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No doubt the most exciting Internet strategies today rely on leveraging the trust relationships that exist within groups of people, be it for social, commercial or educational purposes. The concept jumped on the scene only a few years ago but has quickly gone mainstream, shape-shifting to suit ever more purposes and expanding far beyond what was originally thought possible. The technologies underneath go by the umbrella term of social networking and Facebook is considered the standard bearer.
Corporate America has been quick to embrace this trend externally, primarily for marketing purposes, but has been noticeably slower in their adoption internally. That dichotomy is understandable. The security of these networks is broadly regarded as weak and the potential for leaks of confidential information is great.
But what hasn’t been talked about to the same extent, and what is an equally grave impediment to broad adoption, is the simplistic relationship model embedded in those networks. Without a richer model to address role complexity of the typical professional in the modern workplace the value of social networks as a collaboration tool is dubious at best.
It is this latter aspect that was foremost on our mind when we set out to reach beyond our traditional board market and build a collaboration platform for leadership teams. Reconciling the needs for security and simplicity is a technical challenge for many engineering teams but, for BoardVantage, with our extensive experience in the board portal market, it is a core competency. The greater difficulty lies in the proper capture of multiple roles which are needed to support the normal social functioning of the workplace, and which are routinely combined in a single person (e.g. direct report, peer, manager, etc.).
We viewed enriching the model as the central architectural challenge, one that could only be addressed with a reinterpretation of established concepts. However, if successful, it would be the keystone to fulfilling the requirement of capturing multiple roles. Below I will delineate the five key elements of the architecture we developed.
1. TeamSpace-Driven Content and Communication
In our model TeamSpaces are shared environments that function as the focal points for confidential collaboration. They form the backbone of our architecture, permeating every aspect of our design. Individual spaces are configurable with a rich functionality to support a range of knowledge worker roles and workplace process. Since knowledge work commonly relies upon a combination of content, process and communication, TeamSpaces are equipped as such.
2. User-Driven Content and Communication
The architecture also designates a class of content as being user-driven. This class represents any content under the exclusive control of the user. Among others this class includes such items as an alert inbox, a document ‘briefcase’ and status information.
This distinction allows a user to maintain exclusive control over private information even while working in a shared-content space. User-driven content is portable so it’s at the individual’s disposal at all times, irrespective in what TeamSpace the user resides at any given time.
3. TeamSpace Arrays
TeamSpaces are often networked. They can be snapped into a collection of spaces, creating a TeamSpace Array. This permits segregation of the roles which users play across the various groups in which they collaborate. Because spaces are ring-fenced, the role played in one TeamSpace does not spill over to the role played in an adjacent one.
4. TeamSpace Backplane
A TeamSpace Array can serve as proxy for the multiple roles a professional plays in the modern workplace. But this concept only works if a user can navigate between multiple spaces — swiftly. That’s why the architecture deploys a secure backplane. Controlled by permissions, this model lets individual users jump back and forth between spaces quickly and securely.
5. Permission Model
TeamSpaces are access-controlled, but that does not mean that should be one-size-fits- all access, once inside. Consider the example of a calendar schedule. Even if a schedule isn’t confidential, it is generally considered to be privileged to the individual. While every TeamSpace is ring-fenced against intrusion by outsiders, within the space any asset, whether a document, event or otherwise is access-controlled under a permission model. The model is flexible enough to support real-world cross-hierarchical use cases.
Using this framework the NextGen architecture has proven to function in a range of collaboration initiatives by different types of knowledge workers. The model balances the concerns of confidentiality with the real needs to share. Equally important it addresses the need for multiple roles in the modern workplace in an effective and elegant manner.
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A Brief History of Board Portals
Monday, October 18th, 2010At BoardVantage we do our fair share of product demos, during which we answer all manner of questions about functionality and how the portal is being used, standard demo stuff. Lately, another set of questions has entered the mix. Customers are now also asking about the board portal market itself, and how it has evolved. They’re more interested in our product roadmap and in the trends that have shaped the market as it exists today. It’s a departure from demos a year ago, but I think I understand why. There is a new dynamism in the space driven by a range of external and internal factors all the way from the iPad to the advent of social media, to the increased adoption of board portals beyond the board. Having been in board portals for almost eight years, I thought I’d provide a Cliff notes version of the space, and shed some light on how it might evolve from here.
All about Access: The Electronic Board Book
Unlike other recent business applications, board portals were not part of the Dotcom crop of the late nineties. They are a more recent phenomenon with the first vendors releasing products in the early 2000s’. BoardVantage was among them receiving our first round of VC financing in late 2002. Other early entrants received their funding around that same time, some from their corporate parent, and others from private sources.
There were two factors that propelled market development. The first was a cadre of progressive directors who, enthusiastic about technology and weary of bulky board books, advocated electronic access to meeting materials. The term used by them was “electronic board book”, an apt description given the rather primitive solutions in existence, which did not support much more than rudimentary online access.
