Revitalize Your Boardroom: 5 Spring-Cleaning Hacks for Maximum Efficiency

Making your board operate more efficiently is simpler — and less of a heavy lift — than just about any spring-cleaning project. But like spring cleaning, you need the right equipment first.

If your board already operates with a digital, cloud-based board management portal, congratulations! You won’t need to go shopping to complete these tasks. If not, however, finding the right board management solution that best fits your organization’s needs is a necessary first step.

Without further ado, take these 5 steps to make your board operate more efficiently, and we’re confident you won’t need to pick up another (virtual) broom and dustpan for a long time.

1. Centralize Every Document in One Secure Portal

OnBoard customers who share their stories often say some version of the same story: “We wanted everything to be in one place.”

Hunting through email threads, shared drives, and board books that are hundreds of pages long is time-consuming and frustrating. Spring-clean your board by consolidating agendas, reports, minutes, and policies into a single board portal.

Some suggested tasks include:

• Use drag-and-drop (or upload + reorder) to build your meeting packet in minutes.
• Apply simple tags or metadata (committee, date, document type) for instant filtering.
• Leverage built-in version history and auto-archive rules to keep your workspace uncluttered.

The result? Your next board packet comes together in one place—no hunting, no guesswork, and a lot less time spent.

2. Automate Approvals and eSignatures

Chasing down ink signatures and email reminders slows down approvals and buries your inbox. Important items collect dust, in a virtual sense.

The solution? Implement eSignature workflows directly in your board software, complete with notifications and audit logs.

The steps to make this happen include:

• Configure sequential or parallel signing queues
• Enable automated nudges for overdue signers
• Store a tamper-proof certificate of every completed signature.

What used to take days now takes hours … and it’s completely paper-free.

Want to explore eSignatures further? Check out our self-guided Deep Dive Demo.

3. Leverage AI-Generated Pre-Read Summaries

It’s common — and painstaking — for directors to spend too many hours combing through long, dense board materials. Some of the material applies to that director and their specific role. Much of it does not.

The emerging world of artificial intelligence has a solution. Consider an AI summary tool to automatically distill large, complex board packets into concise executive briefs.

Here’s how to make it happen:

• Choose a summary style (bullet list, short narrative, or another similar setup that works best for you).
• Highlight the top action items or concerns.
• Review and share the brief within your portal.

The result? Your board members arrive to the meeting more informed, while taking a fraction of the preparation time they once did.

Want a guide on how to do this? Get sample prompts in the OnBoard Guide to AI in the Boardroom.

4. Automate Action-Item Tracking and Reminders

Tasks can easily fall through the cracks when you rely on sticky notes or spreadsheets. Instead, turn every decision into a tracked action item with deadline alerts in your portal.

Here’s how to pull it off:

• Assign tasks directly within the board software, with due dates.
• Enable email and mobile push reminders
• Monitor completion rates on a dashboard

This process fosters accountability without any manual follow-up needed, so you can close the loop on completing necessary tasks.

Want to see how it works? Explore our Action-Item Tracker Demo.

5. Utilize Real-Time Dashboards

Manual reporting on attendance, voting, and task status takes too long — and it’s often stale by the time you share it.

A live dashboard auto-updates key governance metrics as soon as a meeting ends.

How does it work?

• Embed your top KPIs (e.g. quorum rate, vote outcomes, action-item closure) in your portal homepage.
• Configure threshold alerts (e.g. if attendance falls below an established minimum)
• Exports charts and summaries for your board packet in one click

This practice provides real-time visibility into board health so you can course-correct immediately.

Want to see a board health scorecard for your organization? Request a personalized demo.