How to run more effective, engaging board meetings

For CEOs and CFOs, especially in early-stage VC-backed startups, board meetings are not just about presenting numbers. More often than not, this is when crucial decisions are made about how to meet strategic goals and address current and potential challenges. This means business leaders need not only a well-structured agenda for board meetings, but also a compelling presentation with detailed financial reports and updates in performance metrics.

This article explores the role of SaaS CFO (and CEO) in leading impactful board meetings and highlights some best practices to make them more efficient and productive for all stakeholders.  

The role of the CFO in board meetings

Board meetings can be stressful. 

New finance leaders or startup founders typically struggle to make an impact at board meetings and, given their lack of experience, are often overwhelmed by demands of the boardroom conversations. Even with a solid understanding of the topics at hand, a lack of confidence or preparation can lead to missed opportunities. 

With the right approach and tools, however, you can turn these meetings into a platform to showcase your expertise and strengthen your relationship with the board. 

Here’s how you can leverage your role as the CFO within the SaaS business to facilitate board relationships.

Understand the board’s expectations

For startups, members of the board meeting often include investors. Some of them might prefer detailed reports on the company’s strategic goals, current performance, and responses to external economic factors, while others may want an overview that focuses on key metrics. Take the time to understand what your board members value the most—growth, profitability, risk management, or innovation.

Set the agenda 

A board meeting agenda provides structure and direction to the meeting. It ensures that all board members are aware of the topics to be discussed and can come prepared with questions and comments. 

Focus on KPIs and over-prepare

As a CFO, knowing your numbers is non-negotiable. Prepare thoroughly—validate facts, rehearse your presentation, and review key points with board members. Go beyond the basics, and have backup materials (and team executives) at hand for deeper discussions. 

Be transparent 

Always highlight the most important financial data and updates about the business, using charts and visuals, to allay any concerns.

Provide actionable insights

The board will look to the CFO to share specific insights not only about the company’s short and long-term financial goals, but also about trends around business performance, financial reporting, taxes and compliance status, etc. Your objective is to share practical and actionable insights aligned with your CXOs and the business’ overall vision.

Anticipate questions (and prepare data-backed answers)

It’s not enough to just present the numbers—you need to be ready to defend them and provide additional (data-backed) context when necessary. Rehearse and discuss your answers with the CEO and trusted advisors to ensure you’re aligned on the messaging.

Use a checklist to help you prepare

Prepping for a board meeting is a big deal and involves a lot of work. A good checklist can help you make sure you don't miss anything in your preparation. You can download our board meeting preparation checklist shown below to help you get started. Use it as-is or as an example for developing your own.

What to include in a board meeting package 

The board of directors and investors will expect an agenda and board package before the meeting. While it varies in terms of structure and content from company to company, for SaaS companies, it usually includes the following:

• Executive summary (CEO/CFO updates)
• Current agenda and updates on minutes of the previous meeting 
• Department updates
• Product roadmap
• KPIs and metrics overview
• Financial statements and projections
• Plan of working sessions with the board 

6 best practices for conducting successful board meetings

To excel in board meetings, finance leaders must master the balance between delivering precise financial insights and engaging thoughtfully with the directors and investors on larger business issues. 

Here are some best practices to help you navigate these dual responsibilities effectively. 

1. Have a clear agenda

Whether reviewing current financial performance or budgeting for the next financial year, having a clear, well-prepared agenda ensures that the board meeting stays on track. 

To cover all your bases, develop the board meeting agenda with inputs from department heads and key stakeholders. These sessions provide an opportunity to align on critical topics. 

2. Prepare thoroughly and collaboratively

Preparation extends beyond just creating an agenda. Prepping for the board meeting is a collaborative exercise that begins weeks in advance. It is advisable to hold pre-meetings with key board members to review the agenda, align on important topics, and incorporate their inputs into the final presentation. You can also utilize financial reporting tools to track and measure the metrics that matter. 

