Leading the Digital Revolution
Why Company Secretaries MUST Take Charge
by Kerryn Gordon
Allow us to introduce you to Jamie.
Jamie is a typical Company Secretary...
In other words, the “go-to-get-everything-done-genie”, that makes magic and administrative miracles happen behind the scenes.
Constantly busy with company law, shareholder administration and compliance with statutory requirements, everyone knows (including Jamie), that if she has anything to do with it, things will get done and done well.
“Digital pioneer” and “ transformation revolutionary” are probably not ways that the rest of the company would use to describe her. In fact, Jamie doesn’t see herself that way either.
Little does she know that in her quest for efficiency, accountability and good old-fashioned common sense, Jamie will be at the forefront of digital transformation at her company in the not too distant future.
Jamie knows a good solution when she sees one, but first, let’s share some of the challenges she overcame, which inspired her digital revolutionary tendencies in the first place.
1. Minutes that take days
One of the many challenges that Jamie faced was getting sign off on the minutes she’d taken for important meetings.
Decisions taken by an organisation’s leadership such as the Board of Directors need consensus. That consensus needs documentation through minutes and resolutions. These minutes and resolutions also need formal approval - which is where Jamie comes in.
She needed signatures from all the important stakeholders on the same document, but many of them are often scattered across the country, if not around the world.
Chasing after signatures from all the necessary parties by sending documents to them via pricey courier or by waiting until they were somewhere nearby again often caused the sign-off of minutes to take days!
2. Not seeing the “Signs” for Company Resolutions
Before any major decisions, policies and strategies can be properly executed in the company, Jamie has to make sure that there are signatures from each important stakeholder on every necessary document.
Getting these signatures and keeping them on record form a vital part of the accountability Jamie is expected to maintain in her role. But, ensuring that each ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed for every important signature used to give Jamie a right royal run-around.
Sending and receiving documents, tracking status, chasing completion, and checking that what comes back is what was sent out had to be done, but wasn’t much of a value-add for Jamie.
3. The Courier Cash Haemorrhage
Jamie knew that the company spent a not-so-small fortune every month ensuring that the same original document got to the right signatories wherever in the world they may have happened to be.
Where multiple signatories were involved the paper-chase could take many days. Often, by the time the final signatory received their documents so much time would have elapsed that it was hard to recall the detail of the meeting that sourced them.
Jamie believed there had to be a way that she could get the signatures to come to the document rather than the documents always having to take pricey planes, trains and automobiles to get to the signatures.
4. Time to sign
An urgent decision had to be made at a board meeting. This decision would have a drastic effect on the company’s future, but before the resolutions agreed upon could be implemented, Jamie needed to make sure that she had all the right signatures on all the right pieces of paper, to do her job.
Everyone was waiting for sign-off. And some of the board members were in New York and one of them was in Lagos. Jamie needed to get those signatures ASAP and everyone made sure she knew just how much pressure they were under to get sign-off on.
5. Tracking document status
There had been a number of really important meetings being held by the leadership of Jamie’s company recently. Jamie found herself amidst a flurry of paper chases for various documents that needed to be signed by different signatories for a variety of reasons.
Jamie needed to be able to stay on top of all the document journeys. What document was with which courier on the way to what signatory and when?
It was like Jamie’s brain was facing a barrage of paper cuts. It was almost impossible for her to know at all times where these high priority documents were and how close she was to getting every signature on them so she could store them for her records.
6. Accountabilities
Jamie is really good at her job because she knows how to juggle a number of things simultaneously.
She is also incredibly well-organised and likes to keep the priority documentation that she is responsible for impeccably filed.
As organised and on top things as Jamie was, there used to be so many factors outside of Jamie’s control that every now and then something would fall through the cracks and Jamie’s accountability would be compromised.
This is what prompted Jamie to get her company to adopt a new digital solution that would allow her to maintain impeccable accountability.
Unknowingly, Jamie ended up being a person to usher in a new era of Digital Revolution.
Her practicality, accountability and work ethic is what prompted her to find and implement a solution that helped her do a better job and also saved significant money and time.
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