BoardPro offers board management software for small enterprise, small cap and nonprofit organizations. With it, users can create agendas, build board packs, record minutes, send actions and store files.
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HCL Notes
Score 7.5 out of 10
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Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.
The best scenarios for the use of BoardPro are highlighted when there is planning, development, coordination, execution and monitoring of projects and activities, in addition to being an information panel for all the members of the different teams of the organization, it provides the ability to hold meetings, an integrating element that stands out from other software. The management of the boards is exceptionally intuitive and easy to use, in addition to simplifying its content in a way that is easy to understand for all people, granting continuity and consistency to the work or works to be developed. An area of opportunity where it could be developed in a better way is offline work, since it will not be possible for your team members to work in this way.
I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
Agenda-setting and writing minutes is very easy with the built-in structure offered
Compiling and distributing Board packs with BoardPro takes a fraction of the time it used to - and updates to papers are so much easier
Ability to hold all governance documents in one central repository is useful for external Directors
Directors find the Board paper annotation feature very useful. New updates to this have made it an extremely powerful tool.
Flying Minutes feature is very useful for obtaining formal decisions between meetings and then automatically adding them to the next set of minutes.
The ability for Directors to update their own interests in the Interests Register is efficient and puts the responsibility on them to ensure this is up to date - this is automatically included in each Board pack.
The actions feature is fantastic - allocating a person responsible and an action deadline which then is followed up by BoardPro email reminders keeps people on tasks and allows the Chair to stay on top of actions as they are reported in the Board packs each meeting.
Notes' backwards compatibility sometimes gets in the way. Menus are cluttered with extraneous, outdated options and features that modern users will never use, and Preferences are often difficult to navigate for those coming from Gmail or Outlook. We have greatly simplified this via Policies, but users still find it daunting to go through all the options that are available.
The IBM Notes client for Windows & Mac is essentially the Eclipse Java development platform...so it is HUGE. Performance initially was very slow but IBM has done a good job of speeding things up. As IBM moves more toward cloud-delivered applications, this will not be as much of a problem.
Notes and Domino can be complex to manage for administrators who are more accustomed to ActiveDirectory, Group Policy, etc. Editing a notes.ini file to add a feature, or working with XML files by hand to create a SmartUpgrade kit can be daunting to those coming from more modern administrative roles.
Some users claim to "hate" Notes mail. While I have heard this less and less over the past 10 years, we have had 3rd party software offer plugins to Outlook and it's rare to see any for Notes.
The client update process should be automated more. I would like to see the Notes client update quietly and quickly more like an Adobe software update. If an update fails it should automatically try again without prompting the user over and over.
Notes multiple language spell checking is a downloaded add-on Java-based resource that has to be deployed in a convoluted way that is difficult for users to grasp. Therefore any foreign language spell check updates must be done individually per Notes client by IT, which is unfortunate. I would prefer to see that be a "live download" update option for users to get directly from IBM (don't make me download it and put it on my network).
I've been in IT business and as a Programmer/Developer for 20+ years with too many programming languages experiences/back ground (C/C++/Visual Basic/Basic Program/Unix/COBOL/Java). Also with 18+ years with Lotus Notes/IBM Domino, I am still and always think Lotus Notes is the best RAD platform available!. When the time where resource is very limited and the expectation is very high and the turn around is too short, IBM Domino/Notes is the platform to use and it's the only choice available.
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
BoardPro is on a different playing field than monday.com, in fact, BoardPro is in a league of it's own. I used monday.com at a different organisation board and actually found that I did not use it. I found it easier to download and read the PDF board pack that was provided to me. The user interface of BoardPro is such that the software is easy to navigate and use, it is intuitive and such a delight to use.
Outlook has been considered for years as a replacement platform. Pricing and support staff made it prohibitive. Our long-time use of Microsoft Office productivity suite naturally led us to consider the adoption of Office365. A recent investigation told us that Azure Cloud services propel an O365 solution to the forefront. Early adopters in international divisions have paved the way for Azure and O365.
Over the years, we have lost countless hours of productivity from the thousands of crashes we have experienced.
One benefit of IBM Notes is that it is very simple to train a new user on. Many people prefer and are familiar with Google tools, but those that use IBM Notes have very little trouble acclimating themselves.
