Your Awards Program: Cyberspace or Office Space?

Walking through the silent ballroom blanketed with programs, vacated seats and empty wine glasses, John Salak, founder and president of The Salak Group, breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. The annual awards show he managed was finally over. Months of in-house planning, collecting nominations, communicating with judges and tallying final results had come to an end, and he now had a few moments to relax before starting the process all over again.

Fortunately for Salak, doing that would be less daunting than you might think.

Three years ago, he traded his in-house awards system of countless hours, manpower and headaches for a relationship with mBLAST, an online software management company that now streamlines the award process for him.

“The program helps manage nominations coming in,” says Salak. “People can submit their nominations online, then we can manage, track and analyze online. It’s much faster and more accurate.”

A Better Way to Manage Awards

Online software companies like mBLAST have recognized the need for an automated awards system to streamline the vast amounts of communication and administrative tallying that goes into managing an awards program. For an annual fee, you can manage everything online from nominations to judging and final count.

“Besides making it easier for entrants and judges — which usually equates to more entries, which equals more revenue — our software is a huge cost/time saver for the admin,” says Brian Seery, client support specialist for the OMNI Solutions Group Inc., which also offers an online awards program solution, among other Net-centric business solutions. “What a lot of people don’t account for when trying to figure out how much an awards program is really costing them is just how many man-hours it takes for an admin to sort and receive all the entries coming in, and then get them all judged.”

Is It Worth the Investment?

But is investing in an automated online awards program really worth the hassle of changing systems, not to mention the expense? A lot of time and money go into operating your system, whether in-house or out. Is it cost-effective? Sue O’Keefe, director of marketing and strategic partnerships for mBLAST, says yes.

“Award shows can be huge revenue generators for companies,” she says. “Today, travel costs are so high that people are not traveling as much as they used to. As a result, overall revenue is going down. Awards are a great way to bring it back up. People get really pumped about winning awards.”

Perhaps one of the most enticing aspects of online awards management is the ability to control all aspects of the program from anywhere in the world. Have a nomination deadline coming up? Jump online and see who still needs to finish their form. Send those people a targeted e-mail reminding them to finish up their nomination before the deadline. The same can apply for keeping your judges on schedule.

“One of the greatest things about it is control,” explains O’Keefe. “You can change a typo without having to go through your IT department. You can set up an awards program on the fly. If you have an opportunity to participate in a show, you can set it up incredibly quickly and go from concept to live in maybe a day.”

Another benefit of using an online system is the ability to upload high-resolution data files. Entrants don’t have to be limited to a couple snapshots of their work. With systems like OMNI and mBLAST, entrants can upload video or sound files for review.

“Some awards just can’t do justice by showing a snapshot,” says O’Keefe.

For Salak, the speed and efficiency with which an online awards system tracks results is more than worth it.

“We can hold the award nomination window open longer because we can turn around the judging in two weeks instead of three to four,” he says.

Do What You Do Best

But even with all this assistance, it’s ultimately up to you, the user, how helpful the system will be.

“[The software companies] are there to support their system, but you need to be creative in how to get more out of it. That is your job,” says Salak. He recommends doing a little research post-show and getting in touch with people who started a nomination form and never finished it.

“Lift those names and send a letter asking why they didn’t complete it,” says Salak. “That way, you can build your base and make it better next time.”

In the end, online systems aim to help make the process easier for entrants, judges — and most of all, you.

“Event planners can use this software to allow them to focus on doing what they do best, planning the event,” says Seery.

For people like Salak, who know firsthand the difficulty of organizing an awards program manually, an online awards management system is a breath of fresh air. He has just one word to describe the system that has simplified his life: “Godsend.”