The second driver was the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley act. This major piece of legislation, written in response to the scandals of that the time (Enron and others), threw a spotlight on board portals as a vehicle to drive governance. At BoardVantage we recognized the value (Technology in Corporate Governance, 2008) in that area but never regarded technology as a substitute, recognizing that corporate governance is ultimately a matter of expertise, ethics and transparency. Taking a pragmatic approach to the role for technology, our focus was increasing director visibility and improving timely access to information. That meant investments in alerting, secure email and Web conferencing. This approach has been validated, as online access has proved its staying power while governance faded as purchase justification for board portals.
Demand came from surprising corners. Contrary to popular expectation it was strongest from brick-and-mortar companies, not the tech sector. Also, large enterprises, typically perceived as conservative, were among the early adopters. Despite this contrarian trend, overall demand remained modest because product functionality was inadequate for widespread uptake.
From Access to Process: The Board Portal
It wasn’t until 2005 that the category found its footing. Technology matured, buying criteria firmed up, and naturally deal flow increased. Right around this time the term electronic board book fell out of favor while the term board portal took hold and is in use to this day. This reclassification was an implicit acknowledgment that newer technology could do much more than provide simple electronic access to board materials. Driven by customer requests, BoardVantage made major technology investments to stay ahead of the trend. Product enhancements allowed capturing virtually all aspects of board process including written consents and director questionnaires. We launched the corporate secretary toolkit with dashboards to manage and tally director input. We shipped an agenda builder for creation of an online agenda and assembly of a board book from Word. By the time 2007 rolled around we had re-engineered our product from top-to-bottom and had Web-enabled all board process as it was practiced inside a typical Fortune-500. With this second generation portal a General Counsel could provide the board with access to board materials AND support process in meetings as well as in-between meetings.
Other material developments during that time included improvements in the process aspects of security architectures and the initiation of SAS70 audits. Also, during this time hosted solutions vanquished the on-premise model. In the early days it had been possible to purchase an on-premise license, but this rapidly faded when F-100’s and financial institutions broadly adopted the hosted services model, correctly perceiving security would be better and director support greater. With time, the vendor hold-outs of the old model dropped out, and as of this writing the market is exclusively based on hosted services. After this rapid series of advances the board portal space entered a maturing phase (temporarily as it turned out) where customers were satisfied to absorb the improvements in their organizational process.
By now some of the biggest companies in America had embraced board portals although often preceded by lively debate. On one hand there were “the progressives”, on the other hand “the traditionals”. This debate has carried on in many boardrooms and reached a stalemate for several years. It’s only recently that the balance has begun to shift.
From Process to Collaboration: The Cross-Over
Starting in 2007 we noticed a change in the demand picture. Whereas up until that time board portals were strictly used by directors, “inside the boardroom”, requests started to come in to deploy the service for applications “outside the boardroom”. Driven by a growing need to include senior executives in the boardroom conversation as well as the desire for executives to collaborate more closely among themselves, companies were reaching out for something better than email.
This might be surprising at first but on closer scrutiny it becomes clear that the way that boards work isn’t so different from the way most executives do. Like directors, executives, depend on a steady flow of information, are often on-the-go, and get their information from an eclectic network of sources. In an increasingly fast-paced world, getting timely access to that information is of growing concern. Compounding the issue is that the information is confidential and is held under some form of process control. To tackle this problem they have email, which had begun to fall short. A board portal on the other hand, with its built-in security, ease of use, and document management has obvious inherent advantages to address this need.
This new demand did however not come without its challenges. As much as there are similarities in the way that boards work there are also material differences. For example, as a group, executives are far more tech-savvy than board members. Also, whereas board process is a relative constant across industries, there’s significant process variation from company to company when it comes to executives.
Before long demand “outside the boardroom” outpaced demand inside. As it continued to grow the BoardVantage flagship product was no longer optimal so in 2008 we green-lighted an engineering effort to build an executive collaboration platform. This platform was equipped with a new UI, a new architecture and new functionality, while leveraging our expertise in security, ease of use and executive team workflow. We also integrated social media because it is increasingly a key component of any enterprise application. Our NextGen product was announced earlier this summer and is now in full production.
We now see ourselves at an inflection point as a company with the market itself on the cusp of a transformation. Of course customers still need online access to board material and Web-enablement of board process but they have also added executive collaboration as a new criterion. No longer is the platform just for the board. It now also includes the leadership team and beyond. All of this has shaken up the stalemate in the boardroom. Whereas before the two forces were at an impasse, “progressives” are getting the upper hand over the “traditionals”, at least that’s the way it looks to us judging by the rapidly growing demand for our service.
No discussion of this topic would be complete without commenting on the iPad. Only announced this spring but it has had the impact of turbo-charging the trends outline above. I witnessed the revolution in computing that emerged with the PC, and I see a similar dynamic here. Every single demonstration we perform includes questions about iPad support (iPad Fever) and it’s not hard to see why. As I wrote in my iPad Experiences, the iPad is the perfect way to review and approve content. Just as the PC needed client-server computing to provide access to centralized systems such as SAP and Oracle, the iPad (and the inevitable follow-on devices, which will be more direct PC replacements) works best with modern hosted systems such as BoardVantage.
These are exciting times for the board portal market as it transforms to a broader market while leveraging the very latest software application trends with the latest hardware in the shape of the iPad. I am pleased that BoardVantage is at the forefront of this wave of change.
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