Diligent Boards Reviews

A board management software that delivers unparalleled excellence

Comments: Outstanding!

Pros:

When we switched over to Diligent, we were expecting a bit of a transition period. But we were pleasantly surprised that everyone found it so easy to jump into this program because the design is so intuitive and very little training was required to operate it. The software has also has gorgeous and elegant aesthetics which makes it very appealing. It's a fast and secure way to handle sensitive information. Our board members are able to access the information both in online and offline mode, while TouchID ensures that only those who have permission can see them. It also allows us to move away from a paper-based environment which are also a security risk.

Cons:

I think the years that the developers have spent studying how board members work and interact has truly paid off because you have a simply outstanding software that serves its customers well. I think the only thing that could possibly make it better is if they increased the scrolling speed when you’re looking through a lot of files.

Air Canada Diligent Boards Review

Comments: My experience has been very good and seamless transition from previous portal - very user friendly. [sensitive content hidden] has been a really great help and his promptness to my questions are much appreciated and evident. It truly goes a long way.

Pros:

Very user friendly which makes creating books seamless and easy, secure sharing and everything is available in 1 platform for all board members. Easy to communicate to them through the platform.

Cons:

Little details that are manageable but having to have the same # of pages when you replace with options, having to re-link your full agenda if there is a change made, not being able to upload videos rather than getting a link

Alternatives Considered: QuickBooks Time

Reasons for Choosing Diligent Boards: The inability of the platform to process and do certain things

Switched From: Directors Desk

Reasons for Switching to Diligent Boards: Many current board members had Diligent with their other issuers and highly recommended

Uploading to Diligent

Comments: Hard work

Pros:

Not sure as yet. would like to see what amendments can be made to help with issues raised below

Cons:

loading lots of documents takes ages when you have lots of appendices Not having the ability to create new meetings and adding relevant directors to those meeting rather than having to go to Diligent

Diligent Board Portal

Comments: It has been an incredible experience. The platform itself is second to none and the customer service support team is incredible.

Pros:

How intuitive it is to use for new users.

Cons:

The shift away from an always answered 24/7 customer service centre.

Alternatives Considered: Nasdaq Boardvantage

Reasons for Switching to Diligent Boards: Overall functionality and superior customer service.

Recommend Diligent

Comments: Long term user. Like the improvements rolled out over the years.

Pros:

Intuitive and simple. Diligent Boards is very easy to use.

Cons:

Nothing. Generally very pleased overall with the product.

Alternatives Considered: DiliTrust Governance Suite

Reasons for Switching to Diligent Boards: Current user of the product. Chose to remain.

Diligent - best tool for governance

Comments: From on-boarding to ongoing use, Diligent is a tool for any Boatd

Pros:

Diligent Boards is a valuable tool to get your Board the information they required to make informed decisions in a user-friendly tool.

Cons:

Could have a separate login for the Minutes module

Alternatives Considered: Boardable

Reasons for Switching to Diligent Boards: Offline access for Directors to read materials

Great product and service

Comments: Great customer service and product, Board is happy with the easy of navigation

Pros:

Easy to browse for board members, easy administration

Cons:

View of committees, sometimes there is too much to view

How to make my directors' lives easier

Comments: I have nothing but good things to say about my experience with Diligent Boards.

Pros:

That physical board "books" are a thing of the past!

Cons:

These, with lots of change within the Diligent organization, when I need to reach out to Diligent for support, I don't always know who to contact. Also, response times aren't always quick.

Diligent review

Comments: My and my board’s experience has been very positive.

Pros:

The ease of posting Board and Committee materials

Cons:

Not quick to make improvements based on customer feedback

This makes my board life easier

Pros:

Access for directors, historical documents availability

Cons:

Challenges with downloading documents very good

Review of Diligent Board Books

Comments: Overall, my experience has been great.

Pros:

It's easy to use and you can have one sign in if members are on other boards.

Cons:

More flexibility in changing an evaluation if already published.

