Choosing The Best System To Manage Your Awards Program
The system you use to manage submissions and judging is instrumental to your awards program’s success. After all, how easy it is for an entrant to apply, or how intuitive your judging is, can make or break a participant’s experience. (Not to mention that of your awards staff!) As such, it’s important to have the best solution to meet your program’s needs.
Upgrading from a paper-based system to awards software is the first step. But after that, there’s still the question: how? Do you build a custom system in-house or purchase an existing one? Not all awards software systems are created equal, after all.
In order to make the right decision for your program it’s important to not get caught up in whether you want a custom system or think purchasing software would be easier. Instead, it’s best to take a practical approach and address what factors are crucial for a good, state-of-the-art management system. By looking at the issues and needs of your program and how a system could meet them, you’ll be able to make an objective decision that will benefit everyone involved.
To make your job easier, we’ve compiled a list below of important factors to consider in the decision of build versus buy.
Cost Of Initial Program Development
Initial development of an awards management system is an enormous task. Not only are you building a whole new piece of software, you have to find credible web developers to hire, or task those already on your staff. Such a project also requires a great deal of funding, as you are starting from scratch.
Takeaway Questions:
- Where will the time, money, and manpower come from?
Upgrades
No piece of software can remain static after initial development. It must evolve and be upgraded to meet the needs and demands of the awards program and industry. However, developing new features and upgrading existing ones in a custom system is difficult and costly.
Takeaway Questions:
- Does your staff have the skills and time necessary to maintain and upgrade the software?
- Does your staff have the time to keep up with trends and best practices in your industry, as well as the awards industry?
eCommerce
eCommerce is a necessary component in an awards system that charges entry fees. Setting up the ability to process payments online can quickly get complicated. The software needs to host a server and integrate with payment gateways and processors. PCI Compliance requirements must also be met to guarantee information remains secure. Whereas this can tack on added time and stress to developers building an in-house system, existing software already has the technical and regulatory issues taken care of.
Takeaway Questions:
- How will you deal with integrating with the proper gateways and processors?
- How will resolving the technical and regulatory issues influence your timeline and goals?
Hosting
Hosting an internally developed web-based system can be tricky. You need a solution that is secure, reliable, and capable of streaming the necessary volume. Good software is also able to handle heavy web traffic and large, complicated medial uploads like photos and videos.
Takeaway Questions:
- Can your in-house system handle large amounts of traffic and media uploads?
- How will you guarantee (and monitor) the data and info put into the system remains secure?
Integration
Integrating with your membership database, payment processors, and other systems is difficult. Often it leads to further development and time costs. But it’s not something that can be overlooked. Getting your existing information into the system is essential. It helps consolidate and organize information, ensuring your historical data can be used in future awards cycles.
Takeaway Questions:
- How will you integrate in-house software with other necessary systems?
- Which systems does the software need to integrate with (now and in the future)?
Program Support
During your awards cycle applicants, judges, and staff are bound to have questions. And to ensure a smooth awards cycle, and happy participants, these questions and issues must be dealt with in a timely fashion. But, the costs that you can incur to hire extra staff or assign existing staff to provide support are quite steep for an awards program. This added budgetary stress can quickly cost your organization more than expected, causing unforeseen complications.
Takeaway Questions:
- How will you deal with the influx of support questions during the awards process?
- Do you have the available staff and do they have the time needed to devote themselves to dealing with issues as they arise?
Industry Standards
Any awards management system worth its salt needs to stay up-to-date with industry trends. However, learning about the latest trends and researching and implementing them into your software is a big job. Who is going to be in charge of that task? After all, your staff is already busy running your program. But, you’ll have to find the time to ensure that your program is both successful and efficient. On the other hand, an existing system is already doing the research and integrating new and helpful features into the software.
Takeaway Questions:
- Who has the time and skill to stay on top of industry trends and integrate them into new features for your software?
Making The Decision
Looking at the above criteria and the questions that arise, which makes more sense: building or buying awards software?
A fully developed system is often the simplest solution for awards programs seeking an effective awards management system. Not only are development and updates already handled, but you won’t have to worry about issues such as hosting, integration, support, or keeping up with industry standards.
To learn more about how different awards software solutions meet the criteria above, download the guide Awards Software: Build vs. Buy!
Got questions about your awards program? Just ask us!
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