Best Meeting Management Software

Efficient communication is one of the essential parts of modern business workflow. One of the crucial parts of such communication is work meetings. During meetings, team members plan current operations, discuss tasks, results, brainstorm, and conduct other group discussions. Future work results would depend on the effectiveness of such meetings.

If employees exchange opinions and ideas freely, have a clear mutual understanding, discuss every moving issue, and every participant of the process knows what they should do, the result will definitely be positive. If the meeting has been held without a definite plan, employees have unanswered questions left, and little understanding of what to do, such communication may result in negative consequences for the whole company.

The project development is also influenced by the efficiency of time management during the meeting, task distribution, and the discussion of follow-up questions. The already customary online chats are not convenient enough for such debates. That is why we decided to discuss meeting management apps in this article.

What is Meeting Management Software?

The main goal of the meeting management solutions is creating conditions to plan and hold meetings, organize the communication inside teams, manage the relative data, and share the information. As a rule, one of the flexible work process organization methodologies is used as a base: Scrum, Kanban, LeSS, SAFe, etc. Such programs are particularly helpful when establishing workflows in geographically distributed teams.

What are the Reasons to use Meeting Management Programs?

Time is money. To get a desirable result, you need to learn how to manage this resource in a proper way. For example, to arrange meetings competently and hold them in the most effective way. Exactly, for this purpose, project management programs have been created. Below we are going to discuss the typical functionality.

Planning and Task Distribution

A basic function that plays a key role in the team building and work process organization. Planning tools may vary depending on customer requirements.

The most common points for planning are:

• Planning the date and location of events, taking into account the free time of each participant;
• Making the plan for the upcoming meeting and notifying required staff;
• Searching the system, structuring and attaching information for the planned event;
• Writing a report on the results of the meeting;
• Assigning and distributing tasks, taking into account the workload of employees;
• Estimating the time required to solve each problem;
• Sorting tasks depending on the urgency of their completion;
• Presenting the project schedule in the form of various diagrams;
• Facilitating the simultaneous management of several projects.

Creating, Searching, and Maintaining the Information

Meeting management programs operate over large amounts of data, such as:

• List of projects, requirements, and tasks;
• Resources allocated to each task;
• Timeframes;
• Workload data;
• Information about project progress, performance indicators, and forecasts.

Managing Communication in the Team

• Discussing and coordinating the solution of work issues;
• Analyzing the arising problems and solutions;
• Forecasting and managing the risks;
• Providing the actual information about the progress of the project.

How Can a Meeting Management System Help Business?

Up to a third of the time spent in meetings is used inefficiently. This can be due to the lack of planning, the lack of preparation, difficulties in communication among team members, frequent emergency meetings, and other factors, both internal and external. Having a meeting management system is the first step to plan effectively and organize the workspace competently.

Top 27 Meeting Management Tools of 2020 

1. nTask

Project and task management service that has meeting arrangement functionality. The gliders fix the date, time and place of the meeting, there is a section for the agenda description, options to set the repeatability of meetings and describe issues for discussion.

2. Cisco WebEx Meetings

A part of WebEx service, this tool is a free online meeting arrangement and video conferencing. It is often used for operational calls, brainstorming, and other remote discussions.

3. Meetin.gs

A popular meeting scheduling platform with wide functionality and lots of capabilities for third-party service integration. It has a visually attractive interface and a handy notification system.

4. Fuze

This is a cloud calling, contact center, and team meeting management software. Functions of holding video conferences, webinars, group chats, sharing documents and screenshots are available. It has a simple interface and keeps the transmitted data in secure encrypted cloud storage.

5. GlobalMeet

Enterprise-grade communication platform provides a number of capabilities for holding video and web conferences. Functions of arranging and conducting meetings, chat discussions, and file sharing are also available.

6. EzTalks Meetings

Universal cloud-based meeting management software. It supports effective communication among team members. It is used for audio and video conferences, which can be recorded for further review.

7. Clickmeeting

Service aimed at conducting webinars. Product demonstrations, training and studies, business meetings – Clickmeeting allows organizing all kinds of online video conferences.

8. Lucid meetings

An online tool aimed primarily at meeting management. It helps to plan and optimize all things attributed to meetings. All participants are provided with predefined roles, each with its own access rights and permissions.