Makes life so much easier for Directors!!

Comments: Diligent enables two important Board functions (provided that the hospital admins upload the materials timely, which they do really well after a quick learning curve years ago):
1) Directors (or Committee members) have materials in advance and there is every reason for them to be prepared for meetings
2) During meetings at our hospital and the system meetings, all participants (often 18-30 people in the room) can simply be directed to a specific page in the Diligent packet and boom! we're all on the same page, not shuffling through a bunch of papers.
Members of boards and board committees are selected because they are in the center of important things for the institution. They shouldn't have to diddle around looking for some document used in a meeting. The Diligent system ensures that Boards and Committees have what they need to perform the important jobs they agree to in guiding the system and providing meaningful input.
It is important that organization administrators have good training and support to launch this process -- it took a few months but then our admins totally rocked this thing! Thank you, Diligent, for enabling our Board and Committees to use their time for important business and dialogues -- rather than waiting for a document to be photocopied or shuffling through a pile of papers.

Pros:

Reams of paper, and many valuable moments in Board meetings (and administrator time), are saved because of Diligent. Our hospital system has used Diligent for Board work for several years now. The hospital administrators have mastered the art of getting the appropriate materials posted, on time and accurately -- and our Board meetings flow more smoothly and with increased engagement by members, because everyone has the materials in front of them and ... materials to review in advance.

Cons:

I can't speak to the back office work -- I'm an end-user as the Board chair and member/chair of committees -- from my perspective I'd like to see some highlighting/focus from Diligent. Every Board or Committee icon on the software looks the same -- what if the Diligent Team were to put a red (or green or whatever- striped?) border around the most recent, the "live" meeting that members are to focus on?

Diligent Board Review

Comments: Diligent Boards is a great tool for assembling and housing board materials. It saves us hours of preparation time for our five boards and related committee meetings. It also functions well for directors to be able to access materials securely from anywhere in the world. We also use it to assemble other types of document packages rather than just board books.

Pros:

It is easy to use and very intuitive for both administrators and directors. I like that there are several ways to accomplish certain tasks, depending on what works best for my company and directors.

Cons:

There is no dedicated online training for directors or administrators. The help features are very good, but directors don't have the time or inclination to search how to handle basic functions. In addition, the notification, table of contents and calendar features are the weak parts of the software. Administrators should be able to add other users to a notification, even if not listed as a member of the particular committee or board. The table of contents feature, while improved from a few years ago, still isn't editable or movable within the document. The new Agenda feature also should be more editable.

Highly Recommend Diligent Boards

Comments: Diligent has great customer service and is very easy to use and understand the ends and outs of the product.

Pros:

Diligent Boards and very easy to use as an administrator and as a user. The time that it takes as an admin to upload materials has decreased dramatically compared to the software we used previously. It's so easy to build a book that you almost think you missed a step. The permissions are very easy to understand and control. Our board members love the ease of use of the software for the iPad. It seemed very easy to transition everyone to this new product and we had 200+ users to transition over.

Cons:

I do wish it was easier to see who all has access to a particular set of materials once a books is archived as to be able to scroll through all the users, you have to put the materials back in hidden or current mode to do this.

Essential Product to our Business

Comments: Diligent has been immediately responsive to any questions or issues we have with the product, passwords, or general operating questions. Our board does not utilize all of the many features but we have the option to do so if we wish to expand our usage.

Pros:

I like the ease of use, the instant replacement of documents that I used to have to courier out to Board members, and the environmental & confidential aspects of not having printed copies of Board materials.

Cons:

I'm frustrated that the web version and one-click are not identical yet and wait for the day that the web version can do the drag and drop the same way that one-click does.

iPad battery Drain

Comments: Good for security, but being able to move documents between tabs and archive Resource Centre materials would be a great advantage. As would sorting the annotations issue.

Pros:

Pros: secure file sharing, ability to upload large files, linking between books, resource centre, agenda.

