becoming a key issue, businesses may fear documents and other confidential data being misplaced. However, meeting management solutions can add the necessary security measures to avoid data breaches while making the data accessible to employees and stakeholders.

Some vendors even provide auto-purge features. This means you can wipe out data from a device if it’s stolen, lost or unauthorized attempts are made to access information.

3. Improved Collaboration

Efficient meetings are engaging and encourage participants to get involved. It can be a great learning experience for newcomers and existing employees. Meeting management software lets you add value via video demonstrations, presentations, and whiteboards to work through process issues. You can even ask participants to use in-built “sticky note” features to jot down their thoughts and ideas and achieve results faster.

4. Synchronised Information and Real-time Updates

Meeting management solutions keep everyone in the loop when any changes or updates are done. This ensures that participants always have access to real-time information and version control is well-managed. It will save you precious time that you spent working on tasks only to find out half of them are no longer required to be completed.

5. Simplified Note Taking

If you have ever volunteered to write minutes of the meeting, you will be familiar with the scenario where you wrote down something, only to later have no idea what it meant. Well, it can be easy to miss out on details and forget why you note something. By the time you sit down to write notes, the entire context is gone. Meeting management software provides you with automated note-taking functionality. This ensures that nothing is missed out, and you get comprehensive minutes for each meeting that can be shared and archived.

6. Improved Participation

Conference management software ensures that participants at the opposite ends of the city can collaborate easily. Since everyone can communicate like they are in the same room, you can save time, money and ensure progress despite busy schedules. Moreover, rather than spending time briefing individuals, you can make sure that your entire team is on the same page with meeting management solutions.

 Top 5 Meeting Management Software Trends

 Here are some of the trends that will impact meeting management solutions in the years to come.

1. Deep Attendee Personalization

Personalizing attendee experience is essential to increase overall satisfaction and get a good return on investment. More meeting platforms will adapt methods to do so and enhance customer experience. Some of these include:

Creating customized registration paths and defining attendee types

• Use a mobile event app and send personalized push notifications and session recommendations
• Personalize every aspect of your event management technology with your brand to create a seamless experience for your participants
• Offer customized registration and website templates to save your planners time, and ensure your website can easily be navigated by attendees

2. Onsite Data Collection Technology

Event data is an excellent source of knowledge to understand and work on improving future sessions. But, real-time data is even better as this represents attendees’ behaviors and has important sales and marketing functions. More meeting management solutions will use onsite data collection technology to enhance user experience in the coming years. Furthermore, there will be an increase in customized event tools for attendee tracking user in-door positioning and laser technologies.

3. Facial Recognition Technology

Facial recognition technology is a biometric solution that stores an individual’s facial features. It allows the software to identify a person in digital images or a live video. In short, it works just like your digital fingerprint and can be used to categorize you based on your age, gender, ethnicity, or behavior. As facial recognition technology has become a part of people’s everyday lives, expect this at meetings and events. In the future, more organizers will integrate this facility into their existing meeting management solutions. This will offer them greater session access control.

4. Machine Learning & AI

Future meeting management solutions will use artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) to make recommendations to attendees. This will be based on their demographic data points, their behaviors, preferences, and their activities. In addition to providing attendees with accurate activity, session, and accommodation recommendations, AI and ML will also make recommendations to meeting and event planners. This will help them figure out the right attendee mixes, optimize their events, and guarantee customer satisfaction.

5. Data Consolidation

Modern meeting management software are now looking forward to providing a consolidated data platform. This will let them measure event data and forecast future trends. This will further facilitate the use of machine learning and AI and democratize data which will be beneficial for all stakeholders.

 How Can Meeting Management Software Be Helpful To A General Employee?

     Here is how a meeting management solution can benefit a general employee.

1. Increased Engagement and Collaboration

When led well, meetings offer each person an opportunity to provide input and participate. Meeting management solutions let facilitators focus on asking questions and guiding the conversation. This lets employees understand the discussion and the fact that their ideas are valued. Moreover, it can also lead to collaborative brainstorming sessions that let you conceive new ideas and creative solutions.

2. Increased Accountability

A good leader is skilled at creating an environment in which everybody feels that their contribution is valued. It helps participants feel at ease and take up more work, as they know that every task impacts the project as a whole. Moreover, committing to a task in a meeting is better than saying yes via email or in a one-on-one situation. This is because individuals feel more accountable to the group and are more motivated to complete their tasks. Furthermore, capturing responsibilities and action items in the meeting also increases personal accountability as team members can easily review the task assignments in the meeting notes.

