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‘The Boardroom’: SL’s first secretarial app

10 Jan 2021

  [caption id="attachment_112939" align="alignright" width="300"] "We have seen a very positive response from our clients – especially from our Australian clients who took a particular liking towards it, due to making documentation easy and not having to always rely on their company secretaries" Ananda Sirisena and Co. (Pvt.) Ltd. Executive Director Isura Sirisena[/caption] Every business today requires a list of secretarial documents and registrations to function and grow. These documents usually make the legal and corporate basis for companies, and need to be readily available to company officials. Due to this need for accessibility, international markets have begun to adopt digital solutions, which help them access these documents remotely via mobile phone. However, the old secretarial norms still dominate countries like Sri Lanka, with most companies relying on physical copies of important documents, making them inconvenient to access when needed. Seeing this gap, Ananda Sirisena and Co. (Pvt.) Ltd., a registered corporate secretaries and incorporator with a range of international and local clients, has decided to disrupt the market by introducing Sri Lanka's first-ever secretarial app. Named “The Boardroom”, clients have the ability to carry all their corporate documentation on an app that will help them quickly share these via social media, messaging apps, and email, and also allow accessing documentation during meetings with banks, investors, and/or partners. Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, the 30-year old company’s Executive Director Isura Sirisena stated that the app brings an organisation's registrations and company secretarial documentation to their fingertips. He explained that this will give uninterrupted, efficient access to these documents, and allow company officials to share these files with the intended parties. Having worked with both global and local clients in the last three decades, he stated that they have seen the need for quick access to these documents when companies are at the end of closing a business-related deal, or doing banking. He explained that each time, they would have to call the office secretary and have them transfer the documentation needed, which was not ideal. “What we have done is brought all these documents to your phone, so that you do not need a lengthy back-and-forth with your secretary, and we have given these companies the option of making these documents shareable through other third-party messenger apps, such as WhatsApp and Viber.” The app looks at a common set of documentation a company needs for everything, which includes their business registration certificate, a list of the chain of directors in the company, the share structure, and the annual returns. All the client’s documents available on the app will be verified by Ananda Sirisena and Co., and registered with the registrar of the company. Sirisena emphasised that they are currently doing a test run with 50 of their existing clients, and have been updating the app according to their findings. He also stated that they are currently not looking to make a revenue off the app, but instead want to install it with all 400 of their existing clients, perfecting and developing the app further, and reaching out to other secretarial companies, where they hope to create revenue.  “We have seen a very positive response from our clients – especially from our Australian clients who took a particular liking towards it, due to making documentation easy and not having to always rely on their company secretaries. The need for our app was further emphasised due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, because most of the offices are closed and companies do not always have access to the hard documentation.” He stated that by testing this app out on their clients, they witnessed that the process, which was earlier done manually, has now been made so much easier and accessible to their existing and new customers. Therefore, through the launch of the app, they also aim to target new clients that are tech-savvy and looking at transformational business models. Furthermore, Sirisena stated that they plan on introducing new features to the app, such as digital business cards and introductory videos for both corporates and individuals, and a platform for board members to interact with each other. This new app and its features are designed to save time and bring ease of access to any scale of business, from first-time entrepreneurs to large organisations.


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