Using a designated and bespoke product like AF, has taken out so much stress and uncertainty around getting the nominations in and judged remotely. we had over 1000 entries that needed to go through a very clear and strict judging process (in light of being fare and transparent ) We could let judging take place remotely and smoothly, with the confidence of our data security and personal reputational image being protected.

Everything! Especially the rep our account tech support manager. she was on hand 24/7 with not just support, but with solutions, and confidence building techniques to help me take charge of the growth of our work. The platform itself, is slick, very user friendly and a 100% reliable. It gave us the confidence we needed to launch our first annual HEAT awards. this has gone so well, we are already pencilling in next years campaign. Award Force have been the first and only platform I have used for this task, but I wouldn't dream of going anywhere else. In the grand scheme of things the cost was extremely good for all the benefits we obtained, and even though our event programme is over, we are still able use all the data for our analysis and personal development.

In all honesty I have very little bad to say about the whole experience. If you really pushed me for a balanced review, I would have to say that on a couple of times and considering I emailed support up to 4 times a day in the build up of our launch. that if our designated manager was out of the office or had finished for the day. The person that took over sometimes was a little enthusiastic to come back with a response and not grasp how slow I was being. That's really nothing bad just maybe a pointer for the future that they get a summary of the clients habits and personal synopsis before responding to a query.

We used AwardForce to run a two-round (semi-finalist + finalist) grant application process that required two different applications and two rounds of judging. AwardForce made the application and judging process easy, and customer support couldn't have been better.

I appreciated the level of customization that was possible, which makes this product flexible for different needs and even changes mid-stream. Perhaps the most valuable was the highly responsive and friendly customer support team via email or phone, which I leaned on frequently.

The in-app reporting views are limited, so I ended up exporting data to Excel to do certain kinds of sorting, filtering, and other data analysis. Also, the process of assigning judges was cumbersome in my case (instead of set judging groups, we assigned different combinations of judges to different applications - which was a multi-step process).

Good overall but too many bugs this year (started in Sept. 2023) compared to 2022

Easy to set up and prompt support available in any timezone

There can be some bugs to the system that prevent from making progress when setting up things. The support that needs to be email than a zoom call. I had around 30 email exchanges with support this year which is not efficient on our side - Last year was much better, two zoom calls resolved my issues

This program is very nice to have. Worth the money.

It takes some time to catch on to this program.

Overall, our judging team LOVED AwardForce and we're looking forward to using it next year again!

We were incredibly excited to implement AwardForce as we needed something to revamp our judging processes. The customer service provided was phenomenal- truly the best my manager and I have ever had. Whenever you have a question, the team is there to support you. Our contest was quite complex and has been running without the help of the judging software for several years so we were thrilled to know AwardForce was there every step of the way to ensure our contest was successfully built out on their platform. Shoutout to Marco - a wonderful customer service rep on this team who met with us for our one-on-one support sessions!

There were several things we would have liked to see on AwardForce, little "nice to haves" that would have made certain finicky parts of our contest operations a bit easier, that we were unable to make work with the current platform. Some examples include: - A way for judges to sort their assignments in VIP judging from highest to lowest score without needing to navigate to the leaderboard - Allowing commenting at every judging phase, including PASS/FAIL rounds - Having YES/NO dropdown fields instead of numerical 0/1 dropdown fields when evaluating submissions However, I know the product team is always implementing new features so I feel confident that the product will continue to get better and better with time!

Over all experience If I say, the security measures and data protection features of Award Force are the best I found.. Emphasize how it safeguards sensitive information and ensures the integrity of the awards process., which is in fact very high in quality and confidentiality kept tight.

While introducing I begin your review with a brief introduction to Award Force, mentioning its purpose and significance in awards management. You can also include any context about how you came across the software. Discuss the user-friendliness of the software. Mention if the interface is intuitive and if it's easy for both administrators and applicants to navigate.: Absolutely it is intuitive and easy to navigate. Features and Functionality:Detail the key features of Award Force that you found valuable. This could include aspects like customizable application forms, scoring systems, reporting capabilities, or any unique features that set it apart. All are very good and excellent I found.

There are certain things of course to be improved. Like reporting part, I could not find any easy way to get the scoring sheet and scores together to be converted to a pdf format.

More entries than expected and we saved a lot of administrative fees. Their support team is very helpful and fast in responding, which was a big plus for us.