If legal actions are required, prepare these with your legal counsel ahead of time. Additionally, ensure that any board actions, like approvals for previous meeting minutes or financial authorizations, are ready for review and sign-offs. 

3. Develop a great board presentation

The actual presentation should be comprehensive, yet easily understandable. 

It is a good idea to start with a high-level overview before drilling down into the specifics. Remember to include comparisons of current performance against prior periods, budgets, forecasts, etc. 

The presentation should also include key SaaS metrics that your directors and investors are most interested in. 

You could even consider using a board report template to standardize the presentation.

4. Facilitate engaging discussions with key stakeholders

It is extremely important to create an inclusive environment. You need to manage the flow of conversation, keeping discussions focused on the agenda items to ensure all critical topics are covered within the allotted time. 

Foster a culture of open dialogue, encouraging all members to share their opinions and insights.

5. Follow up promptly with actionable minutes

Post-meeting minutes should clearly document decisions, assign follow-up tasks, and establish deadlines. You need to assign a trusted team member to take structured minutes and distribute those promptly to all stakeholders, ensuring everyone is aligned on outcomes and next steps.

6. Foster ongoing engagement  with good communication

Lastly, your aim is to keep board members informed with regular progress updates on the company’s financial health and performance, as well as its growth journey. 

Continuous communication with the board between meetings makes subsequent meetings more productive for your directors and investors.

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Leverage technology to build your financial reports and get “board ready” faster 

Board meetings rely heavily on numbers. But financial reports alone don’t tell the whole story. Utilizing strategic financial reporting tools enable business leaders to keep track of the company’s financial health and be “board ready” without scrambling for data, insights, and visuals .

Drivetrain is a comprehensive SaaS financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software that consolidates and validates all the data you need from different systems into one centralized platform. This allows real-time access to all the data you need to fully prepare for board meetings. 

With Drivetrain, you can slice and dice your data in any way you need to tell your story at a high level or drilling down to a granular level to show the details, all with just a few clicks of the mouse. These capabilities, combined with interactive dashboards allows you to build a sophisticated and informative board presentation in a fraction of the time it would take in other tools. 

Here’s a look at some of Drivetrain’s key features and capabilities that will help you:

Streamline cross-functional collaboration

Drivetrain automates data consolidation and reconciliation, reducing manual interventions and making the data consolidation process less prone to errors. This frees up the finance team to thoroughly analyze the data and prepare for the board meeting with actionable insights and trends. 

If questions arise during this process, the messaging and notification features built into the platform make it fast and easy to get answers, virtually eliminating any need to go back and forth via email.  

Role-based access controls ensure secure cross-functional collaboration ensuring that different team members only have access to the information they need to perform their jobs, without inadvertently altering the models.

Automate data consolidation with native integrations

With 200+ integrations, Drivetrain ensures automatic syncing of financial and business data from different apps and systems like ERP, accounting, billing/invoicing, HRIS, CRM, etc. This ensures that your forecasts are always up-to-date and all the numbers you need for the board presentation are accurate. 

Build connected 3-statement models

Drivetrain allows you to build a three-statement model where changes in one (let’s say the cash flow statement) is instantly reflected in the other statements (P&L and balance sheet). 

It also helps with scenario analysis, enabling you to demonstrate the potential impact of unforeseen market conditions and other external factors on the company's financials. This helps the board understand the risks and rewards associated with various options to support strategic decision-making.

Create real-time reports and visualizations

Drivetrain’s robust reporting and visualization capabilities and dynamic dashboards enable you to present financial forecasts, KPIs, and metrics as a cohesive financial story. These charts and graphs help non-finance members to easily review financial data, understand the complexities, and identify trends.

Maintain compliance and security

Drivetrain ensures your business is always compliant with financial regulations with robust security measures that safeguard sensitive financial data, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive financial data.

Explore Drivetrain to see how it can automate and streamline your financial reporting process and make your board presentations data rich and impactful. 

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