9. Less meeting

One of the most interesting instruments in this list. Its particularity is that for each question there is a definite time during which participants must find a solution. It is marked with color and there is also a timer that controls the time. All in all, Less meetings strives to maximize the efficiency of each meeting allowing to conduct them less frequently freeing more time for the actual work.

10. Meeting king

Meeting planning and timing tool. You can plan meetings, compile agendas, add notes and exchange the data to participants.

11. Samepage

It is team collaboration software. Among everything else, it is handy for arranging, organizing and holding audio and video conferences. During the video conference, the screen sharing function is available. This allows demonstrating documents, presentations, videos, actions in different programs, etc. while providing a narrative or leading the discussion.

12. Magic minutes

A program for arranging and managing meetings and discussions while focusing the attention of participants on specific topics. It has a simple intuitive interface and provides a possibility to supply the event with relative materials, as well as assigning the tasks according to the results of discussions.

13. Soapbox

Highly useful and simple project management tool with many capabilities including meeting management. It allows for arranging both personal and team meetings.

14. Vyte

Simple but intelligent all-in-one scheduling app with powerful features.

15. Calendly

This scheduler works by integrating with agenda services such as Google Calendar and enhancing their capabilities with additional functions and modules

16. Meetingsense

It is a simple meeting management software that requires minimal efforts to master it. MeetingSense interface is visually attractive. It has various layout options, styles and a set of special functions to increase the effectiveness of team discussions.

17. Ecuria

It is an online meeting management software, that is available for employees across the globe. It has two options for the data input: audio and typing. In addition to the main functions – the arrangement and holding of meetings, it can also track the activity and attendance.

18. Beenote

Rather simplistic software with a basic set of functions necessary for organizing work meetings. It includes arranging meetings, issue and discussion tracking, task management, and reporting.

19. Microsoft Teams

Part of Office 365 family of corporate services, Microsoft Teams is a solution for organizing the team cooperation, particularly work meetings. Advantages of meeting management software consist of holding audio and video conferences, providing access to the speakers’ screens, and, most importantly, direct integration with other Office 365 tools, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, One Drive, Sharepoint, and Microsoft apps/services such as Azure.

20. Zoom

One of the best conferencing programs on the market, Zoom offers a wide variety of collaborative functions. It can be integrated with a personal calendar, due to which it is handy for making appointments, and provides the possibility to collaborate on files (view, edit, and update). It is also possible to create chats for personal as well as for team discussions.

21. Teamviewer

Remote control system aimed predominantly at providing the technical support, Teamviewer also has a conferencing functionality that helps to hold meetings. It may also provide access to the computers of other participants of the discussion.

22. Skype for Business

It is a tool for holding joint audio and video meetings. Participants receive an invitation by reference. All participants can see images from other participants’ cameras and discuss tasks in real-time.

23. Doodle

Very simple but, nevertheless, effective meeting planner. While sending out invitations to the meetings, you can offer several assigned time options.

24. BoardMaps

Another non-typical app among meeting management tools, BoardMaps is the only issue-centric app on the market.

25. Boardable

It is one of the organizing programs used both by commercial and non-profit organizations. It has settings for automatic meeting notifications and reminders. In addition, it can be integrated with the personal calendar and mailbox.

26. Amazemeet

Service for the joint arrangement of work meetings. The main goal of the program is helping to reduce task discussion time as much as possible.

27. Nimble CRM

The third rather unusual solution on our list that includes an interface for arranging work meetings. It allows integrating all the available communication channels (email, calendar, corporate chats, messengers, etc.) to enhance the conversation within the team. The core functionality – wide capabilities for the management of relationships with customers and partners – places Nimble CRM among the best meeting management software.

Selecting the Best Meeting Management Software

To choose the program that would be the most usable in your case, you need to determine the functions that are required to solve your actual problems. Among those responding to your requirements, choose several and rate them based on available funds and team preferences. Then test the favorites and, finally, select the most suitable one.

We described briefly twenty-six helpful tools for arranging, organizing, holding, and analyzing meetings. All of them have at least a basic set of necessary capabilities.

They differ only by the presence of other helpful functionality:

• Audio and video conferencing;
• Webinar publishing;
• Chats for task discussion;
• Screen demonstration capabilities;
• Distribution and tracking of tasks;
• Time tracking.

Conclusion

There are dozens of tools for work process management. All of them are united by the fact that they help somehow to organize and to improve communication within the team, help to connect employees from different parts of the city, country or world. Whatever you choose, it is the right way to improve team results and business growth.