What is a meetings management software and why does your team need one?

All about meeting management softwares

Meetings can’t be avoided, no matter how hard you try. To be able to manage and remember them all, you’ll need a bit of help, which is exactly where meeting management software comes into the picture.

In a nutshell, meeting management software is a software which usually comes on a subscription basis and aids the teams in planning, organizing, and recording the results during meetings. General meeting productivity features include scheduling and inviting the attendees, agenda building and distribution, note-taking during meetings, timers, action item and decision tracking, and minutes generation. Preparing and reporting on meetings requires significant time and effort, thus many organizations often miss out on these aspects and end up with inefficient meetings. To run efficient meetings, it is paramount to have a well-defined meeting agenda, someone taking care of the minutes of the meeting, follow-up action items, and key decisions taken in the meeting.

Want to ensure your team members know what their role is? Assign them action items on the published agenda. Want each point to be discussed succinctly and within time? Alot duration to each point and sync it with the timer. Having clear direction and purpose makes people more productive. Because they have clarity around what’s expected of them.

Choosing the right meetings management software.

Teamwork makes the dreamwork - except when it comes to miscommunications. When discussing a new project, over-communicating, under-communicating, and misunderstandings can take up a lot of time. This, at times, leads to confusion within the team and hence poor productivity. If you can relate to this, you may benefit from using a meetings management software.

Meeting management software, integrated with complete meeting management tools, can help organizations to run efficient meetings.

So, what should a good meeting management software look like? Following are just a few of the many points that everyone should keep in mind when looking for the right meeting management software -

1. It should enable you to schedule meetings like a breeze,
2. Create, search and maintain important information,
3. Fill the communication gaps between the different teams,
4. Allow planning and task distribution
5. Allow creating meeting-related formal documentation.

5 time-saving benefits of using a meetings management software

Some of the key benefits of using meetings management software for remote teams are - 

1. Paperless meetings
   
   Meetings management software is currently one of the best available alternatives for paperless meetings. They evade all the hassle of having to go through countless stacks of notebooks and print outs to find some agenda item which was discussed in some meeting.
    
2. Maintain control of your time during the meetings
   
   Allocating a specific time duration to each agenda item ensures that the meeting is on track and the topics are being discussed in the required time frame. This prevents unnecessary loss of time, which may come in the form of over-discussions and even idea conflicts, at times.
    
3. Establish clear goals
   
   Writing meeting objectives and points of discussion is a crucial part of effective meetings. This practice helps in identifying the destination as well as providing a roadmap for the meeting.
    
4. Stay highly organized
   
   Since everything is conveniently located on one platform, there’s no more sifting through emails and trawling through unwieldy spreadsheets. All of these resources can be attached to the meeting agenda and found with a single click search.
    
5. Truly a tool for global meetings..
   
   Since the software can be accessed at any time and from any location globally, it makes working with teams in different time zones a breeze. If all the documentation is in one centralized location, there’s no reliance on someone being awake, and working, for remote teams to carry on their work.