Viridian Housing has reported on the success of its project to move from paper-based information packs for its executive team and board members to electronic packs using Diligent Boardbooks.
Before using Diligent Boardbooks, the Viridian team prepared paper packs of information for each board, executive and committee meeting, comprising around 45 people and around 50 meetings in total each year. As a result, Viridian wanted to move to a digital board portal as part of a long-term strategy to secure and digitise confidential personal information relating to the individuals using its housing services, as well as to make the compilation of the information packs quicker and cheaper.
Shirley Griffiths, executive assistant, Viridian Housing, said, “We saw a number of systems that were much too complicated and obviously designed to suit the needs of larger organisations. But we were pleasantly surprised by the Diligent Boardbooks solution; its simple functionality and impressive security were really appealing. It did exactly what we wanted, and did it well, within the budget available.”
Aslam Jahan, project manager, Viridian Housing, said, “I can’t stress strongly enough how important data security is for us. We deal with very sensitive data so security was our main concern when looking at a board portal.”
Using Boardbooks, Viridian’s board, executive and committee members now have instant, secure access to all the information they need. Jahan said, “Users have access to any updates straight away, so they know they’re always reviewing the latest information. It is also easy to access historical information via the archive section, so they can refer back to previous meeting notes and new users can get up to speed quickly.”
The new system is saving Viridian’s administrative team so much time each month that when one member of the team left the company, the rest of the team was able to absorb the role.
Griffiths said, “Creating and distributing paper packs took a full-time role, albeit spread across a number of people. Not only is Boardbooks a cost-effective solution for Viridian, but it is also helping us to save money in other ways.”