For our Biennial of Slovenian Design we needed an intuitive and adjustable system. We were hoping to make administrative processes more efficient. After a detailed e-call, we were confident that we will be working with professionals who understand their clients. They translated the system in our language: it has only 2 mill. users, and has characteristics that are hard to work into english-based interfaces. While setting up, we were met with a lot of help from our producer. We encountered a problem: in the EU, it is required to add VAT info on invoice. AF did not have that option. After contacting them, VAT was implemented for us and other users also. We are strict about our image, so the implementation of our visual identity was a must for us. Designers branded it the way they liked it. The base is clean and leaves enough room to make it your own. Our administrators were very happy with the experience, as it significantly lessened the workload and kept our costs down. Our users were very excited to use AF. We are confident that their efficient system brought in more entries than we expected. We are very much looking forward to working with them in the years ahead and would wholeheartedly recommend the system to anyone looking for solutions to dealing with user entries at any scale. We were very glad that our Biennial, which is quite small in comparison with their other clients, received a thoroughly professional and attentive approach from their excellent team.

Some specific features didn't have a lot of flexibility but we managed to go around it with their help.

AwardForce has saved us a lot of time and means we can manage everything to with awards in one site. It's easy to pass on logon details to external judges who may be judging from afar and makes everyone feel as if they are on an important panel even being miles away.

AwardForce is very easy to use and means we can send one link out to hundreds of judges to get the best quality judging we need. The support team are super useful and always reply in good time, there have been times where we need something done urgently and they are very quick to get back to us with a solution. It's easy to download data and keep a record of how we are doing year on year.

It would be good if you could view more on the page at one time, for example filter some of the options when viewing entries like you can in excel but in the site. Other than that I have no cons! :)

Very positive experience from top to bottom. Pleased we made the transition!

We enjoy that the support team is global and that means quick responses on the wide variety of questions that we have on a rolling basis. We've never had a question go unanswered or unsolved. The platform is easy to use and customize for anyone seeking an events management platform.

There are times where it would be nice to have a dedicated support person vs. a wider team, but it hasn't interrupted or kept us from developing the platform. It's just another way of working. The main events admin says that she would have liked to speak to someone vs. emailing. I suppose that goes along with the challenges of a global team. Email is easiest, but sometimes conversations can solve things in a different way.

great overview for entries and easy to manage

creating an account for every single award and limited search funktion

I inherited an open Award season to manage and was able to come up to speed fairly quickly due to the intuitive nature of the platform and the SUPERB support I got from Award Force e.g. one on one training calls, common help tips embedded in the platform (ie don't have to go to another screen and back and forth but can take action in the platform with the tips right there on the same screen), and extraordinarily fast responses to my emails asking how to do certain things. I am managing our 2nd season and it is going very smoothly and I am digging deeper into the functionality that is available. This is our team's second year using the platform and it works extremely well for the needs that we have and I highly recommend the SW if you need to manage an Awards program.

The program is fairly intuitive so the learning curve is not too steep. And for the times when I have needed help, the response time and quality of support is unparalleled in my experience. I send an email, within a few hours no matter what time of the day or night I send it, someone from around the globe answers me. If further assistance is needed e.g. a call with someone, it can usually be set up within a day or two of my request. And the quality of the support is excellent. The staff are extremely knowledgeable of the product and understand the questions from a user or functionality perspective vs providing technical-speak. It seems that often times tech support for other SW I have used is staffed by technical wonks who write the code and make the bells and whistles but don't have a real understanding of the business or user function so the support comes from that perspective rather than understanding what I am trying to do and then providing a solution. Another thing that I use all the time is importing to excel to run reports. In this way, I can always have a user friendly aggregated view of what is on the platform depending on what I am needing. I love this ability to have offline access and I know some of our judges have also made good use of being able to download PDF versions of entries that they can review on the go and then come to the platform to enter their scores and comments.

I have come across some small functionality that I would like to have such as a bit more ability to "pretty up" my email broadcasts or filtering by 2 different dimensions to randomly assign entries for judging. With that said, the SW really addresses so many of our main needs that these issues are not an issue and I have been able to create workarounds if needed.

Despite a few glitches here and there, Award Force truly has been a lifesaver for me and my organization -- it has streamlined the award process so much for us, which makes life easier for our users/nominators, and also frees up my time to do other important work, including giving feedback on submissions to increase the overall quality we're seeing. Keep up the great work!

I run an awards program that gets more than 4,000 entries a year, and before we found Award Force we were allowing people to submit by just sending us a PDF. It was a huge effort to collect them all, a waste of paper to make a "packet" for judges to read, and a colossal pain to notify the winners and losers using a mail merge. Award Force is like a godsend in that regard -- it allows me to keep all the entries in one place, have the judges evaluate them right with in the system, and then I can notify winners and losers right from the system as well. The software allows me to program my questionnaire so submissions are automatically separated into the appropriate category, easily assign judges, and help users from the back end.

