We caught up with John Headley, Chief Financial Officer at the University of Law, to hear how Convene has helped their remote meetings stay organised while providing the best value for money.

John is responsible for all financial and business aspects of the University’s operations. A graduate of Oxford University, John is a Chartered Management Accountant who has worked as a Finance Director within the Bupa group as well as within large NHS hospital trusts and a major modern university in London. John is a Non-Executive Director of Shoreham Port Authority.
[Taken from the University of Law’s website. Available here.]

Since lockdown began, the Board at the University of Law needed to meet twice to support the business continuity of their institution. They used Convene’s iOS application in combination with Zoom to recreate their meetings and bring their key decision makers around the table.

Mr Headley commented that ‘Convene’s been great. Its smooth implementation process meant people adopted to it very easily. We wouldn’t look back’.

While Zoom and other similar platforms have been essential for the smooth running of business as we have moved through this difficult period, they are not a dedicated meetings platform. This is a topic we explored elsewhere on our blog, to learn about the ‘Perfect Meeting Toolbox’ click here.

While some users prefer to chat via Zoom, and meet via Convene, our latest product update has made it possible to do both in one secure, integrated platform. Convene’s new audio-conference functionality allows your meeting participants to chat in just 2 clicks.

This integrated audio feature allows your Board to get together to collaborate, make decisions and present information without the need to: 

- Share long meetings links
- Purchase third-party software providers
- Worry about dial-in codes

To find out more about Audio-Conferencing with Convene, click here.

Convene’s intuitive interface makes it the ideal digital board pack. Our range of presentation tools and simply laid out Document Library make it straightforward for your Board members to follow meetings remotely while making their own private annotations. They have been doing just that at the University of Law.

Convene users often find that it helps their meetings stay focussed and organised. In the University of Law’s case, Mr Headley describes how ‘Convene has helped us get our papers in order in a very discipled way in advance of a meeting…it’s a very reliable, mature product’.

That’s because Azeus has been appraised to the highest level of Capability Maturity Model Integration, meaning our ‘Organization is focused on continuous improvement and is built to pivot and respond to opportunity and change. The organization’s stability provides a platform for agility and innovation.’

By making great use of our full range of features, Convene has helped streamline the University of Law’s remote meetings process. To find out more about our range of pre, in and post-meeting features click here.

Mr Headley, who has sat on a number of different Boards both past and present, spoke of how when a company he works with implements a solution like Convene, it is a ‘mark of respect’. It is a premium product that allows Board members to focus on the issues at hand, rather than be concerned with technologies that end up making life more difficult.

Whether it is Sharepoint that ‘does not make life easy’, or BoardPad ‘which was really expensive, and required lots of hand holding’, Mr Headley highlighted how many other more costly board portal solutions fail to meet the required standard.

As put by Mr Headly, Convene has ‘made us more disciplined and organised about not wasting time. Assistants are not run ragged and good quality papers are out on time’.

To find out more about how Convene can save your organisation time, money and effort, get in touch using the form below.

Solomon Rackham

Written by Solomon Rackham

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