3. Shared Sense of Purpose

Meeting management solutions let you share the agenda of the discussion with your in-house and remote team. It lets you keep the session aligned with the team's goals and provide everyone a sense of purpose. This is because everyone understands why the meeting was held and why they have been included.

4. Opportunities for Personal Growth

A good meeting creates opportunities for each individual to develop their skills. It is a great way to refine their leadership skills, practice effective communication techniques, and motivate them to fulfill their commitments. This is because participants witness the benefit of discussions and make an effort to emulate the skills and behaviors modeled by the leader. Meetings are a great place to urge participants to challenge themselves and try something new. When tasks are being discussed and assigned, participants can freely volunteer and take on work that interests them most. Even if they have limited experience or knowledge, being in a group will make them feel supported and quickly develop that skill.

Things to Consider Before Buying Meeting Management Software

Each organization has different requirements, but there are core features you will need to look for in any portal. Here are some steps you should take to narrow down your options so that you can take your board and shareholder meetings online partially or fully.

1. Check the Security Features

Security is of utmost importance in meeting management software. So, you must check the credentials of any portal you are planning to use. Moreover, you must ensure that the solution offers encryption facilities and adheres to international security and compliance standards. The more secure the portal, the more sure you will be when you share sensitive material through it. Does the portal offer any other security features? One to look for is the ability to store content and notes remotely on members’ devices.

Suppose, if a stakeholder loses their device or it is stolen, data stored in the device can be leaked. This is a major security breach, and your chosen solution needs to manage information centrally. So, there is no chance of information leak.

2. Document Creation Process

Creating documents for a meeting board book is not a single person’s job. To manage the workflow and write the papers seamlessly, your chosen meeting management solution must be able to assign tasks. Moreover, it should let you add due dates and collaborate within the portal to edit the documents. This will let you track the progress of the documents within a single platform, rather than switching between applications.

3. Information Access

While it may seem obvious, the perfect meeting management software must provide easy access to the information that your meeting attendees require. Moreover, it should eliminate the use of paper-based systems and provide something which is clean, organized, and intuitive. Therefore, consider the following things before you finalize a meeting management software.

A. Ability to Search

Board members should be able to search the needed documents easily and enjoy easy navigation.

B. Multiple Device Functionality

The best conference management systems offer access across desktop, tablet, and mobile. If your chosen solution is desktop-based, it is likely to impact attendance at your meetings.

C.Offline Access

Another important thing to look into is whether users can access information both online and offline. It can become difficult to prepare for the meeting if they do not have access to 4G or Wi-Fi.

4. Ease of Collaboration

A meeting management software offering easy collaboration between stakeholders, clients, and team members is the best for your organization. In a paper-led approach, attendees face a tough time explaining their issues, comments, and questions. For this, you can choose a cloud-based meeting management solution. It will let you see everyone’s comments as they leave them. In this, you will be able to discuss administrational issues and make adjustments before the meeting begins. Thus, saving you time during the event.

Moreover, it will also help attendees bring up issues and backup points by sharing the exact passages in question. As a result, everyone is on the same page, and you can have a fruitful discussion.

5. Calendar Functionality

Another feature your meeting management solution must have is the ability to update and share calendars within the portal. This will allow you to schedule meetings and other events. Moreover, it lets you gauge the schedules of your team members. Lastly, it lets you make quick decisions and get RSVPs from your members.

6. Video Conferencing Functionality

To easily identify people who are a part of your meeting, the ability to see who is active in the session is important. On a conference call, it is possible that you could lose and not realize it. So, video conferencing can be extremely useful for transparency. Moreover, being able to see each other makes attendees feel more involved. Additionally, there will be fewer issues with people cutting each other in between as you will get visual cues when someone is about to speak.

Most meeting management solutions let you implement a raised hand system. This will help you give everyone an opportunity to contribute. On a virtual call, it is not always clear who is speaking. So, the ability to see the contributors is a real benefit of video conferencing.

7. Governance Features

When running virtual meetings, it is important that you can complete the necessary governance procedures online. You must choose a solution that offers risk management modules.

An important aspect is that your chosen solution lets you issue eSignatures and approvals through the platform. Moreover, it should also let you provide a list of people who approved the document, related instructions, and dates. Finally, you should also look for handy features that let you give out reminders or notifications to let people when they need to sign a document.

8. Existing Vs New System

Before you finally purchase a meeting management software, ask yourself if it is a better option than your current situation. Moreover, you should ensure that the vendor provides adequate training and support modules. Additionally, customer support is one thing you must look for. Live chat, email, and phone support are a must.