The software can have a steep learning curve for new users (I onboard new judges all the time as we hire new people and it can be confusing at first). I wish some of the language was more intuitive. The system also sometimes can run slowly if I have a lot of tasks running at once on a big set of entries. And I think this is a problem on the end of my users (they work in places with very strong spam filters), but sometimes the notifications I send don't arrive where they're supposed to. I suspect they're getting caught in quarantine, but it causes some extra work for me on the back end having to look up individual submissions.

Award Force for me is the complete package, ease of is second to none and the options available within the system will cater for awards small or large, simple or complicated. Level of support is brilliant with personal service and quick turnaround. Which is a must for Award event & program managers.

The software can be customised to suite various award types as a result is versatile. It's certainly great for awards programs with multiple awards under different categories. It is easy to use and modify even after set up. Good reporting capabilities and great dashboard. Many options for judging of awards and can include different rounds as well. Good branding opportunities within the system, whether it be for your own awards program or your sponsors & partners. From the research I have done this system is the best and is priced well. The level of support available is great whether and you get to speak to a real person, from initial set and an ongoing basis. Many others don't offer this level of support.

There really isn't anything I don;t like about it. It more than suits my needs.

Use of this software has greatly eased our administrative processes in managing our annual awards program. It has greatly improved the entry process for entrants.

Having previously run our annual awards program via submission of hard copy entries from entrants in 2017 we moved to use Award Force software - allowing us to build a custom online platform via which entrants could submit their entry portfolios, and we could easily manage the process from the back end/administrative end of the entry portal. A seamless operation - and very easy to use - allowing us to monitor rate of entry, auto respond to entrants, and obviously the great benefit of being able to digitally store a huge amount of data/info instead of our previous headache of having excessive paper copies. The software has been exceptional value for money. Award Force provided excellent upfront training in how best to use the software and also provided an excellent back up service for any small glitches that might arise in initial use. All in all it has been a fantastic purchase for our organisation and one which we wish we had probably made a number of years ago! Highly recommended.

We really like the ease of copying entries for entrants, to make it easier for them to submit multiple entries (if eligible). The variety of judging options is also very helpful, enabling us to select the best type of judging for that particular instance, rather than doing a workaround on a static judging process.

While there isn't a lot I don't like about AwardForce, it would be helpful to provide an accessibility colour checker/palette - we recently changed sponsor, so had to change the theme colours, and it was difficult to test the colours with all of the design nuances, to ensure the theme a) looked good and b) was fully accessible to people who have eyesight challenges.

Our organisation hosts an extremely complex hierarchical awards program with multiple chapters, categories, price points, sets of criteria, juries and numerous staff across Australia. I have been extremely impressed by the functionality and flexibility of the Award Force platform, not to mention the high level of customer service and willingness to provide solutions. My consultant has been very responsive and always willing to help with our program. I could not be happier with the level of service we have received to date, and am excited to launch our program via this new system over the next six months. During our pilot program I received only positive feedback from the entrants, judges and administrators using the platform. It is extremely easy to use, and looks professional to external viewers. I am relieved to have a lot of control over the configuration of the system for our needs, and it means that I can be the main support for the team working on delivering the program. The team at Award Force are extremely capable, responsive and willing to help. The user experience of the system is second-to-none. The system gives our awards program a professional look. I am excited to use the platform and cannot recommend Award Force highly enough.

Flexible for different needs, easy to use, professional look and feel.

Not being able to run multiple programs at the same time - we would love to use it for our other Prize programs!

Ease of use, professionally run design competitions and peace of mind.

Ease of use. Award Force has allowed us to run design competitions with up to 70 entrants relatively easily. Award Force took so much of the onerous sifting through entries and made it so much easier for us as the organizers of the competitions and for the judges to access and review the entries. It also helped when we ran design competitions with several rounds, i.e. Round One being the initial selection of acceptable entries being put into a coherent set of entries and then allowing the judges to easily go through them in order to populate Round Two. The whole experience has been very easy and that is extremely helpful to us as we don't have the time to develop our own system.

Can be a little bit difficult to look back at previous rounds of a design competition as the competition progresses, i.e. when at Round 2 of the competition and you want to look back at how the entrants earlier work looked it takes some time to navigate and find what you want

Award Force has completely revolutionized the submission, review, and dissemination process for several of the programs administered through our office (Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Middle Tennessee State University). We are currently using it for student grant proposals submissions and abstract submissions for events such Scholars Week, Posters at the Capitol, and several conferences. It truly is a program manager's dream software.

The software is extremely well-designed. It is capable of handling multiple projects/programs at one time and it keeps all the information collected from applicants/entrants organized. The ability to export data to Excel is a great feature. The program is easy to use from all standpoints, including on the entrant side (usually students, in our case), judging side (usually faculty and administrators), and on the administrator side in setting up Award Force and manipulating it to suit our needs and events. Customer service is outstanding!! Seriously, top notch. The help videos are extremely useful, too.

