Simple and Effective Board Managment

OnBoard has completely revolutionised the way we organise and hold board meetings. Due to the nature of our organisation, our trustees and board sub-committees hold a large number of meetings throughout the year. In the past, this caused a huge amount of overhead for our Company Secretary and EA's who organise the meetings, put together board packs, etc. OnBoard provides us with an easy to use platform for our admins to organise these meetings, create board packs, hold votes/approvals, and obtain signatures when necessary. What would previous take days our hours, now takes minutes.

Pros

Overall, the simplicity of OnBoard is it's strongest feature. With minimal training, our admins were able to quickly begin creating meetings and board packs. Simply put, OnBoard is a highly effective system that does exactly what we need it to do, without a mass of unnecessary features. It's also worth commenting on the strength of Passageways customer support. Our account manager worked very closely with us through every step of the implementation process, helping us with the initial setup of the system as well as training for our admins. Passageways also setup a number of training sessions for our Trustees, ensuring they were completely comfortable using the platform before go-live, which has lead to a high level of user adoption.

Cons

There is very little to dislike, however the left to right menu layout may be slightly confusing to some users who may be more familiar with a traditional top-down/webpage layout.

Continous Operations Through COVID

The engagement of the OnBoard sales and service team has been exceptional. Their support has made the transition from our previous board meeting platform to OnBoard seamless.

Pros

The board is able to function well virtually and depending on the packages your firm utilizes, the functionality increases. This has proven particularly important as our firm navigates operations through the COVID19 pandemic.

Cons

As of right now, there is nothing that I dislike about the software. It is user - friendly and helps keep the board efficient in a remote work environment.

Why we prefer OnBoard by Passageways

Our board members have made the transition to OnBoard very quickly and have commented that they find it very intuitive to use. It is a great tool to keep our board members engaged with the college. We can post important announcements and know they will be seen. The Resource section allows us to have all our documents stored in one secure place. I appreciate the monthly webinars on tips and tricks for using the portal in new and different ways.

Pros

I like the fact that OnBoard now has the Zoom platform available. Our board has gone to virtual meetings over the last six months and the Zoom feature in OnBoard makes it very easy to set up the meeting and notify board members.

Cons

Currently I still need to keep some board records in a separate spreadsheet, such as term lengths and dates members will be up for reelection. I have discussed this with the developers. It is possible that this will be remedied for administrators in a future update of the product.

Onboard is super helpful

I've had a very good experience with onboard. I've helped to integrate it into our advisory team and they love the fact that we can be more digital and print less. Our clients appreciate that we are taking on this green initiative within the company as well.

Pros

-saves a ton of money on printing costs -can easily replace and add documents to a presentation -you can add users with different permissions to different sections of the meeting -you can save resources to the resources tab for offline use (no need to access a network drive) -great for meetings when the team is travelling

Cons

-it is not easy to view documents within the software. Every time you upload a new document, the book re-builds so you cannot see the document until the book is done building

Fast, Efficient, Intuitive

Prior to using OnBoard, Board meeting preparation used to take an entire day to assemble hard copy books, plus the cost of all the paper and three ring notebooks. I can now upload the materials and finalize the Board books in 60 - 90 minutes. In addition, hard copy books had to either be hand delivered by college personnel, or shipped UPS, especially if a member was traveling. The use of OnBoard eliminated the need for all that. Plus, the Board members appreciate not having all those accumulated books to contend with.

Pros

OnBoard is very user-friendly for both the administrator and the user. This feature is especially important for users who have various levels of comfort and expertise with technology. Our college switched to OnBoard in October 2014, and before that our Board meeting books were produced on paper. OnBoard has streamlined the Board meeting preparation process, and I like the ability to make last minute changes to the materials, to which the users have access immediately. Using OnBoard is also much more convenient for those members who may be traveling; they can log into their Board materials on any device from anywhere. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, OnBoard quickly created a Zoom/OnBoard interface that allows users to long into Zoom through OnBoard, and eliminate the need for two devices. The OnBoard team reacted quickly to provide a convenient solution for a pesky problem.

Cons

Integration with our existing processes was not difficult. OnBoard provided online training to the administrators, and because the software is easy to use, it did not require multiple training sessions. OnBoard has continued to refine and add other features, some of which I cannot use since ours is a public board. The only thing I would change would be to allow an entire group of members to be blocked from viewing a section. Currently, I only have the option to block individuals. A bit inconvenient, but by no means a deal breaker. And that will probably be corrected in a future software update.