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Are Administrative Tasks Costing Your Awards Staff Too Much Time?

It’s no secret that running and planning an awards program is both work-intensive and time-consuming. But, in the midst of the awards process, it’s not always easy to get a clear idea of where most of your time is being spent.

Quite often, executives find that the highest costs come from administrative tasks that demand full attention from your staff and a significant portion of your budget. As a result, time that could be otherwise spent strategically building your program becomes unavailable.

But luckily, it doesn’t have to!

Administrative Tasks are Hidden Throughout Your Entire Awards Program

From preparation before your program begins to the end of the awards gala, administrative tasks are hidden at every turn. Of course, proper planning can help reduce the time and hassle of dealing with each, but your staff might also encounter surprise time and monetary costs.

But, where do you end up incurring the most damage in administrative tasks?

• Day-to-Day Support – There’s no question that entrants and judges are going to have questions about your program throughout the entire process. And, if you’re using staff members to field the daily influx of questions, emails, and phone calls, you’re spending a lot of time and perhaps even hiring extra staff members just to handle the work efficiently. As you can imagine, the need for day-to-day support is something that doesn’t dwindle as your awards program continues either.
• Call for Entry Preparation – Your call for entry is one of the most important parts of your awards program. That’s because it doesn’t just get some of the most traffic from advertisers and potential entrants, but also because it communicates the crucial details of your program that will serve as the foundation throughout your program. As a result, a substantial portion of time and resources are poured into the call for entry.
• Judging Coordination and Selection – Selecting the appropriate judges for your program is critical for your success. After all, they lend legitimacy and prestige to your program, as well as offer premier marketing potential. Not to mention the fact that they’re also responsible for the scoring of submissions, and thereby the selection of winners. But if your staff is forced to constantly check up on your judges and monitor scoring for hundreds of submissions, it’s going to take a long time to get things done.
• Tracking Submissions and Monitoring Entries – Once your call for entry occurs and entries come pouring in, entering each on your spreadsheet can become quite a hassle (not to mention a headache). Even with multiple staff members and an expertly planned program, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and disorganized quickly.
• Data Analysis – Once you’ve received all of the scores you aren’t done. You’ve still got to analyze the data, determine a winner, and begin coordinating postage and travel arrangements for winners if you’re going to fly them in for your awards gala, etc. As you can imagine, this can take an immense amount of time to ensure that all of your calculations are accurate.

Administrative tasks can easily cost your staff members time and money that your program doesn’t always have. It can even influence the success of your program if you’re unable to keep up with all the administrative demands.

But the good news is that you don’t have to compromise the success of your program due to these administrative demands. Instead, you can automate many of these tasks with awards software to minimize costs and maximize the amount of time your staff can spend on other facets of your organization and awards program.

Do you know where your program is costing you the most? If not, download our budget calculator and determine where your resources are going.

Miriam Hancock

Miriam Hancock
Miriam is the Marketing Coordinator for OpenWater. When she isn't writing and designing content she paints and cooks for her own personal blog.

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