Truthfully, I do not have any complaints. We have been very pleased with Award Force and I would strongly recommend it to anyone.

The customer service was wonderful, and it spoke to salesforce well overall, despite the hiccups we experienced collectively.

I like the fact that the layout of the content is organized and visually appealing. (concept tabs for example) Also, the dashboard, side panel with all the features, and checklists are helpful.

The foreign DOB text box is not conducive to many of the US teams we work with. Also, I wish the videos were more directly accessible and embedded within the software so I was more likely to use it instead of constantly asking the team for support.

Great. Very responsive customer care team. Solved challenges in a timely fashion.

The ability of tag and sort your applications as they progress through multiple rounds of evaluation. The ability to set up multiple rounds, give needs based access based on who in the team is playing what kind of role - just to read, or evaluate or scoring by a jury member. And how that even looked differently for each user. The option to customise how our information shows up and some basic branding was also good to have.

Tagging is one feature that could use more nuancing and we shared this with the Af team. A still more intutive interface would be good. Sometimes it takes a while to understand how to navigate what content blocks show up where etc. Front-end editing of this as much as possible would be great.

We previosuly used Openwater and fine Awardforce much easier to use and competitively priced.

Awardforce lets us run an internal program that lets all our offices globally submit work for judging. This happens every 2-3 months and we can then publish the work into galleries for all to see (separated into the top scorers and all other work). Being able to lock down registration to specific domains means that we can keep it strictly within our company, but allows us the versatility to add external people if and when necessary. The process is relatively simple (once you've gained an understanding of how the system works) and I have always found that help is readily available when needed, with the team being quick to respond, and offering solutions to any problems we encounter or requests that we have.

It isn't particularly intuitive, and if not used on a regular basis it can be easy to get a little lost when trying find specific functionality. That said, we do use the platform ina different way than most other companies so it is partly because of that.

Love Award Force! It's really improved our office efficiency. We used to have to manually collate all information from nominees (over 130 with this program) which was messy and left room for error. We also had to then save all nominations and upload forms and supporting documents to an online share portal for judges to review ( very very time consuming and also fraught with error!) Award Force has removed all of that :) The only thing I'd like to change is how you can communicate with people (nominees and judges) through the program. I don't want to send information to every nominee or judge, just a select few. We also have face-to-face meetings for our judges and we tried to use Award Force to re-score during these meetings, while it was possible it wasn't an ideal means of judging. It would be better if the manager could take over one main scoreboard and add judges scores on their behalf as they call them out (rather than each judge scoring each nomination again and again and waiting for the updated score).

It's reduced our manual data entry process and made it easier for judges to review from anywhere at any time.

Creating the tabs and each individual criteria field - for our particular awards program, this was very lengthy!!

Everyone i have worked with at Award Force has been a delight! We had been using the same system for a long time and made the much needed change to Award Force, we are going into year two with the platform because it was so great!

It works well and is visually appealing.

I wish there was a way to close a round for entries but have a secret way to allow ppl to still edit their entry.

AwardForce is an incredible platform that is relatively easy to use and can be extremely customizable once you get the hang of things. Where there is a learning curve, the incredible support team does not just solve the problem for you but teaches you along the way so that you can become independent and more confident with the platform. Some of the judges using this platform were C-Suite at fortune 500 companies and all commended us on the seamless process. We also worked with a lot of startups and emerging tech companies in the judging and applicant pool and they all had positive feedback about the UX and UI. No matter what size contest or applicant pool you are working with, AwardForce allows you to go above and beyond in terms of features and accommodation and communication with users. It gave our team confidence managing a process with high-level executive judges and users who are some of the biggest names in the tech industry.

- Customizability - UX/UI - Support Team - Managing Features

- If you want a highly, highly complex setup, it does get complicated. However, the support team has your back and allows you to learn as you go. Eventually, you feel like an expert.

AF helps us with the process of application and judging of 9 different awards (individual and big companies can apply). There is a lot of data to collect. Until now we did it all via e-mails. It was a big mess. Award Force put it all in one place so it gives us more time and less work to manage it.

I was a bit affraid before implementing this tool because we have many different awards, each of them with other criteria but from the beggining we had big support - with a lot of tutorials on the website and especially with the customer service. What I like most is the big range of possibilities and its versatility. However your award system is complicated, you will find a solution in implementing it in Award Force. I also like the main menu. It is very useful and easy to use.

What I don't like is the button "configuration mode ON/OFF". It should be on the botton of the page also not only on the top. It is the only thing that comes to my mind.