Award Force Reviews

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.

Thank you for your wonderful words, Matt! Specially appreciate the shout out to Rachel! Thank you also for the feedback about the support received from other members; we are a global team available 24x5 and feedback like this is valuable for us to be able to give more personalised service.

1. Ease to implement and manage for administrators. 2. Ease of use for end users (contest entrants). 3. Great set of tools to set up and use the contest judging component.

Just one thing. Wish the company could allow us to use our primary online payment vendor. We have an existing account for one that does work, but it'd be nice to consolidate and have just one product to deal with in terms of online payment. That said, Award Force has already listened to our concern and our request was forwarded on.

We use it to allow design students to upload their work at the end of the year. Setting the system up to meet our requirements was challenging because there are so many options, but once it was configured the students found it very easy to upload their work, and even sent some fan mail. They could revise their entries up to the deadline, we could specify the acceptable file types and everything worked smoothly. We also invited reviewers to comment on the work , that too was very easy on the user end.

There are a few odd things here: it is , for instance, not possible to sort all entrants by their last name, only by their first. If a judge is already in the AF system they have to use their previous password to log in which can cause confusion. With the help of AF we set up an algorithm that randomly assigned student work to reviewers and you would think that it would be easy for the computer to...

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Thank you for your honest review, Ingrid! As much as we love fan mail, we also like to hear about the pain points of our clients. Bulk downloading is a slow process for sure and we have some ideas to optimise and improve it in the future. Some other interesting insights too which have been passed on to the Product team.

The structure, the analysis report, export the data I received. allow the attachment for people submission

there are some bugs happened in last couple of days when I open my nomination process to large audience.

Hi Betty, sorry for your troubles. From the support email we last exchanged, it seems the problem happened because of a setting issue. Your colleague Carl later switched it on and everything worked as expected. If there's anything else you would like to report, please let us know asap!

Une plateforme bien conçue et simple d'utilisation. Un service support très réactif, patient et à l'écoute. Les utilisateurs (jurys et candidats) n'ont pas manqué de nous exprimer leur satisfaction (parcours de candidature intuitif, intérêt pour les jurys de noter des candidatures avec des fiches normalisées, de pouvoir consulter l'avis des autres jurys...) Nous n’avons probablement pas exploité l’outil au maximum de ses capacités, mais nous nous améliorerons la prochaine fois!

Difficulté pour envoyer des mails à seulement certaines personnes d'une catégorie (sans les faire un par un) Lors des création des membres du jurys, nous leur avons envoyé un mail avec un lien pour réinitialiser leur mot de passe et accéder à leurs candidatures à noter : beaucoup revenaient vers nous pour nous dire qu'ils ne connaissaient pas leur mot de passe et ne comprenaient pas pourquoi ils devaient le réinitialiser alors qu'ils n'avaient rien créé. Plusieurs aussi s'étaient déjà créé un compte candidat avant de recevoir l'invitation, donc ne retrouvaient pas les candidatures qu'ils devaient noter.

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).

The software saves us time and energy by storing the material, categorising it, and allowing entrants to manage the submission themselves until close of entries. Even then, entrants are permitted to resubmit incomplete content if necessary, which saves us a lot of filing. Centralised storage that is backed up and accessible to anyone (with permissions) is a relief. We're pleased when entrants give us feedback that they find the process simple & intuitive. It's very convenient for the administrators to be able to export customisable reports. I could go on and on...

We haven't got around to asking the helpdesk about this feature yet (perhaps it already exists), but we can see some benefit in providing the capacity for an entry to be able to be a "linked copy" of the primary entry. Rather than making a full duplicate of an entry simply to enter into a different category. It would be useful if all the common content was linked between each instance, and there was the capacity to provide additional content specific to the linked category(s) if required. I don't think this functionality exists currently, but if it doesn't I wouldn't be surprised if they are working on it already.

Very easy to set up and use! I am extremely pleased with Award Force on so many levels. As an awards administrator, it offers everything I need and more. Our users, both entrants and judges, have no complaints and are pleased with the platform.

I really haven't had any bad experiences. I do wish I could mirror a users account to see exactly what they are seeing and currently that is not possible as far as I know. As an admin, when a user is having an issue or question, it would be nice to see exactly what they are seeing so I can problem solve. Award Force takes privacy and security of the users seriously, so I am thinking this is the reason why I cannot mirror a user.

Thanks for your kind words, Blake. We are over the moon! Interesting you ask about mirroring a user - we have been discussing this very point internally and it is very much on our radar. As you pointed out, security and privacy is paramount so the solution will need to be properly thought out. Thanks again for your continued business, we appreciate it :)

When you select the help menu, it suggests customized topics depending on what screen you're on Ability to customize most fields Merge multiple submissions

A little hard to navigate at first Some things are not customizable

We were manually collecting/managing awards before award force - so award force was incredibly welcomed. The product is perfect for what we need it for, its simple to use for us who are managing it, the users using it and also for the judges. I would highly recommend this product especially as the customer service is better than anything I have ever experienced.

Would be good to have a user view in the back end when you sign in - just so you can keep track on what the users are seeing along with managing the back end of everything

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...

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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.

Thank you ever so much for your raving review, Gillette! We can't stop the high fives :D We will continue to improve and add time saving features so you can continue managing and growing your program year on year!

The Award Force management and support teams were incredibly helpful during our entire selection process, set up phase and implementation. There was always someone available for answers, no matter that we are located in the US and their main office is in Australia. From our initial conversations as far as what was on our "must have" list and our "nice to have" list of features, AF was able to make...

