Harnessing AI for more efficient and effective board pack preparation
A well-crafted board pack is essential for informed discussions and decisive action. But in the lead-up to a board meeting, assembling and refining these materials can be a race against time — sorting through past records, gathering updates, ensuring accuracy and making everything digestible for board members.
For general counsels, corporate secretaries and board administrators, this process is both high-stakes and highly manual, often leaving little room for strategic work. AI is now changing that.
By automating board book assembly, material summarization and meeting preparation, purpose-built AI-powered governance tools are today revolutionizing this once mammoth task — not only saving time and improving efficiency, but enhancing the quality of board decision-making too.
So how does AI reshape board meeting prep in practice? Read on for specifics, including a real-world example of AI-powered board packs in action.
From manual work to AI-optimized efficiency
Preparing a board pack requires a careful balance of data gathering, content refinement, and accuracy checks. Traditionally, this meant:
- Manually assembling reports and filings from previous meetings
- Summarizing key takeaways while ensuring no critical details are lost
- Formatting and cross-referencing to maintain consistency
- Tracking legal and regulatory updates to ensure compliance
AI is now transforming these steps — automating routine tasks, reducing errors and allowing legal and governance professionals to focus on what truly matters: enabling strategic discussions and better decision-making. Here’s how:
Step 1: Automating board book assembly and creation
Board packs don’t start from scratch. They build on past discussions, decisions and data points. But compiling these materials manually is time-consuming and prone to inconsistencies.
Smart Book Builder automates this process, pulling in the most relevant materials from previous meetings, governance reports and financial filings, assembling and pre-formatting them to a follow a desired template. Not only that, it dynamically updates content, ensuring board members always receive the most accurate and up-to-date information.
By eliminating manual collation, legal and governance teams can spend less time assembling materials and more time shaping the narrative — ensuring board members focus on the most important issues.
Step 2: Strengthening compliance and accuracy
Legal and regulatory considerations are woven into nearly every board discussion, but ensuring all materials meet compliance requirements can be a major challenge.
Smart Legal Scanner analyzes board pack content in real time, identifying potential risks, inconsistencies, and missing regulatory references. Whether it’s aligning with governance policies or flagging outdated legal language, this tool helps governance teams proactively address issues before they reach the boardroom.
By embedding compliance checks into the board pack process, organizations reduce risk, improve accountability and ensure decisions are built on a strong legal foundation.
Step 3: Making board packs digestible
Once the board pack is assembled, board members need to be able to quickly grasp the key insights.
Smart Book Summary condenses complex materials into concise, cross-referenced takeaways, highlighting the most critical data points. AI-generated citations allow board members to seamlessly navigate between summaries and full reports, reducing time spent searching for context.
For those who prefer audio over reading, this feature also converts board packs into an on-the-go podcast, making it easy to prep for meetings while commuting, exercising or traveling.
Step 4: Enabling more strategic director engagement
Beyond summarization, AI helps board members engage with materials more effectively.
Smart Prep provides personalized insights and key focus areas, ensuring directors arrive at meetings ready to contribute meaningfully. Instead of sifting through dense reports, they gain a clear understanding of critical discussion points—leading to more focused, productive conversations and faster decision-making.
By shifting the emphasis from information overload to strategic clarity, Smart Prep elevates the quality of board discussions and enhances overall governance effectiveness.
AI’s boardroom impact beyond meeting prep
While AI transforms board pack preparation, its value extends beyond the meeting itself. AI-driven tools support governance professionals before, during, and after meetings, ensuring continuity and informed decision-making.
- Smart Minutes – AI-assisted meeting minutes capture key discussions, decisions, and action points with precision, streamlining post-meeting documentation.
- Actions Tracker – Converts meeting outcomes into trackable follow-ups, ensuring accountability and progress between meetings.
- Smart News & Competitive Insights – Provides real-time updates on regulatory changes, financial risks, industry trends and peer benchmarking, equipping boards with proactive intelligence.
- AI Education & Templates – On-demand resources that help organizations align their governance strategies with AI best practices, ensuring they stay ahead of evolving regulatory and ethical considerations.
By embedding AI at every stage of the boardroom lifecycle, governance teams can improve efficiency, maintain compliance, and ensure decisions lead to tangible outcomes.
AI-enabled board packs in action at ELCO
As general counsel and corporate secretary, Eric Myers handles board packs — and much more — at ELCO Mutual, an insurance provider managing more than a billion dollars in assets. Using Diligent's AI-powered board management software has freed up valuable time in his schedule.
“I used to spend maybe a day or two preparing for board meetings with the old system. Now with Diligent, it’s maybe an hour or two,” said Myers.
Meeting documents at ELCO can run to 150 pages or more. But with the software's AI Board Book Summary tool, Myers was able to generate concise overviews at the click of a button. “It basically summarizes everything, and I can pull out the bits and pieces that I need,” he said. “Having something that tells the board, ‘Hey, this is where you need to go, this is what you should focus on,’ is very helpful.”
The new summaries had a substantial impact: directors’ engagement rose, and meeting dynamics improved as board members were more prepared and informed, leading to faster, more effective decision-making.
“I can tell much better than I used to how prepared people are,” said Myers, “just based on how the meetings go.”
Read the full case study to discover how ELCO Mutual leveraged AI-powered governance technology to modernize its boardroom operations.
AI as a strategic enabler in governance
For legal teams and governance professionals, AI is not just about saving time — it’s about shifting focus to higher-value work. Instead of spending hours on manual processes, board teams can ensure strategic alignment, regulatory compliance and forward-thinking governance.
For board members, AI-driven summaries, automated citations and intelligent prep tools enable more effective engagement — helping them make better decisions, faster.
And across the governance ecosystem, AI strengthens accuracy, compliance and accountability — ensuring that boards stay ahead of risks and opportunities rather than reacting to them. However, to maximize trust, confidence and control, organizations must adopt AI purpose-built for governance, with security and transparency at its core.
Modern governance is evolving, and responsible AI is driving the next era of more effective, informed and forward-looking boardrooms.
Discover the future of AI in governance, risk, and compliance. Join our AI Innovations Virtual Summit for cutting-edge insights, real-world success stories and practical strategies to elevate your GRC initiatives. Don’t miss out — register now!
Put AI to work in your boardroom
Discover the full suite of AI-powered board management features that can boost your board’s efficiency with tools to use before, during and after the board meeting.
Download the guideMore to explore
Debunked: 4 myths about AI-assisted decision-making in the boardroom
Dispel common myths about AI in the boardroom and discover how purpose-built AI tools enhance decision-making and empower directors.
Demystifying AI: What does it really mean for the boardroom?
Download our white paper to gain a deeper understanding of the steps your company should take to leverage AI.
How general counsels are stepping up as unlikely AI champions
Discover how general counsels are emerging as unexpected leaders in AI adoption, driving innovation, compliance, and strategic decision-making across organizations.
