As an entrepreneur, you will need to organize many meetings with different persons inside and outside your small business. However, one important part when it comes to managing effective meetings is recording, preparing, and sharing meeting minutes. But, there are many meeting minutes software that can help you.
Why You Need Meeting Minutes Software?
Before we start looking for the solution it is important for you to know the real advantages you will get with meeting minutes software.
As a first, meeting minutes are the only one written document that will contain brief discussions, recommendations, and conclusions from the meeting. This means that this document is the only one tool that will ensure next actions after finishing the meeting. Why would you hold meetings if they are not producing the next actions in your company?
But, one of the most difficult things when it comes to managing effective meeting is producing meeting minutes. Because of that, you can find on the market different meeting minutes software that can be used in preparing this document.
Here, I will not talk about commercial and specific based meeting minutes software, but instead of that, I will talk about possible solutions that you can use as a meeting minutes software in your small business.
Before I share several solutions I would like to mention what I want to have the following features in a meeting minutes software:
- a simple tool that will enable me easy writing solution when I am on a meeting.
- a recording functionality that will enable me to have the whole meeting recorded as a future reference.
- the syncing solution that will enable me to collaborate with all meeting participants.
- a mobile version that will enable me to use different devices when I prepare meeting minutes.
Let’s start with some tools.
1. OmniOutliner as Meeting Minutes Software
I will start this list of possible meeting minutes software with OmniOutliner as a tool for creating, collecting, and organizing information. Exactly what you need when it comes to using this tool as meeting minutes software?
You can prepare in advance the template for you meeting minutes based on the agenda (that also can be prepared in Omni Outliner). In such a way you can fill the gaps when you are on the meeting in the form of the most important meeting discussions, recommendations, and conclusions.
Another useful aspect of OmniOutliner is the possibility to record the whole meeting as a part of the software itself. On the other side, you can use their iPad or iPhone version to do the job. Also, you can enable syncing the document on their own syncing solution called OmniPresence or use another one as Dropbox.
2. Evernote as Meeting Minutes Software
The second possible solution in the form of meeting minutes software is Evernote. I am a big fan of Evernote for many things, and this is one of the activities I have used Evernote for. In Evernote, you can also create your own template form about the meeting minutes. For example, the template can have the meeting agenda, so you can easily fill the gaps in the template and use their recording functionality that will be part of your note as a meeting minutes.
3. Google Docs as Meeting Minutes Software
I think that we don’t need to explain in more broader details for this tool. Yes, you can use Google Docs as a meeting minutes software because it will enable you very useful collaborating environment when you take notes from the meeting and prepare your meeting minutes document. The only thing that I miss in Google Docs is a recording feature. But this disadvantage can be easily solved with other tools available.
4. Scrivener as Meeting Minutes Software
Next tool that simply becomes one of my favorite when it comes to my writing work is Scrivener, that I found also very useful as a meeting minutes software. All your meeting minutes can be prepared in this tool and all of them can be in that one project. In such a way you can have a very searchable environment in the future when you need something as a reference. You will have all the features I have described earlier as a building template, recording, and collaborative environment. You can learn more about collaboration in this screencast.
5. Scapple as Meeting Minutes Software
The last tool that I want to mention here as a meeting minutes software is Scapple from the same developers as Scrivener. This tool, unlike the aforementioned solutions that work on a writing principle, is based on a drawing. So, Scapple is close to mind mapping solution and visual representation. You can show different notes and comments based on the meeting discussions, recommendations, and conclusions. The tool is very simple to use, but you will need to use it only as a reference to create your meeting minutes. But, this is much more simplified in combination with Scrivener.
As you can see you have really many different tools available to use them as meeting minutes software. What you will choose depends on your work and your own way of working. I have used all of these tools and all of them finish the work when it comes to preparing meeting minutes.
Question: Do you have some other recommendation that can be used as a meeting minutes software?
