Which board management software is best for improving board reporting?

Key takeaways

• Effective board reporting improves decision-making and governance transparency.
• The best platforms support clarity, reduce noise, and streamline board pack creation.
• Board Intelligence’s portal and Lucia both enhance reporting with smart design and AI-powered tools.
• Choosing the right software ensures directors focus on insights, not admin.

Why does reporting matter for boards?

Board reporting is the backbone of effective governance. Timely, well-structured, and accurate board packs are not administrative “nice-to-haves”; they are governance infrastructure. Their key functions are to:

• Offer transparent insights into operations, empowering directors to fulfill their oversight duties with clarity.
• Connect company performance to strategic goals creates strategic alignment, which helps everyone stay focused on the same priorities.
• Bridge the present and the future by providing a snapshot of current performance and equipping the board to steer strategy and anticipate challenges.
• Act as an early warning system to highlight problems before they become crises by showing trends that might not be visible in day-to-day operations.
• Support smart decision-making through concise summary data and key metrics, striking the right balance between actionable insight and overload

On the flip side, poorly structured or incomplete reports can lead to flawed decisions, wasted time, and loss of trust. Our research shows that over the past five years, board packs have been getting longer, but the level of insight they provide has been declining. Less than half of board papers add value in the eyes of their readers, with the rest considered as either having no impact or being an obstacle. Overall, 63% of board members and governance professionals continue to score their board packs as “Weak” or “Poor”.

That’s why you need strong reporting that connects directly to your organization’s vision, purpose, strategy, and values. To be effective, board reports must focus on material, relevant, and reliable information presented clearly and aligned to strategy and risk appetite.

The right board management software can help governance teams deliver concise, well-organized materials, giving directors the clarity they need to lead.

Which software features enhance board reports?

The best board reporting software software offers tools and features designed specifically to improve reporting quality and usability:

• AI-driven support: Tools that guide writers to cut jargon, sharpen analysis, and focus on what matters.
• Smart collation: Combine files into a single board pack with automatic page numbering and indexing.
• Annotations and collaboration: Directors can add notes, ask questions, and share insights securely.
• Search and navigation: Find key information across long packs in seconds.
• Version control: Update reports without losing annotations or causing confusion.
• Performance dashboards: At-a-glance summaries that bring data to life.

Which are the recommended software solutions?

Board management software should improve clarity, structure, and accessibility. For generating great reports, you’re looking for smart templates, AI-powered prompts and summaries, and visual dashboards.

Board Intelligence

Board Intelligence stands out for its design philosophy: not just to make reporting easier, but to make it meaningful. With question-driven structure, intuitive navigation, and strategic alignment built in, Board Intelligence turns every board pack from a document into a powerful catalyst for more insightful governance.

Lucia: AI-Powered Reporting

The best board packs follow the tenets of the Question-Driven Insight (QDI) principle. This proven method ensures that each paper within it is built on robust and critical thinking, communicated effectively, and focuses on what matters. That’s why we developed Lucia, a revolutionary software platform that embeds the QDI Principle using smart templates and AI-powered prompts.

Lucia helps management write sharper board reports by starting with the essentials:

• What’s the paper’s purpose?
• Who’s it for?
• How does it connect to stakeholders and strategic priorities?

From there, it checks whether the content is hitting the right balance or missing the mark.

Instead of facing a blank page, writers are guided by a tailored set of questions that spark critical thinking, highlight gaps, and provide prompts for stronger answers. AI nudges make sure that reports stay relevant and on track.

Lucia also strengthens communication with real-time readability feedback, editing suggestions, and auto-summaries that distil key insights into clear executive summaries.

By embedding the QDI Principle across the organisation, Lucia improves board packs and management papers and raises the quality of conversations and thinking at every level of the business.

With Lucia, reports are written in plain language, structured logically, and free from noise for non-technical board members. The software also reduces editing cycles and speeds up preparation for governance teams.

If you'd like to find out how to apply these principles to specific papers, check out our best practice guides below.

How to …

• Write a great CEO's report
• Write a great business case
• Write a great management report

Board Intelligence board portal

The Board Intelligence portal supercharges board reporting by making it faster, smarter, and more secure. It empowers boards to stay focused on strategy, oversight, and outcomes rather than admin tasks.

It provides major cost and time savings. For example, the NHS Royal Surrey Trust slashed its reporting time by 90% and reporting costs by 36%, transforming a once-lengthy paper process into a streamlined digital workflow.

These are the features that make this happen:

• Digital board packs are accessible securely and instantly, eliminating printed packs altogether.
• Clearer content and organized preparations mean meeting discussions are more focused, and decisions are reached quickly.
• Report authors benefit from best-practice templates and writing tools that focus content and reduce drafting time.
• Drag-and-drop agenda planning, instant timing recalculation, and analytics result in balanced, strategic agendas while retaining flexibility and transparency.
• Stakeholder tagging, agenda analytics, and compliance support for frameworks like Section 172 amplify stakeholder governance.
• The portal supports multi-board structures, centralized access, granular permissions, and lightning-fast search functionality.
• Directors can find information quickly, annotate confidently, and engage in collaborative discussions ahead of meetings.
• With automated pack collation and real-time updates, last-minute papers don’t derail preparation.
• Insight Driver allows you to see what matters in your board materials, spot gaps in data or reasoning, and use AI to generate value rather than abstracts.

This combination of structure and simplicity makes reporting both efficient and transparent. Ready to get started? Explore our board reporting assessment tool to get a short self-assessment that will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your board packs.

Then, we have dozens of tools, tricks, and tips to help you improve your board reporting using our board portal.

Learn how to …

• Brief board report writers for high-quality papers
• Write strong executive summaries
• Use data to tell the story

Other leading board portals

Here are four board management platforms known for enhancing board reporting, along with their strengths and limitations. Plus, how Board Intelligence elevates the experience even further:

Diligent

Diligent offers robust board reporting capabilities, with advanced analytics, governance benchmarking, secure document sharing, and real-time collaboration. It’s trusted for its enterprise-grade security and comprehensive governance tools.

Some users, however, find that the system’s all-encompassing features can add complexity, and the lack of in-platform document editing or slow search can slow down reporting workflows.

While Diligent excels in scale and compliance, Board Intelligence trims the fat by focusing on clarity and curated insights. It enables boards to spend less time navigating options and more time transforming reports into strategic decisions.

OnBoard

OnBoard is well-regarded for its intuitive design and AI-driven tools like meeting summaries and analytics. It's mobile-friendly and integrates smoothly with tools like Zoom, Teams, and Google Drive.

Higher-level AI features often require premium plans, and template customization is limited. Some users also report syncing issues across devices.OnBoard makes reporting easy. But Board Intelligence makes it smarter, combining seamless usability with deep, question-guided board reporting that aligns documents directly with strategic goals.

BoardEffect

Popular in regulated and nonprofit sectors, BoardEffect offers strong agenda tools, compliance tracking, permission-based document sharing, and performance reporting. Users note limited integration options with other systems and fewer customization possibilities for advanced users.

Board Intelligence, by contrast, blends flexibility with unstoppable insight. It can adapt to diverse use cases and create reports that feel intentional, not templated.

Board.com (Board International)

Although not a traditional board portal, Board.com offers sophisticated business intelligence and reporting features like drag-and-drop interfaces, interactive dashboards, and automated publishing across devices.

It's built for performance and financial modeling rather than governance-specific workflows, making it less focused on board dynamics like meeting prep or director collaboration.

Board Intelligence, in contrast, embeds smart reporting within a governance-first experience. It streamlines every stage of board engagement, not just the final report.