Live Voting Software for General Meetings and Events: Online Voting Tool For Meetings

Like many aspects of our lives, the way in which we work and conduct business has adjusted to a “new normal” over the last few years. A major trend that emerged from this is the need to conduct annual meetings and voting virtually in a secure, and efficient way.

Online meeting software such as GoToMeeting, Skype, WebEx, and Zoom allow members to interact with your organization digitally. These solutions are great for handling presentations, interviews, and general meetings. And while many of these solutions offer polling or survey functions, none work for live, real-time voting that is secure and official. Relying on Robert’s Rules of Order simply isn’t enough. You need a solution that enables engaging discussion, with the ability to cast votes securely (by name or anonymously), instantly tabulate votes, and creates dynamic reports for record all within a real-time platform.

That’s where our real-time voting software comes in, your enterprise tool for virtual meeting voting.

Real-time voting software can help your organization bridge the gap of voting in a virtual annual meeting. You can run your meeting as you normally would, all while easily building your ballot, adding attendees and receiving instantaneous, verifiable results.

Why use Real-time Voting Software for Meetings?

When we were in the process of developing the software, our team was faced with the task of creating an enterprise solution that can handle a multitude of voting and election scenarios. Our development team took this challenge in-stride, and worked to create the solution we have today! We went to great lengths to ensure that all aspects of the platform are optimized for both ease-of-use, as well as security, making it a true enterprise solution.

Real-time voting software is ideal for any kind of organization looking to conduct a virtual meeting. Many organizations who use our platform utilize it in a myriad of different ways. Whether they have a finance committee who is voting on budget approvals, their Board who is voting on organizational changes; or polling their employees and members about where they should host their next happy hour. Our software can handle this all with ease, and we are constantly working on bringing new features to the platform to enhance its capabilities, and functionality.

Some highlights of our electronic voting systems for meetings are:

• It works perfectly side-by-side with all major web conferencing platforms. Meeting administrators are also able to embed meeting invite details directly into the platform.
• Meeting administrators are able to create pre-set motions before your meeting, as well as quickly and easily add motions as they arise during the meeting.
• Optimized for any web-connected device, so your voters can vote however is most convenient for them!
• Admins can upload documents for members to easily access them before or during the meeting. This is perfect for reviewing meeting minutes, proposed bylaw verbiage and so much more.
• Meeting administrators can send meeting invites easily to their voters via email or SMS Text. All invites include unique invite links that contain security parameters to ensure members are unable to share their invite with others to cast duplicate votes.
• Members who are ineligible to vote can still observe the voting process! Simply assign a member a weighted vote of zero to add them as an observer.
• You can also easily assign alternative voting weights for any of your voting members, including fractional weighting.
• Easily communicate with your voter base  with our built-in chat functionality! Admins can choose how they connect with their members, either via a broadcast announcement channel to all voters, individually, or by putting members into different groups to facilitate conversation.

Who uses Real-time Voting Software?

We have organizations all around the world that use our software every day. Ranging from international food cooperatives, fortune 500 corporations, labor unions of all sizes, and everything in between. And they all utilize the platform in unique and different ways! Our clients are constantly surprising us with the unique situations that they are utilizing real-time voting software within, and this creativity pushes us to further develop the platform to fit their needs.

Truly any member-based organization could benefit from utilizing real-time voting software for their virtual annual meeting. One such organization is the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS), in 2020 they were faced with having to move their annual meeting to a virtual meeting. Check out their success story to learn how the software helped their meeting run smoothly and efficiently!

How to Connect with Your Members and Build a Digital Community

Some organizations seem to have effortlessly made the transition to digital interaction with their members, but other industries – notably utilities and insurance – are still struggling with a digital engagement rate below 15 percent. 

Connecting with members digitally is a drastically different way of doing business

It can be challenging for organizations to add digital options such as virtual meetings, online voting, online payments, outreach, etc. Sometimes the mountain appears to be so tall, and organizations will continue to put off beginning to climb it, especially when industries are highly regulated. Adding digital connection options can be disruptive, but in many cases, that disruption produces positive results.

Organizations feel their efforts to connect digitally are not paying off with their members

It’s a common issue: Your organization introduces a new initiative or option, but members don’t seem aware or interested in it. Often, this means you need more data on your members, what they want, and how they use and interact with your products and services. With the right information, you can better improve those connections with your members.

So, especially now, when in-person interaction is discouraged and becoming much more difficult, how can your organization make a digital connection with your members?

Virtual annual general meetings

Large gatherings will be unlikely for quite some time, so how can you make sure your bylaw changes, motions, budget, and prior meeting minute approvals happen? Give members an easy-to-use and secure way to connect to a virtual annual meeting. Address the change in format, but try and maintain the same tone as you have in past annual meetings. Provide members with incentives to participate, like giveaways.

Whatever you do, avoid using unsecured polling software or casting votes via unsecured email or a web conference chat. A surefire way to introduce doubt, suspicion about results, and possible challenges to your process is by utilizing easily manipulated software not intended for voting.

Remote board & committee meetings

Many boards and committees have long expressed a preference for meeting remotely due to convenience. Due to new guidelines and social distancing measures, related to the global public health emergency, remote meetings are experiencing a surge in popularity with hundreds of millions of new users.

However, the average remote meeting software does not offer participants a way to securely and confidently vote on motions, especially in real-time. Real-Time Voting Software handles real-time voting, the addition of motions and much more to replicate the secure results of in-person meetings.

Focus groups

Need to get members’ opinions on new products, services, new ads or marketing promotions, etc.? Your organization can also use Real-Time Voting Software to conduct remote focus groups to vote and share opinions. It is a great and unique way to keep members involved and feeling like they’re part of your community.

Don’t let “we’ve never done it this way before” be your motto for the future, especially when it’s easy to take a few simple steps to engage your members online and further involve them and keep them invested in your organization.