Why Banks Value Navigability in Board Management Software

When your bank has the opportunity to gather industry veterans with centuries of experience between them into a single room to make decisions that affect its future, every moment counts. Working fast should never be a goal when “fast” comes at the expense of making well-informed decisions. However, streamlining aspects of your board meetings leaves more time for directors to deliberate on important topics. There are, of course, many ways to streamline your board meetings. Today, however, we’re going to focus on just one: navigating your governance technology.

So, what does “navigation” entail? When it comes to board management software, navigation means the speed and efficiency with which your bank’s board members are able to move around between (and within) features in the course of a meeting. At a conceptual level, this doesn’t sound as important as it is when you put it into practice. Most boards have at least nine members, each with varying degrees of technological proficiency. Banks will always find themselves at the mercy of their least tech-savvy board member when trying to maximize their decision-making effectiveness.

Every second a board spends waiting around for all the members to arrive at the right location in their digital board packets is a second they could be spending evaluating ideas and deliberating on solutions. In the moment, it might only seem like a few seconds are lost. However, this problem will likely come up several times over the course of a bank’s board meeting. Before you know it, those minutes start to add up.

Gauging Navigability

To maximize the time board members spend deliberating on important issues, banks should look for a board management solution which takes streamlined navigation into account. There are a few things to look for when determining whether a vendor fits the bill.

  • Navigation within a given feature, function, or screen: This is fairly easy to identify. When demoing a board software candidate, consider whether the process of finding what you need within a single “screen” of the application (such as the events calendar, the agenda screen, etc.) will be easy enough for the least tech-savvy member of your board to manage proficiently.
  • Navigation between features, functions, or screens: You need to determine the difficulty of navigating from one feature, function, or screen to another. The easiest way to do this is to count the number of “clicks” (either mouse clicks or finger taps on a touchscreen) to get from Point A to Point B. Regardless of the technological proficiency of your board members, this is a good way to gauge the size of the learning curve they’ll need to overcome.
  • Navigation between multiple apps or softwares: Some board software providers ask bank directors to switch between entire apps or software programs in an effort to modularize their product offerings. While, in most cases, we would recommend against this, if you are considering spreading your board portal across multiple apps, it’s important to gauge the difficulty of doing so. This also applies to banks considering using enterprise communication softwares (such as WebEx, Skype, or Slack) to facilitate board communications (something we unequivocally advise against).

Maximizing Technological Efficiency

Beyond simply investing in board management software which prioritizes simple, intuitive navigation, there are a few things banks can do to maximize the technological efficiency during board meetings. Keeping the information your board stores on its board management system organized is a great clerical best practice. Regardless of how easy it is to navigate within or between features, functions, and screens, making quality training a central part of the implementation process is a solid step in the right direction. It’s important to consider how a learning curve changes over time.

Image Source: TynerBlain.com

Looking at the graph above, it’s clear that the time between bank directors’ first impression of a board management software and the end of training poses a valuable opportunity to reduce the learning curve. The extent to which the learning curve drops in this period is largely dependent on the navigability of the software and the quality of the training.

Directorpoint’s board management software is designed to mitigate time lost to getting all of your board members on the same page. Our OneView design gives bank boards access to all the features and information they need in a single click. Our board portal allows you to easily organize and search through a large amount of information. Directorpoint’s search capabilities allow bank boards to search for a single word across pages of information.

When viewing documents in DIrectorpoint’s board portal, board members will find a simple page preview sidebar which allows you to scroll through pages in seconds to find the one you need without needing to search for a specific word, phrase, or page number. We value a seamless design experience, leveraging efficient navigation to maximize your decision-making effectiveness.


To schedule a demo of Directorpoint’s simple, time-saving board portal, click here. You can also contact us online or give us a call at (888) 492-7020 to speak with a board technology specialist.

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