AAT

The Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) is a membership body that supports accounting technicians and bookkeepers in the United Kingdom. AAT utilises a complex governance structure comprising a board of trustees, three subcommittees, three advisory groups, subsidiary companies and various internal leadership teams. Organising meetings for this intricate framework was a time-consuming process that involved creating manual PDF packs before the organisation turned to iBabs.

The organisation's previous board portal lacked the essential functionality for streamlining its meeting processes and required extensive manual work to prepare meeting documentation. As a result, AAT sought a more secure and intuitive solution that would eliminate inefficiencies and enhance their governance processes. This article explains how iBabs met and exceeded AAT’s requirements.

Before iBabs: Manual PDF creation and inefficiencies

Sophie Joseph is the company secretary at AAT and leads the governance team. When she joined the organisation, she quickly identified issues with their existing board portal solution.
She described the system in the following words:

"The idea was that you would receive your board papers, you would put it together in a PDF and then you would put it on the board portal to share. Having used iBabs before, that sounded insane to me.”

Becky Glover, who serves on AAT's main board, finance and performance committee, and people and nominations committee, experienced the security and organisational challenges firsthand:

"The previous system felt basic, and was essentially just a collection of PDF documents.  The whole process felt quite fragmented - things were sent and updated as they became available, making it difficult to keep track when I have a busy career.  iBabs which has many more features and is very easy to use.”

This existing process proved to be inefficient, particularly when handling late board papers. If documents were issued close to the meeting time, the administrator had to recreate, renumber and redistribute the entire board pack.

If there was not enough time to recreate the board pack, meeting attendees would have to flip back and forth between the main set of documents and the late papers, taking up valuable time, causing inconvenience and potentially damaging the efficiency and productiveness of the meeting.

The existing board portal was not only time-consuming, but it also lacked features that Sophie knew were available elsewhere, limiting the effectiveness of AAT's governance processes.

iBabs as a solution

Sophie had experience with other board portals from previous roles and knew there were better solutions available. She arranged demonstrations of three meeting platforms, including their current provider and iBabs. Sophie said about her selection process:

"My biggest push was the ease of iBabs. The balance of the ease of use of the board portal, how simple it is and how it gives me everything that I need. And the cost; it was easy for me to persuade people."

The financial case was compelling. iBabs delivered a 55% cost saving compared to AAT's previous solution, with considerably more features included in the offering.

Sophie added: "Some were a lot more expensive than iBabs, which helped me to make the change. I wanted the ease of iBabs, and the fact that I actually managed to get everyone trained up really quite quickly shows how easy it is to use."

The ease of using iBabs

Sophie reported that her workload significantly reduced following the implementation of iBabs at AAT. The most notable improvement was in the process of creating and distributing board packs.
Sophie said:

"I don't have to change everything to a PDF before I put it into iBabs. I just upload it and it turns it into a PDF in no time at all. It takes ages to download into other board portals."

The platform has provided numerous other benefits that have improved AAT's governance processes:

"Most important is how easy it is to add an agenda. The best button I think I have is putting the standard agenda items on. That could be very tedious having to write 'minutes' 100 times. The ease of that is really important."

The security features have been particularly valuable for an organisation with external board members:

"We have it set so you can't download, which is a really good option for us. You can't take anything off it, you can't copy and paste anything from iBabs, so it can't be shared and it can't be accessed by anybody else.”

Sophie is also enthusiastic about the action tracking functionality. She explained how iBabs has streamlined this workflow at AAT:

"Adding action items to agenda items is so easy. I don't even have to send reminders for actions, it does it itself, and everyone gets the red circle on their dashboard to show the status of the item.”

Other benefits include the ability to secure sensitive agenda items for confidential discussions:

"We've got a couple of meetings where we have to have different people go out of the room at different points and the fact that they can't see anything about that agenda item makes that a lot easier. And then that follows through into the minutes too."

User experience

The improved user experience has been notable across AAT's governance structure. Francesca, a non-executive director who sits on AAT's main board and audit committee, noticed the improvement immediately:

"The old system felt more like a desktop solution and was harder to access. iBabs is much brighter and more user-friendly than traditional board meeting software."

Becky Glover appreciated the enhanced functionality compared to their previous solution: "There wasn't as much functionality with the previous system. You could bookmark pages and do a little bit of annotation, but there wasn't as much functionality as iBabs."

She found the system intuitive to learn: "It's a really nice, easy system to use. The system is easy enough that you can just have a little play around with things—I think that's sometimes the easiest way to learn these systems."

The positive reception has been unanimous across the board. Becky noted:

"Everyone seems really happy with it. There's not many comments about iBabs at all, which I think shows the happiness level, because you want it to be something that just works in the background. If there started to be comments about it, I think I would be really worried."

Results of working with iBabs

Sophie described the implementation and transition process as remarkably smooth and efficient:

"The onboarding was amazing. You guys did everything for me. We had some really good sessions with Matthew online. They're recorded, which makes it easy for us to share with team members. Pretty much everyone attended. A couple of questions were asked, but everyone seemed to be able to use it."

Sophie described the implementation and transition process as remarkably smooth and efficient:

"In order to make sure it landed properly, Matthew came in for the afternoon and just sat with a couple of people who preferred to learn that way. And he went through and answered some questions, which was excellent."

When asked what she would tell other organisations considering iBabs, Sophie said:

"I would tell them that it is easy to use. It will save you time. It probably saves you money. The ease of use is the thing that people really need to understand and how much time it saves you. Governance can get really busy, especially at the time when you have to send the papers out. iBabs is so easy to use. We've managed to train a vast number of people who have varying levels of digital expertise and they've all found it quite easy."