Meetings are practically unavoidable in your everyday work life. However, their effectiveness has come under scrutiny in recent years. A survey found that 71% of respondents believe meetings are unproductive and inefficient, with 65% stating that meetings are the primary reason preventing them from completing their work.
Sometimes, the root cause of inefficient meetings can often be traced back to the organiser. Many employees have likely experienced the frustration of attending a meeting that “could have been an email”. In other cases, the lack of proper meeting tools can hinder the ability to record key points, agendas, or notes after the meeting, leading to confusion and wasted time.
This is where meeting management software comes into play. Meeting management software offers various features and functionalities to help teams plan, organise, and follow up on meetings. These tools ultimately lead to better collaboration and improved outcomes, ensuring that meetings are productive and valuable.
In this article, we'll dive into 15 top meeting management software solutions that cater to the needs of organisations of all sizes. Whether you're part of a small startup or a large enterprise, there's a solution that can help you optimise your meetings and drive success.
What is a Meeting Management Software?
Meeting management software is a category of tools designed to facilitate all aspects of hosting meetings. It combines various functionalities, such as scheduling tools for syncing digital calendars, agenda creation and distribution tools, communication platforms, and features for recording meeting minutes and creating action items to enhance accountability.
By leveraging meeting management software, organisations can significantly reduce the time and effort required to organise meetings. These tools simplify the process of sharing agenda items and other essential information beforehand, helping to maintain focus during meetings. Additionally, meeting management software improves team-wide communication, collaboration, and transparency by offering action items with due dates and individual assignees.
Investing in a well-chosen meeting management system can lead to more productive meetings, better decision-making, and greater organisational success.
Beam sends your team a short check-in on your schedule, reminds anyone who hasn’t answered, and collects the answers in one place.
15 Top-Tier Meeting Management Software
To ease the selection process, we've compiled a list of top meeting management software and compared their key features:
Top 5 Meeting Management Software
1. Beam
Beam isn’t a meeting tool, but it removes the most time-consuming part of many meetings: the status round. Your team answers a short weekly check-in, Beam reminds anyone who hasn’t answered, and managers see goals, updates and feedback in one place before they meet.
2. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is an online meeting management platform that combines various features, including real-time messaging, video conferencing, and powerful meeting management capabilities. Its seamless integration with other Microsoft products makes it a common choice for many organisations.
3. Fellow
Fellow is a specialised meeting management tool that strongly focuses on ongoing collaboration. It allows users to assign clear action items and takeaways to meetings and track interactions and feedback over time. Fellow's agenda builder is great for simple meetings and lacks robust people management functionality.
4. Zoom
Zoom is a popular meeting management tool for hosting productive meetings. It offers a range of features to facilitate video and audio communication and connect remote teams. Users can communicate with internal and external contacts, engage in calls, or schedule video meetings with just one click.
5. Grain
Grain focuses on transforming video meetings into valuable assets by providing recording, transcription, and the ability to share key moments. It integrates with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, making it versatile for various businesses.
Comparison of Top 5 Meeting Management Software
Other Meeting Management Software
6. Google Meet:
Google Meet is a video conferencing tool from Google that offers features like real-time captions, meeting recording, and screen sharing for up to 250 participants. It's integrated with Google Workspace, making it a seamless option for businesses already using Google services.
8. Hypercontext
Hypercontext is a meeting management tool designed to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of team interactions. It is particularly beneficial for managing 1:1s, team, and leadership meetings.
8. Zoho meeting
Zoho Meeting is a secure web conferencing solution emphasising privacy and data protection. It supports audio and video conferencing, screen sharing, and session recording. Zoho Meeting is known for its affordability and integration with other Zoho products.
9. GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting offers video conferencing with features like Breakout Rooms for collaborative work in smaller groups. It's designed for remote employee engagement and supports desktop sharing for effective real-time collaboration.
10. MeetGeek
MeetGeek is a meeting assistant that records, transcriptions, and summarises online meetings. It integrates with popular video conferencing tools and provides insights such as sentiment analysis.
11. Whereby
Whereby is a browser-based video conferencing tool that requires no app installs, making it easy for guests to join meetings. It supports session recording for later reference.
12. nTask
NTask is a project management tool with online meeting management software that allows you and your team to collaborate and schedule your projects, tasks, and meetings.
13. BoardDocs
BoardDocs, a product of Diligent Brand, is designed to enhance the management of board meetings and governance processes. It offers a comprehensive suite of features to automate and streamline various aspects of board management.
14. Klaxoon
Klaxoon is meeting management software that innovates conventional meetings into lively and participatory encounters. It provides a suite of interactive utilities, such as quizzes, surveys, word clouds, and brainstorming boards, to maintain engagement and promote cooperation among participants.
15. Adam.ai
Adam.ai is a board meeting management platform designed to optimise the entire meeting lifecycle for businesses of all sizes, from individual users to large enterprises.
Conclusion
The article explores meeting management software and underscores the critical role these tools play in enhancing the productivity and efficiency of meetings within organisations. As we’ve highlighted, many professionals find meetings unproductive and a hindrance to their work, often due to poor organisation or the lack of proper tools to manage the meeting's outcomes.
Meeting management software addresses these challenges by offering functionalities that streamline the planning, execution, and follow-up of meetings, ensuring that they are productive and valuable to all participants. Organisations are encouraged to carefully consider their specific needs and explore the various software options presented in the article to find the best solution that will help them achieve more productive and efficient meetings.
