NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — One CU is touting the benefits of going paperless-not just for members, but for the board.
"For years we'd been looking at replacing our existing board portal-which was a very basic thing-with something more robust," recalled Brad Williams, CTO at South Carolina FCU. "The challenge was that everything out there required board members to remember to bring a laptop to a meeting to review data and then go paperless. It's cumbersome; it's a lot to bring to a meeting, so we never really adopted any other thing."
As a result, South Carolina Fed kept printing materials necessary for board and committee meetings-which often meant making as many as 30 copies of 180-page printed books.
With the advent of tablet computing, all that changed. The CU adopted Diligent's Boardbooks solution, which allows boards to use an iPad for those documents.
"We try to replicate the paper process in many ways, but to do it in a much more efficient manner," explained Diligent's EVP and Director of Client Services, Jeff Hilk. "Our software allows the administrator to drag and drop those documents into a shell that's built into our software that's kind of like the tabs of a board meeting book."
The app also allows users to digitally make notes, highlight, underline, dog-ear pages, and more.
A Game Changer
Hilk called the spread of the iPad "a game change for the board portal industry," noting that about 300 of Diligent's 2,300 clients are CUs and community banks.
South Carolina Federal's Williams explained that when the CU decided to try out the solution, it gave directors a three-month trial using both iPads and traditional board books. The trial period didn't even run the full three months. "In the second month they said 'We're good, this solution works,'" recalled Williams. "I would say of the 14 board members, I've only got one who grumbles about using it."
Neither Williams nor Hilk were willing to share specifics regarding cost, but Hilk noted it is a subscription-based service charged on an annual basis, and includes support, updates and more, along with a thorough on-boarding process.
When South Carolina FCU launched the Diligent solution, it purchased iPads for each board member, as well as a few extras in case anyone forgot theirs or extras were needed. Williams noted that the solution hasn't actually saved SC Fed any money, but has improved the board meeting process.
"The solution itself is more expensive than what we were doing before-that shouldn't come as much of a shock," he said. "It's not hugely so, but it is more expensive." But, he said, there have been significant benefits as far as incalculable "soft costs," such as the time it takes to assemble board documents, make last-minute changes and more. "It's more expensive, but it does so much more."
Williams said the Diligent solution worked for his CU because of a mix of both practicality and accessibility. "It was not practical to go paperless at the board meeting with a laptop," he said. "It wasn't until tablet technology arrived that solved the practicality part of the equation that we were able to move forward."
When it comes to rolling out this type of solution, Williams reminded CUs to be prepared for initial hardware investments. But, he said, "as an organization, the tablet technology and its ability to go paperless has just scratched the surface of what's possible for the entire organization."
