Use CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm to manage your company’s board meetings, and stop worrying about the time, the expense, and even the risk of non-compliance.

Your company’s board is meeting next week. Have all the directors been notified? Do you know if they’re attending? Do they have all documents they’ll need for the meeting? After days of photocopying, phone calls and overnight mailings, you’re still not certain.

That’s because your system for managing board meetings, in addition to being time-consuming and costly, is flawed. No matter how diligently you work, documents can be sent to the wrong address; opened by the wrong person; directors can miss calls; compliance events can be overlooked. As a consequence, directors may be ill prepared to make the decisions that are critical to the company’s operations, and your company may even be at risk of violating corporate governance regulations.

You can’t afford to continue to manage your board meetings in this manner. And now, you don’t have to.

CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm changes the way you manage your board meetings and correspond with your directors. This powerful online tool automates communication and creates a centralized repository for document sharing, eliminating the laborious logistics of notifying directors, and physically distributing and updating materials.

“CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm is a paradigm shift away from paper,” explains Chris Quimby, CSC’s Senior Product Manager for Compliance and Governance Services. “It gives company officers and directors secure, online access to the materials they need for board and committee meetings, and eliminates the need to print and mail documents.”

Moreover, the boardroom has been completely integrated with CSC RecordsCenter^sm, our acclaimed entity management system, so that a company’s data is automatically populated, eliminating the need for redundant data entry.

“The integration with CSC RecordsCenter^sm makes it a simple task to establish boardrooms and committee rooms and to designate the membership based on existing director and officer data,” says Tom Charno, Product Manager for Compliance & Governance Services at CSC.

Hands-on Directors Need Fast and Easy Access

Directors have become increasingly involved in the scrutiny and operations of their companies since Sarbanes-Oxley, and as a result, companies are looking for more efficient ways of communicating with their directors, Charno explains. “They can do that with CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm. It’s an easy jump to pushing data to your directors electronically.”

A corporate secretary can use CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm, either as a stand-alone application or integrated with CSC RecordsCenter^sm, to create boardroom and committee work areas which directors can access via web browsers to review documents and find other meeting information. Access is controlled by client administrators to ensure that officers, directors and other personnel do not access information that they are not authorized to read.

Board and committee members are automatically notified when materials become available through a robust calendar component within CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm. The system allows meeting attendance to be tracked for compliance purposes. “The calendar allows directors to choose how they wish to be notified, and the system can even track when directors access the documents,” Charno says.

CSC is planning to gradually add other features to CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm, such as providing virtual meeting places, or including an audit checklist in the audit committee workroom. “We envision things like voting, and public and private chat rooms in the future,” says Tom Charno, “but we want to bring directors along in a logical fashion.”

As a group, directors may be more reluctant to go paperless, but as they get comfortable using CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm, CSC’s Quimby is confident they will be pleased with the change. “Imagine not having to lug around big paper packages, wait impatiently for revisions, and wonder when the next meeting is,” he says. “It’s all right there on the desktop.”

FAQs and Answers

How does CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm make your task of preparing board meetings less expensive, less time-consuming, and more secure?

Because our directors travel a lot, I often have to prepare several document packets for the same person and send them to different addresses, often overseas.

With CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm, electronic documents are posted to a central repository, and directors are automatically notified at multiple e-mail addresses (business, personal, and assistant) that the documents are available for viewing. Because CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm is browser-based, directors can access the documents from any computer with an Internet connection, here or abroad. This can save your company thousands of dollars associated with the preparation and mailing of board and committee room materials.

I frequently have to race the clock to get critical documents, and in particular last-minute revisions, to directors in time for board meetings. I’m also always nervous about leaving out a document.

Electronic documents can be accessed as soon as they are posted within CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm. Again, you don’t have to squander valuable time and resources mailing the document packets, and directors can start their review of the materials immediately, ensuring that they are better prepared for the upcoming meeting.

I’m concerned that sensitive documents might be delivered to, and opened by, the wrong person.

CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm is a secure, online system. Only authorized users who have been issued passwords can access boardroom work areas. In addition, different rooms can be created for the board’s various committees, and again, only committee members with authorization will be able to access the documents in those work areas.

It’s hard to keep track of officer and director changes at my company’s entities.

It is a simple matter to update the officer and director data in CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm. Moreover, if you are using the CSC RecordsCenter^sm entity management tool, officer and director information is automatically updated to the boardroom thereby streamlining the administrative and communication tasks associated with board meetings.

Keeping and distributing the minutes and resolutions to directors is one of my biggest headaches!

CSC RecordsCenter^sm has a Minute Book component that guides you through the steps of high-quality record-keeping and has been fully integrated into CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm thereby simplifying the maintenance and distribution of meeting minutes.

I am afraid I’ll overlook an important compliance event or upcoming meeting.

CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm includes a robust calendar function, which automatically tracks all relevant compliance events and meetings. The application generates easy-to-read, customized calendars indicating key boardroom and committee room events. Email reminders are automatically generated and sent to you and other key personnel directly from the calendar application.

I need to be able to demonstrate that corporate information and updated documents actually make it into the hands of the right people in a timely manner.

CSC Virtual Boardroom^sm automatically creates a reporting and audit trail, which is critical for demonstrating compliance with corporate governance regulations. You can generate reports that indicate when documents were accessed and by whom, which provides accountability on the part of officers and directors, and the opportunity to follow up on assignments still pending.

To learn more about CSC Virtual Boardroom, send us an email at switch@cscinfo.com, or call 800-927-9800.

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