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There is very little that I don't like about Award Force. But if I had to pick one: since the system is used by multiple award program clients around the world there are a few small areas that don't quite give us exactly what we need and that weren't able to be changed for us. However, these are just a few small items and through conversations with our AF implementation manager we devised ways to get...

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Award Force is so easy to use, yet delivers a thoroughly comprehensive solution. The system is so clear, intuitive and logical it's an absolute pleasure to use. You can navigate your way around without ever getting lost or confused, everything is exactly where you'd expect to find it and you always feel completely in control. From the clean and clear layout you may initially be fooled into thinking...

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I have to confess that I have struggled with this question, but the ability to sort by all of the fields within a view would be helpful. It would also be helpful to be able to configure bespoke reports for export, but it's not exactly a chore to have everything exported and then just choose to keep the ones you want. The things I've mentioned above may well be possible, I'm by no means an expert on every aspect of the system and I find new features and options every week!

Wow, thank you for such wonderful feedback, Ped. We'll do our best to keep helping and to keep innovating!

The ease of use on the user and the administrator ends was great. The administration learning process was not complex and Award Force staff took the time to train us. The entry process for the users worked so well. It was simple! The part that sold our organization was the wrap-up portion. We didn't have to do much of anything and the program did it for us. Our members could login and see the winners' entries. This saved our admins a ton of time compiling award winners and sending them out to everyone. That was an amazing process! I would definitely recommend this, and have, to other organizations if they want to go all digital and have a simple back-end process to administer, and help the users get their information entered and then received quickly.

Like any software, you have to learn it. It takes a little time at first to learn, but once you do, it is not hard to utilize. The Award Force team was very helpful through that process, though. There are some unique ways to find information within the software, so it just takes working with it to gain an understanding. The payment system was something that we had to inform our membership of, since this software is based in Australia, when using an United States credit card, it is best to charge all entries at one time and not individually, as they card will question foreign purchases and possibly shut the card off temporarily. This happened to us, but once we realized why, we explained it to the membership and then it worked fine.

Everything. Award Force is by far the best awards and judging platform I have used. Once you understand it and how the modules integrate with each other, it is ridiculously smooth and easy to use. Only the other day, I set up my next season. The longest part was inputting the name. Adding entries is quick and smooth. Modifying or cloning takes seconds. The judging platform is very comprehensive...

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Can't think of anything....the only two tiny little things: 1. The PDF headers can be a bit overwhelming (it would be nice if we could resize them) 2. Could do with extending the broadcast facility a bit so that you can filter who you send messages to more But I stress these are tiny little issues that do not actually affect my work

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.

Wow, thanks Chris! The team really appreciated your positive words. We promise to continue to deliver on the value and support you've come to expect from Award Force.

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....

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

Award Force easily has the best customer support I have experienced with a product. They were timely in returning my calls and emails, and were extremely helpful in helping me customise the product for my organisational needs. Having been new to the software this year, I was able to be quickly become confident in my use of the product. The platform had zero technical issues even upon launch. I had no reports of any difficulties of users logging on or submitting entries. The reports generated from the entries were very fast and provided a high level of detail which I was able to analyse for my organisational requirements.

At times it was a bit difficult to locate the appropriate field when trying to make a change/text edit to the platform. This is when I would contact support and they were able to identify where I could make the change. Other than that, the other improvements identified were less about the system itself and more about how we could customise it next year to better suit our organisational needs - e.g. extra fields.

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...

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No cons were added to this review

My team used Award Force for an awards program, and it was great. I found the Award Force site easy to operate once you are guided how and the support partners set up time for as many orientation sessions as I required and were timely in replying to any issues. Ease of use The ability to personalize site with our branding Prompt and professional support

I do find it frustrating that specific features are not present in the software. Like not having a report of notifications, being able to copy anyone into notifications, to contact collaborators in an application, not being able to use the fields in all areas of the application. The review flow is quite challenging to set up and impossible to visualize quickly, it would be nice to have a way of merely imagining which applications are where Also setting up judging is a bit tricky too, and it is hard to see if it has been set up accurately. I would also like to get a general update on what you have designed regarding feature updates. I have also previously sent some feature ideas to the support team. It would be nice to see some of these administered.

Thanks so much for the feedback Charles. Rest assured that we keep track of all feature requests and feedback and incorporate that into our plans. For interest, we do 5-10 deployments per week with improvements and new features - there's always lots coming through and we're about to start a regular news feed on those - coming your way soon! Please always feel free to speak with our team about any uncertainties or needs - they'll be only too happy to help.

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! :)

Thanks for the great review, Rosie! We do have the ability to customise every view to see more on the same list view. We'll be in touch in the next 10 minutes to show you how :)

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!

We're so glad we can support the complexity of your needs right out of the box Caitlin. Thanks for the wonderful review :D We do of course have a solution for running multiple separate prize programs, it involves multi-account subscription fees is all - but has some very handy multi-account functionality!

Everything

There are no cons. I like everything. Nothing to complain about whatsoever.

Wowza! We're blown-away by your words Robert. Thank you. We'll be sure to keep it up :)

The Award Force team provides basic training and awesome support that enables anyone to configure their product. The product is very flexible. We are able to create and manage application forms and judging for four separate grant funding streams, with different deadlines. It's accessible to applicants and judges anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Our organization must comply with privacy laws for the protection of personal information. The storage of data on servers outside the country could be an issue.

Thanks for your lovely review Elizabeth. For information... Data protection has always been a major focus for us¿ we are currently finalising compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the most stringent requirements globally for data protection. Our practices mean you are already in very good stead in Canada¿ the work we are currently doing will put you in an even better place! Details will be sent to all clients in the near future.