Appifying valuable company governance

Company management is a multidisciplinary and interconnected practice; valuable company governance is about managing this well. 21st started as a well-done board app, but we now have bigger and broader ambitions. That's why we are now transforming the 21st app into an "app of apps" where the user can turn on modules based on the needs and maturity of their operation. In this modular app, the 21st board app is just one of several modules or apps that will be launched on top of the 21st base functionality. We believe this "NOT one size fits all" approach will support our users to do more valuable corporate governance with minimal clutter and confusion.

The base functionality, or app if you want, is the stakeholder graph where each company's managers can map and keep up to date all the people and other companies that play some role with the company. This is the foundation for access management and delegation of accountability and responsibility for processes and decisions. The following apps we launched on the 21st platform are the revamped board app and the brand-new general assembly and shareholders app.

Each of these apps with be continuously improved and expanded over time in collaboration with our users. Some of these developments will result in new apps catering to more advanced and special needs. Our approach is to deliver new and more value to our existing users for every development initiative we do. Our vision is that over time 21st will be able to support with technology the whole 360 degrees interconnected company governance process and let humans spend more time making well-grounded decisions and less on manual work.

Pieces of the puzzle

What are the features of the foundation app which we mentioned earlier?

At the moment, this element of the application consists of two pillars. The first is the register of management team members. These are the people sitting in management board and everyone who supports their work, even if they only have an advisory voice. Therefore, it is also a place for observers, experts, and other specialists who can be helpful in the company management process.

The register is transparent and allows you to get all the necessary information at a glance. Its operation is also effortless. Neither adding new entries nor editing existing entries requires translation, as the UI guides the user by hand during these operations.

The second fundamental register is the list of shareholders. In one view, you can see the data of all holders of the company's shares (in the case of an institutional shareholder, also the data of the person representing it). But, of course, what is most important - the number of shares and votes attributable to each shareholder - is also clearly visible in terms of absolute numbers and percentages. Similarly, as in the case of management team members, adding and editing list items is so simple that it does not require further description.

An essential feature of the shareholders' view is the preview of the company's cap table with the option of editing it. In this way, all enterprise ownership settings are available in one context.

The Board and Shareholders' apps

The board app, in turn, is a component responsible for organizing board meetings. 21st offers a very straightforward, end-to-end flow. From the very beginning of the process, the application supports users. In the beginning, through a convenient tool for planning where and when the meeting will take place, appointing the secretary of the meeting, and uploading the necessary documents. Later, through a series of meeting agenda templates covering the vast majority of typical situations, up to control and edit the list of invitees (by default, an invitation to a board meeting is sent to all people from the 'Team' tab).

The meeting secretary also has helpful application functionalities at their disposal during the meeting. 21st allows you to check and record the presence of invited persons in the meeting minutes and edit individual points of the minutes created automatically on the basis of the agenda. It is also possible to add notes to this document.

After the meeting, the minutes drawn up during the meeting should be signed by the participants of the meeting. On the 21st, one click is all it takes to send a document. Participants can read its content and then accept (or reject) it after confirming their identity in the application. The whole process is intuitive and straightforward to carry out.

The general assembly and shareholders app work on a similar principle. The difference lies in the agenda templates tailored to the specific needs of stakeholder meetings. Compared to the board meeting app, the change is also the built-in mechanism for selecting a meeting leader and additional signer following the rules applicable to this type of meeting. Generally, however, the shareholder's meetings module works similarly to board meetings - in other words, convening a meeting and conducting and recording it in accordance with legal requirements is easy and intuitive.