Best use of technology Benchmark Electronics
Stephen Beaver, Benchmark Electronics
For governance professionals, technology can be a helpful means to enhance teamwork, improve accuracy and improve efficiency despite finite resources. Benchmark Electronics for the first time decided to use a cloud-based collaboration and financial reporting tool in drafting and creating its 2021 proxy statement.
As proxy statements become more complex and wide-ranging – making greater use of graphics and other design elements, as well as including more detailed discussions in areas such as board composition and ESG – they are also becoming products with input from a variety of groups around the company.
As a result, they are the outcomes of often elaborate teamwork, with legal playing a key co-ordinating role.
Benchmark used technology enabling multiple parties to work on the same document, or specific sections of the document, at the same time. Meanwhile, the document owner was able to maintain the necessary security and version controls. The technology used interfaces such as Word and Excel that are familiar to the drafting team.
‘We have been on a journey to enhance the tools we use to help with disclosure,’ says Stephen Beaver, senior vice president, general counsel and chief legal officer at Benchmark, noting that the company has been moving away from more manual processes. That included a lot of the design work on the company’s proxy statement.
The new technology used for the 2021 statement helped make the process more robust, keep the team on track, use time more effectively and ultimately complete the project in a better timeframe, Beaver says.
Among other initiatives on the technological front, Benchmark customized its AGM and document web-hosting landing page for its 2021 meeting, changes that prompted positive feedback to the board.
We’ve been on a journey to enhance the tools we use to help with disclosure
