Geisinger Health System is one of the nation's leading, fully integrated healthcare providers, serving over two million residents through its 650 member group practice. Geisinger has been nationally recognized for its IT innovations, and in 2005 established a goal of taking its board communications paperless. Today, Geisinger is using the BoardVantage board portal to streamline board book preparation, provide directors with easy, online access to board materials, and to reduce board communication costs.
At the end of 2005, Geisinger established a goal of going paperless with its board communications. The organization wanted to simplify board book preparation, provide directors with easier access to board materials, and reduce the volume of printed documents — both for environmental and economic reasons.
Geisinger initially developed a board communications system in-house. With this system, the board administrator and her team assembled board books electronically, and then sent them on disks to directors who could read them with specialized mobile devices.
In 2007, Geisinger began exploring transitioning its board communications to a board portal. They wanted to find an easier way to assemble and update board books, and to eliminate the need to send disks to directors. In addition, they wanted to provide directors with immediate, online access to new board documents, including updates. They also wanted to enable directors to log-in to view new materials via their own computers, rather than requiring them to use special hardware.
Geisinger elected to adopt the BoardVantage board portal. According to Noelle Tiesi, executive assistant to the CEO, The solution looked very easy to use, both for our directors and our board administrators. We were also convinced it was secure, given its SAS70 Type II and SysTrust certification and third party audits.
We also liked the solution's rich functionality — particularly the drag & drop capabilities as well as the wizards for creating agendas and board books.
said Tiesi.
In addition to product functionality, Geisinger noted that BoardVantage's focus on board portals, as well as its customer list and leadership position in the board portal space played roles in its decision-making process as well.
Today, the board administrator is able to assemble, update, and distribute board materials much more quickly. She uploads documents in their native Microsoft Office formats, and the system automatically converts them into Adobe pdfs for wider viewing, while at the same time maintaining native versions. She and her team also use BoardVantage wizards to automatically create agendas and board books, and to send alerts to directors letting them know when new materials are available.
Directors simply log on to the system from any location, and easily navigate through hyperlinked documents. They are also able to use other productivity tools like secure email and Web conferencing from within BoardVantage.
David Felicio, chief legal officer at Geisinger, commented on the cost savings with the board portal. According to Felicio We have 35 individuals who receive board materials. They meet in person four times a year, and have phone meetings during the other months, in addition to committee meetings. It was very expensive to create board books for each individual for each meeting.
With BoardVantage, we're able to create, update, and distribute board documents efficiently,
said Felicio. We're also printing less, given everything's available online. And, since BoardVantage is a hosted solution, we no longer need to use our IT resources to manage an internal system, or to support our users. In short, this is a very cost effective solution for us.
BoardVantage Board Portal
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