Cons:

Cons: iPad Battery drainage is a major issue. When you request assistance Level 1 Helpdesk responses suggest user error or poor device management. Its neither, the latest version drains the battery of a new iPad (latest OS and app versions) where settings are configured to minimise battery use and no other software is open!

Still needs some work

Comments: Great. The customer service is fantastic. Top notch. Best I've ever seen. Super friendly, super knowledgeable, and super quick with getting back to any phone call or email. Like I need the answer NOW, and they provide the answer NOW.

Pros:

I love that everything can be in one place. We deal with many different boards and committees, so it's nice to be able to have all of the information in one location

Cons:

I use the web version. It still needs work. I want to be able to have more control over how my completed book looks. I want to be able to upload different logos for different boards. I want to format the agenda builder so it looks nicer. etc.

Review of Diligent Boards

Comments: The overall experience is very good and the customer service is excellent - the team are always ready to assist with any issues.

Pros:

The web interface is very easy to use and it doesn't take much time at all to set up a meeting.

Cons:

The Resource Centre needs some more development it is a little clunky at the moment.

Diligent Board Solutions

Comments: The Account management is Great. there is always someone on hand to deal with any small issues we have immediately.

Pros:

Diligent is easy to use, our Board members have been using this for over 2 years now and find it as easy to use as the Administrators. It looks sleek when you log into both the admin portal or the iPad and is intuitive to use.

Cons:

Integration to our existing business was simple because we had already been using Boardpad. When you have a comparison to using something else, it can sometimes be difficult to accept that not all the previous functionality exists.

Using Diligent

Comments: It is faster than depending on couriers, non-confidential emails or clunky two-authorization email systems for security. I can create a book, approve and publish it to Directors within minutes. We use it weekly for Executive meetings as well and the material stays confidential with no papers remaining behind after a meeting in the boardroom.

Pros:

I don't have to email and courier binders to Directors who live in other countries. It really opens up opportunities to have members around the world.

Cons:

I understand the need to protect confidential documents but I wish there were easier options to print and export PDF items for Corporate Libraries. You can export a PDF but it is not similar to the actual book and tabs you receive on-line.

Diligent

Comments: Makes the work of the Cosec much easier in terms of meeting packs and approving of documents.

Pros:

It's various functionalities supporting the Cosec function in managing of meetings.

Cons:

Would be nice if books could be created in one window from loading document, to approving and publishing.

Best Board program out there

Pros:

I build the packets. The interface to make board packets, questionnaires and so forth is easy to use and intuitive.

Cons:

I wish the added features didn't require additional licenses or contracts.

My review for Diligent Board

Pros:

Good tool, very easy to use with a large space that allows me to store my files such as my videos, my photos and many other documents and folders

Cons:

It is a software which is very greedy in terms of battery energy especially on mobile

Diligent is an excellent product!

Comments: Overall, Diligent is a great product compared to how I used to do Board reports before. It was more archaic how I used to do Board reports so Diligent has definitely changed how I do the reports and has greatly improved how easy it is to do Board reports.

Pros:

What I like most is the agenda for each book being created by the software. Plus page numbering is automatic.

Cons:

There can be some improvements on certain Excel sheets that do not transfer over correctly to Diligent. For example, if the Excel sheet shows one page, it then converts to two pages in Diligent. Currently I convert some Excel sheets to PDF as a workaround. Also redlined Word documents do not convert exactly over to Diligent. Tracked changes sometimes change to a different color or bubbles that show formatting changes are shown on right-hand side of Word document when the original does not show this. Also, I convert Word document to PDF as a workaround. This is why I rated ease of use as 4 stars.

Happy customer

Comments: I have only created books for 6 meeting periods so far following one training session, but it has been with ease. Updating of books

Pros:

The software is extremely user friendly compared with other similar platforms to which I've been exposed. It takes me at least half the time to create a book compared with the last programme.

Cons:

I would prefer being able to perform all functions through the url than having to switch to the OneClick option.