Corporate governance | Board performance evaluation | Social impact & entrepreneurship
Yesterday I had a chat with a consultant for a board portal provider that I hadn't reviewed for a few years (last undertaken in April 2021). I check in now and again with providers to evaluate development roadmaps and understand what changes or updates might make their products more useful to me or make my clients' jobs easier. Most board portal platforms in the market today suffer from two significant, enduring problems: (1) worthless feature bloat, or (2) lack of differentiation. While it could easily be a number (3), I don't mark providers on "ease of use" specifically because anyone who can't reduce a process to a few clicks has no business being in this market to begin with. Only a small number get this balance right, while others are what I call "middlers" - genuinely, embarrassingly average non-contenders that throw resources at the space because it's convenient as a product offering rather than being an innovator that actually threatens incumbents in a meaningful way. Those at the forefront of innovation leave the others in the dust. On this basis, price discrimination might net providers some clients but if they're not solving a board administrator/company secretary's pain points, they're not worth it (nor are the savings for that matter). I've developed resources to help boards evaluate these offerings and make the purchase decision easier precisely because it can be so hard to tell them apart, while many volunteer-based boards without independent, professional corporate governance support don't have the knowledge, let alone the time to pursue this exploratory exercise on their own. Going into the new year many boards will be completing their annual self-evaluations and during this time, I'd suggest asking yourselves, "is this technology actually helping us govern?" or "are we effectively using a glorified drop box with annotations that we pay a premium for?" There are three market-segment targeting products I generally recommend to my clients that add value over and above being a place to store board packs. If you're interested in finding out what those are, let's have a chat. #corporategovernance #boardportals #boardeffectiveness
