Board evaluation software
Run a formal, rigorous board performance review without the cost or complexity of a traditional consultancy engagement. Boardforms gives company secretaries, chairs and governance teams everything needed to plan, distribute and report on a board evaluation — with questionnaires mapped to UK governance codes, anonymous director workflows and board-pack-ready reporting.
Self-administered from £2,000 per year. Externally facilitated from £4,000. See pricing
Board evaluation software is a purpose-built tool for running board effectiveness reviews: the structured, usually annual, assessment of how well a board, its committees and its individual directors are performing. Instead of stitching together Word questionnaires, email chains and spreadsheets, a dedicated platform handles the full cycle — building the questionnaire, distributing it securely to directors, collecting anonymous responses, and generating the analysis and reports the board and its committees need to act on the findings.
For UK boards, the review is more than good practice. The UK Corporate Governance Code expects an annual board performance review, with an externally facilitated review at least every three years for FTSE 350 companies. Similar expectations apply to investment companies under the AIC Code and to large private companies reporting against the Wates Principles. Board evaluation software makes meeting those expectations repeatable, defensible and far less painful.
Most boards start with what's to hand: a Word document, a generic survey tool, a spreadsheet to tally results. It works — until it doesn't. Generic tools weren't designed for the specific demands of a board review:
Directors expect genuine anonymity, and are noticeably more candid when they trust the process. A survey link forwarded from the company secretary's inbox doesn't inspire that trust. Governance teams need questions that map to the codes they report against, not generic engagement-survey templates. Chairs want a board-pack-ready report, not a CSV export that someone has to spend three evenings turning into something presentable. And the whole exercise has to be repeatable year on year, so the board can track progress against last year's findings rather than starting from scratch.
Purpose-built board evaluation software addresses all four — which is why boards that switch rarely go back.
The value of a board evaluation lives or dies on candour. Boardforms is designed so directors can be honest: responses are collected anonymously, individual answers are never attributed, and reporting presents themes and aggregated ratings rather than exposing who said what. The result is the conversation the boardroom actually needs to have — surfaced constructively, on paper, before the meeting.
Every evaluation produces a structured report designed for the board pack: aggregated ratings, year-on-year comparisons, free-text themes and a concise executive summary. It supports the board's discussion, gives the nomination committee evidence for its work, and underpins the board performance review disclosures in the annual report — without weeks of manual analysis.
Boardforms is built for UK governance: company secretaries and chairs of listed companies reporting against the UK Corporate Governance Code, investment trusts applying the AIC Code, large private companies adopting the Wates Principles, and subsidiaries, charities and public-interest bodies that want the same rigour without inventing a process from scratch.
1. Build the evaluation.
Start from proven templates aligned to the UK Corporate Governance Code, the AIC Code or the Wates Principles — or bring your own framework. Tailor questions to your board, its committees and this year's focus areas. Browse board evaluation templates →
2. Distribute and track.
Issue secure, individual questionnaires to each director. Live tracking shows the company secretary exactly where the cycle stands — who has completed, who needs a nudge — without compromising the anonymity of the answers themselves.
3. Directors respond.
Directors complete their evaluation anonymously, on desktop or mobile, in their own time. No accounts to configure, no IT tickets, no printed packs.
4. Generate the report.
Produce a board-pack-ready report and executive summary in minutes, not weeks — structured for discussion at the board meeting and ready to support the disclosures in your annual report.
Boardforms supports both recognised approaches to a board review, on the same platform:
Self-administered board evaluation — from £2,000/yr.
The company secretary or chair runs the process internally using Boardforms' templates, workflows and reporting. The right choice for interim years, smaller boards, and organisations that want rigour without external cost. Learn more →
Externally facilitated board evaluation — from £4,000.
An independent facilitator designs and runs the review, adding external perspective and satisfying the UK Corporate Governance Code's expectation of external facilitation at least every three years for FTSE 350 boards. At a fraction of the cost of a traditional consultancy-led review. Learn more →
Many boards alternate: externally facilitated in year one, self-administered in years two and three — keeping methodology and year-on-year comparisons consistent because both run on the same platform.
See how Boardforms runs a formal, rigorous board performance review at a fraction of the traditional cost.