Sherpany and EPFL: Future-focussed meetings for Swiss university leadership
Challenge
EPFL struggled with the administrative burden of meetings, and also found that leaders lacked an overview of decisions and action items resulting from management meetings.
Result
Sherpany provides a single, digital solution to centralise the entire meeting process, enabling flexible agenda creation, and providing robust version control.
The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is a vibrant and forward-thinking university, and is one of the top 20 universities in the world.
It’s widely accepted that meetings are integral to organisational success — for charities, governments, and private corporations — and EPFL acknowledged the need to digitalise their meetings, and to overcome cumbersome processes that were hindering efficiency. In 2021, they made the decision to implement Sherpany.
We caught up with Tristan Maillard, Secretary General, to find out exactly what meeting challenges EPFL were facing, why they chose Sherpany, and why this is their chosen solution for meeting management.
Meetings to manage a leading Swiss academic institution
Universities are one of the more unique — and sometimes complex — organisational structures, with management teams involving myriad stakeholders with disparate experiences, philosophies, goals, and agendas.
Meetings are the central point of exchange for the leadership team of a university, and EPFL’s management team holds two types of meetings — “one dedicated to discussion and the other one to exchanges and decisions.” While this delineation aids productivity in meetings, the management team recognised the need to build greater efficiency into the meeting process — and to digitalise meetings overall.
According to Tristan Maillard, Secretary General at EPFL: “The administrative preparation of meetings was very time-consuming. What’s more, it was difficult to maintain an overview of the decisions and action items agreed by the management team.”
This need for oversight and efficiency led Mr. Maillard to begin searching for solutions. They needed a tool that enabled flexibility — including last-minute changes — while maintaining visibility and control. That’s where Sherpany came in.
The Management team can prepare for meetings independently and needs less administrative support. They can easily find information before and after the meetings.
EPFL: Efficiency, flexibility, and preparedness with Sherpany
EPFL made the decision to implement Sherpany in January 2021. The world was still in the grip of the chaos of COVID-19, yet the roll-out of Sherpany was smooth.
The university’s management holds two meetings per week, each lasting for an average two-and-a-half hours. Therefore, their investment in meetings over the course of a year is considerable. By implementing Sherpany, EPFL aimed to enhance the efficiency of the meeting process, and make the most of their investment in valuable meeting time.
Mr. Maillard commented that “Sherpany is user-friendly. Members can easily find documents and past decisions on the same topic with the search functionality.” He also noted that, “The flexibility enables last-minute changes to the agenda or documents.”
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By providing a unified, easy-to-use experience for all stakeholders in the EPFL management team, Sherpany supports them in holding more effective meetings. One of the primary ways is through meeting preparation. By providing a single source of truth for meetings, Sherpany enables the management team at EPFL to remain up-to-date and prepare thoroughly ahead of each meeting.
Mr. Maillard acknowledged this, stating that, “Sherpany helps us to prepare meetings in an efficient way. Participants use the tool during the meetings to follow the agenda and access documents. They can easily find documentation of past meetings and action items.”
Sherpany and EPFL: Effective management meetings for the future of academia
We are proud to support EPFL in holding more effective meetings — to help the management team experience greater meeting efficiency, and to form a part of the rich history of this leading academic institution.
By helping the EPFL team to reduce the administrative burden of meetings, enhance their preparation, and maintain a holistic overview, they can focus squarely on the goals of their meetings, and ensure that they are achieved.
As Mr. Maillard nicely explains "when the values of the group are respected, participants have been able to express their opinions and the decisions taken have enabled the institution to move forward" only then meetings are excellently run by the leadership team at EPFL.
We would like to thank Tristan Maillard for his time and candour in speaking with us. You can learn more about EPFL on their website.
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About EPFL
The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne , or EPFL for short, is a world-renowned research university located in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was founded in 1969 — but has roots dating back to 1853 — and has become a leading institution in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). EPFL is a public research university and is part of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain, which also includes the ETH Zurich.
