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Founded in 2006, Ascencio is a public regulated real estate company based in Brussels. Specialising in retail premises, it has a hybrid portfolio of supermarkets and retail parks (business parks located in outlying urban areas). It operates primarily in Belgium and France, although it also has interests in Spain. A company with a workforce of 18 employees, Ascencio manages around 100 buildings (or 450,000 m2 of retail space) and generates over 46 million euros in annual rental income.
For Ascencio, organising (and holding) board meetings is a challenge in itself. Nearly thirty meetings take place every year, involving the board of directors, investment committees, audit committees, and appointment and remuneration committees. Planning these meetings demands a great deal of time and effort since most of the processes involved are manual: encryption, printing documents and booklets, sending emails to participants, and so on. As Stéphanie Vanden Broecke points out, “it was high time we went digital, and we chose Oodrive to support us in this process”.
In this article, we look back at an experience that proved to be highly instructive, since Ascencio was able to save 15 working days a year, improve processes for organising board meetings, and drastically reduce its dependence on paper and postal documents.
Ascencio devotes entire days to preparing board meetings. Organisers need to manually encrypt the calendar on Outlook, draft formal notices in Word and PDF format, print all the documents for participants (agenda, proxy forms, appendices, etc.) and put together a booklet to be sent to committee members. And once the meeting’s over, they have to publish the minutes.
The whole process is tedious as well as costly in terms of time, money, and risk.
Each committee meeting involves an average of 10 documents, which are sent out by email, DHL delivery, or even by personal carrier in the event of an emergency. This cumbersome procedure means that even the slightest changes are extremely complex and time-consuming for everybody involved. Further, sensitive documents are shared with participants without an extra layer of security, thereby potentially increasing latent risk in terms of confidentiality.
It was clearly time to switch to a digital solution for organising board meetings.
For Stéphanie Vanden Broecke, Oodrive Meet ticks all the boxes. “It’s a solution that gives us the flexibility we need, while also fitting in with the new ways of working that we have had to adopt since the start of the pandemic. Being able to access documents at all times, from a variety of media, makes our work easier, while also ensuring absolute confidentiality, secure storage, and risk-free document transfers.”
“The collaboration with Oodrive was seamless,” explains Stephanie. Despite a few objections, mainly from committee members who were wary of change, the process of adaptation was both fast and smooth. “Employees learned to use the new solution in barely half a day!”
With Oodrive Meet, meetings are prepared from a single location, in just a few easy steps. Organisers simply encrypt the work calendar and formal notices, draft the agenda, attach the documents (making sure that the latest versions are always available), and send out the invitations, digital booklets, and so on. At the same time, participants can view and annotate documents, and track committee history via the calendar.
The new solution brought fast results. Since Oodrive Meet went live, the company has saved on…
Today, organising a board meeting costs Ascencio… absolutely nothing! The new organisation also brings benefits for the planet: a result in line with the company’s CSR approach.
Finally, looking beyond these practical benefits (and positive ROI), two further aspects should be taken into account – optimised processes and increased flexibility. As Stéphanie Vanden Broecke says: “Oodrive Meet has completely transformed the way we do business. It’s a huge step forward in terms of organisation, flexibility and security. There’s no way we could ever go back to the way we did things before!”.
“The collaboration with Oodrive was seamless,” explains Stephanie. Despite a few objections, mainly from committee members who were wary of change, the process of adaptation was both fast and smooth. “Employees learned to use the new solution in barely half a day!”
With Oodrive Meet, meetings are prepared from a single location, in just a few easy steps. Organisers simply encrypt the work calendar and formal notices, draft the agenda, attach the documents (making sure that the latest versions are always available), and send out the invitations, digital booklets, and so on. At the same time, participants can view and annotate documents, and track committee history via the calendar.
The new solution brought fast results. Since Oodrive Meet went live, the company has saved on…
Today, organising a board meeting costs Ascencio… absolutely nothing! The new organisation also brings benefits for the planet: a result in line with the company’s CSR approach.
Finally, looking beyond these practical benefits (and positive ROI), two further aspects should be taken into account – optimised processes and increased flexibility. As Stéphanie Vanden Broecke says: “Oodrive Meet has completely transformed the way we do business. It’s a huge step forward in terms of organisation, flexibility and security. There’s no way we could ever go back to the way we did things before!”.
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