The Evolution of board portals

Joe Ruck, CEO of BoardVantage, reveals how the market for board portals is changing.

What have been the biggest changes you have seen in the market for board portals?

Joe Ruck. I believe we have seen three distinct phases. Boards were relatively late to move online, in large part due to security concerns. As a result, the initial focus was on simply enabling secure online distribution of the board book. The stringent security needs made this a non-trivial exercise, and one made much harder given the uncompromising focus directors have on ease of use.

The second phase occurred five years ago. It addressed the needs of the corporate secretary office. Often working under stringent deadlines with numerous last minute changes, in many cases early electronic board books, especially home grown attempts, actually increased the workload of the corporate secretary office. It's fair to say that BoardVantage led the field with a full-fledged corporate secretary toolkit, tailored to their needs. That resulted in dramatically improving productivity in their process.

The most recent phase started a few years back when we first noticed that customers were using BoardVantage not just for the board, but also for their executive team. When you consider that they have to deal with many of the same issues and require similar levels of security as directors, you realize that it is a natural extension. This trend has since taken a strong hold and we are now seeing board portal technology begin to address the broader need for the secure collaboration in leadership teams.

So when we started to develop our next generation Board Portal two years ago, we designed it not only to support boards, but also for leadership teams. This required a top-to-bottom product redesign to deliver a rich collaboration platform to address all the needs of executive teams.

Your website talks about the iPad - what's the uptake of board members there?

JR. When the iPad first came out I wrote a brief article on my own experiences using it for board work and published it on BoardVantage.com. Since then we've been inundated with inquiries. Because we have always had Safari support we ran on the iPad the moment Apple released it. Since then we have released an app through iTunes for BoardVantage NextGen. I use it all the time and there is no secret for its popularity among board members. It is compact, light, highly readable, and with instant boot time it cuts in half the effort needed to review and approve items compared to using a laptop.

How do you address the security concerns that organizations have?

JR. BoardVantage solved the security problems with hosting board materials for Fortune-500s years ago, including those of global financial institutions. We have invested in the product, process, and audits necessary to meet or exceed the standard of even the most security-conscious IT departments.

What can we expect to see from BoardVantage in the future?

JR. There is rapidly growing interest in using social media. Also expectations of richness and ease-of-use have increased dramatically. Having been in the board portal market for years with a large base of marquee accounts we anticipated the trend and built support for those requirements in BoardVantage NextGen. Our cornerstone market is boards, whose unique requirements now require tailored solutions, one that incorporates the best practices of the F-1000 and leading not-for-profits. But if you've ever have a need to collaborate across the firewall and still meet the security demands of your IT department, as well as the ease of use expectations of your users, then I would urge you to take a look at BoardVantage.

Biography

Joe Ruck is President and CEO of BoardVantage. He has led many high-technology companies through successful growth to IPO or acquisition. Prior to joining BoardVantage, Joe was senior vice president of marketing at Interwoven and part of the team that drove the company through one of the most successful IPOs of 1999. Previously, he held sales, marketing, and executive positions at Sun Microsystems, Network Appliance, and Genesys Telecommunications, subsequently acquired by Alcatel. Joe holds a BS in engineering from Oregon State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.