IMA - International Management Assistants

IMA - International Management Assistants (IMA) is a global network of management support professionals. Since 1974 it has been at the forefront of providing personal and professional development for professional administrators around the world.  

Given the nature of the company’s sector, the ability to run meetings in an efficient and effective manner is of professional importance, and that is why IMA continually seeks to refine and improve its processes. By partnering with iBabs, it found a board portal solution that matched its ambition, saving time and work for the organisation.  

IMA is structured with an executive committee at the top level, with national committees in 15 different countries.  

Executive Marketing and Communications Officer Christina Bagge Kragh recalls IMA’s journey towards holding better and more productive their Executive meetings.  

Before iBabs 

IMA’s Executive Committee had found some challenges with its previous way of handling meeting materials using Microsoft tools.  “Some of our companies also use it [Microsoft 365] as their platform,” says Christina, “and when you try to integrate the IMA platform, sometimes our member’s own companies have set rules that make it impossible to integrate with IMA.”  

Board papers 

This presented a problem because IMA stored its board materials in Microsoft 365, using tools like Sharepoint and Teams for collaboration. The Governance Officer would start a live document to begin the process of creating the meeting agenda. However, not all board members could access it or had time to navigate the complicated file structure to update the document, and this caused a lot of email chains preceding the meeting. It became, in Christina’s words, “a hassle.” 

The Governance Officer would also write minutes during the meeting, beginning another manual process. In addition, she would have to email participants to link to the agenda and minutes, but also attach the documents to the email for those without access. For those using the attached documents, they would not receive any of the updates made by those using the live version online.  

Action points 

Another side effect of the previous process was that action points could easily be forgotten. Only when the agenda arrived were some board members reminded of their tasks that needed completing ahead of the next meeting.  

This was another reason why IMA needed to upgrade its systems — it was determined to enhance its meeting management and their follow-up.  

Implementing iBabs 

Once IMA implemented iBabs board portal software for its Executive Committee and for the board of IMA Denmark, Christina Bagge Kragh says that it was “super easy” to figure out thanks to the dedicated onboarding services. “We had a really great intro from Jon from iBabs where he showed us around and helped us set up the first few people,” she recalls. “If we had any follow-up questions, he was right there, answering them for us. I never felt stuck or lost because I could write to Jon and he would get me back on track.” 

After using iBabs 

Agendas 

The improvements that IMA witnessed after starting to use iBabs were immediate. Christina reported that there was a marked decrease in emails containing random, non-urgent questions. Everyone was encouraged to work with the user friendly iBabs platform and add these issues to the agenda for the next meeting, where they could be discussed.  

The ability of all stakeholders to have access to the same, up-to-date version of the agenda was a particular bonus that Christina enjoys. She says: 

 “I like that whenever I think of something we need to discuss, or when I know the annual wheel states that in November we need to discuss a time-related topic, I know I can just go in and create the agenda item whenever I think of it. I’m not relying on notes that I might not find at the time or calendar entries. Once it is on the agenda, that’s it.” 

Meeting minutes 

The centralised nature of iBabs ensures that administrators can write minutes in real-time, helping to speed up the process of distributing them whilst the meeting is still fresh in the memory.  

Christina is particularly happy with the fact that the company is not limited if the governance officer cannot attend and minute meetings of the Executive Committee. Other attendees can use iBabs to note down the proceedings and create the minutes instead.  

Action items  

iBabs has improved the process of creating, monitoring and delivering on action items too. “I don’t know how many action items from meetings were forgotten to be written down or where there was no deadline,” says Christina, “but with iBabs it’s just easy. With iBabs, we get the email and there’s a deadline. And you get a reminder as you get close to the deadline so you actually get things done. I just love it.” 

Other benefits 

For administrators who are members of IMA, Christina believes that having everything stored in one place is the main benefit of using iBabs. She says: 

“Without iBabs, you have meeting minutes in one email, several versions of the agenda in multiple emails – you always have updates! Add your own notes of action items and your own notes of what you wanted to ask during the meeting. That’s a lot of different contact points to keep track of.  

But when we use iBabs, it’s all just there. It’s all connected to that one meeting. You don’t have mails flying around with answers that you forget to store. You go into the meeting, you get the minutes, the right agenda, the right attachments, the right action items, the right solution to the actions. It’s all neatly wrapped.”