Go Paperless With the Best Paperless Meeting Tool

When you’re working remotely, it’s no longer possible to print out and distribute worksheets to all of your attendees—and it’s certainly not the same as working on a whiteboard or presenting a list of talking points in person either. Since more teams are spending their time attending remote meetings, we thought it would be helpful to share the most useful paperless meeting software we know of (and a few of the reasons why we love it so much). 

• Benefits of paperless meeting software
• What to look for in a paperless meeting software
• Go paperless with Fellow 

Benefits of paperless meeting software

• Improves collaboration
• Enhances organization
• Enables secure document distribution
• Accommodates for non-text information
• Is cost efficient 
• Is environmentally friendly

1Improves collaboration

Almost a third of an employee’s time is spent in collaboration mode. If managers are looking to improve how productive collaborations are, they can either increase the amount of time spent collaborating overall or make the existing time more useful. With paperless meeting software, you can automate mundane parts of team organization to make agenda-building, brainstorming, and team decision-making much more efficient. 

2Enhances organization

When teams are distributed across multiple locations, there’s less clarity on what to do, how to get things done, or even where to get and place information. A lot of these small operational issues can be fixed by having a go-to hub for the organization.

For example, Etienne Talbot, an Engineering Manager at Poka and a happy Fellow customer said that Fellow helps him,

“Never forget something I need to do. Which I would forget a lot. Or just lose my notes. So Fellow helps me remember what I need to do and when I need to do it. I never have to wonder what was decided in past meetings, and it helps me offer great support to my direct reports.”

3Enables secure document distribution

Data breaches are on the rise, and one of the most common ways for an attacker to get a hold of confidential information is by breaking into an email account. Instead of sending sensitive documents by email, a secure software product would be a better alternative as it can verify your identity, verify the identity of the person receiving the documents, and keep the document secure while it’s in storage. 

4Accommodates for non-text information

There’s truly no department that functions without non-text information. Finance and operations teams rely heavily on graphs while creative teams need to send tons of image drafts back and forth to each other. Being able to embed media into agenda notes allows teams to easily discuss these pieces during meetings. It’s much easier than trying to print documents ahead of time, draw the vision on a whiteboard, or even email the link to all attendees in advance (which they have the risk of losing or forgetting about anyways). 

5Is cost efficient 

Have you ever actually calculated the cost of your meeting? If you dare find out, try Fellow’s meeting calculator, or simply add up the hourly salaries of every participant. You’ll find meetings get much more expensive than you’d imagine. 

One way to cut costs is by making meetings more efficient. For example, automating administrative meeting tasks like agenda distribution, action item reminders, and the creation of to-do tasks from action items are all ways to save up to 16% of your time! 

6Is environmentally friendly

Not only is printing lengthy copies for meetings expensive and harmful to the environment, but it’s also not productive anyways—especially when many employees misplace the paper right after the meeting ends. Instead, paperless meeting software can provide a one-stop shop for all documentation that employees can then access at any time. There’s no printing required. You don’t even have to drive into the office for it either! 

What to look for in a paperless meeting software

• Ease of use
• Collaboration features
• Security features
• Compatibility

Ease of use 

Any new software you deploy across your whole organization needs to be easy for everyone to learn. Any challenges to getting started might negatively impact your team’s ability to work together on the tool, so you’ll lose out on efficiency benefits.

Fellow offers training sessions to implement company-wide improvements. See how one Fellow user benefited from Fellow’s easy onboarding experience:

“For me, having that walkthrough on an individual level to set up my integrations, set up the different streams, and learn about the fun things you can do with Fellow was a make or break for me having a good experience with the product or not.”

Collaboration features

Since a lot of teams are working remotely these days, your paperless meeting software option will need to jive with your new work style. Try looking for a tool that allows multiple team members to build agendas, track meeting notes, or assign action items. Not only does this help your team members feel involved and on the same page, but it saves one person from being the delegated meeting administrator on every call. 

Security features

Security has long been so underrated, but thankfully enough people are interested in protecting their data privacy that high-quality software vendors have started to prioritize security, too. It’s highly likely that your meetings might have some sensitive information discussed that you wouldn’t want to be exposed in a breach. So to mitigate this risk, look for a software vendor that has publicly documented security features like multi-factor authentication (MFA) or single sign on (SSO), as well as proof of compliance like SOC 2 or ISO 27001. 

Compatibility

Getting your team up and using paperless meeting software is one battle, but building a seamless integration between the rest of your tech stack is another. Find a tool that has technology integrations with your existing software products related to meetings—like video conferencing tools, note-taking platforms, ticketing systems, and communication portals. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for possible technologies that you’ll want to integrate with down the line, too! 

Go paperless with Fellow 

Fellow offers many features that make going paperless a breeze! 

• Collaborative agendas
• Real-time note-taking
• Action items
• Real-time feedback
• Meeting analytics 
• Integrations
• 500+ ready-to-use meeting agenda templates

Collaborative agendas 

Collaborative meeting agendas enable streamlined planning as a meeting host can create an agenda, add a few initial talking points, and then share it with the rest of the participants ahead of the call. It’s a super easy way to get input from your whole team and allow everyone to participate in the meeting planning. 

Real-time note-taking 

For accurate record keeping, it’s a great best practice to take detailed meeting notes. In Fellow, every meeting agenda has an area for note-taking at the bottom (including a private notes section if you want to write something just for yourself). Whether you have a dedicated note-taker for your call or you prefer that everyone takes their own notes, Fellow is flexible to any working style.

Action items 

To foster accountability and make follow-ups easier, you can assign action items to team members directly from the shared meeting agenda. Later, you can also go back into the Fellow platform and see a complete list of all uncompleted action items from all of your meetings, which makes building your to-do list easier!

Real-time feedback 

Providing and seeking real-time feedback is important, regardless of whether you opt to do it synchronously or asynchronously. You can leverage pre-made meeting templates to guide you through collecting constructive feedback during a call, or you can get feedback post-call by sharing a meeting survey with all attendees. 

Meeting analytics 

If you haven’t been tracking meeting productivity analytics, you’ll be surprised to find out how expensive meetings really are! With a dashboard to show you how much time you’ve spent in meetings lately, you’ll be able to calculate the real cost of your time. This can help you make more effective scheduling decisions down the road. 

Integrations

Staying seamlessly connected with the rest of your tech stack is what will help your team members remain efficient with their time. When there are a ton of high-priority projects on the go, you’ll love Fellow’s integrations with popular software products like Google Meet. Or, if you’re traveling frequently, you might find one of the mobile integrations useful, too! 

500+ ready-to-use meeting agenda templates

Feeling like this all sounds great but you’re still not sure how to even get started on paperless meetings? Fellow has over 500 ready-to-use meeting agenda templates that suit every team and need, all the way from running sprint retrospectives to leading a town hall. 

Parting advice

Paperless meeting software is here to stay, especially as teams keep working remotely. This software can help teams stay aligned on project goals, move information efficiently between teams and projects, and get reminders when an action item is coming due. There are a lot of solutions out there, so we recommend narrowing your search by looking for a tool that is intuitive and easy to onboard into, works with your existing tech stack, and helps your team collaborate remotely.