Boardpro improving governance workflow
Anew platform designed to improve the way boards of small businesses and not-for-profits operate is launching.
Boardpro is officially launching on February 1 after doing a soft launch in July last year.
The software, which costs subscribers less than $100 a month, provides an online platform that automates the workflow of boards.
Co-founder Brett Herkt said the idea for the business came after his initial startup failed and he had to go back to the drawing board.
Experienced director Simon Telfer, who was now one of Boardpro’s directors, suggested to Herkt the idea of board software for small businesses and not-forprofits.
Herkt found that one of the biggest challenges for boards of small businesses and not-forprofit organisations was a lack of resources.
Where a large company’s board would have a dedicated company secretary and a team of lawyers and financial experts, small organisations did not have the same level of expertise available.
The general manager of one of Boardpro’s clients ran board meetings, presented and did the minutes all at the same time. Another client had to deal with documents getting lost in email trails.
Sean McDonald is the founder of mobile messaging and marketing platform Mobit and has been using Boardpro for the past eight months.
Before Boardpro, McDonald had the unfortunate job of collating all the information from meetings and sharing it between the other directors.
‘‘The manual task of putting together board documents, agendas, minutes is very, very time intensive,’’ he said.
It took him anywhere between three hours and a full day to finish a set of documents required for each board meeting. Now, it took him under an hour.
Herkt said the aim of Boardpro was to make a positive difference to small businesses and not-forprofit organisations.
‘‘We’re doing very practical things: saving time, making it easier to do good practice, giving them structure, getting them organised. If we can just help them lift their game a bit, that’s really good.’’
In six months Boardpro’s database grew to 500 directors and executives and attracted its first 30 customers on light marketing.
Contracted distribution of the software exposed the company to a further 9000 directors in New Zealand and potentially another 20,000 to 25,000 in Australia.
Herkt said he wanted to reach 500 customers in the next year.