LAUNCHPAD6 TRANSFORMS THE ALABAMA REMODELING EXCELLENCE AWARDS
The Alabama Remodeling Excellence Awards (AREA) selected Launchpad6 for their annual remodeling awards event.
THE CHALLENGE
he Alabama Remodeling Excellence Awards (AREA) competition started with the Greater Birmingham Association of Home Builders Remodelers. They wanted to shine a spotlight on the amazing remodeling professionals in Alabama.
In 2008, they decided to make it a statewide celebration and handed the reins over to the team at the Home Builders Association of Alabama (HBAA). Back in 2008, entrants would submit 'before and after' photos with captions and descriptions. The entries (physical media) would be manually sorted into binders. Judges would meet physically and assess the (30 to 40) entries as a group.
By 2015, the number of entries had increased and the Awards moved to a digital submission system. Looking for a low cost solution, AREA implemented free solutions - such as Dropbox and email to provide a submission collection point.
This solution required human intervention for the management of category folders, collation of entries, manually sending entries to judges and collecting their scores. This proved time consuming and the cost for manual management became prohibitive.
HBAA BEGIN THEIR SEARCH FOR A PLATFORM
As the Awards headed into the 2020s, numerous platforms had been used to try and better manage the process however they were found lacking. Issues included:
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too hard for their users to work with
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didn't provide the ability to brand the website
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were too expensive
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provided questionable score results
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didn't provide appropriate support
The key solution requirements that HBAA were looking for included:
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Provide a structured workflow for key Award processes (Submission, Voting Gallery and Judging)
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Ease for individual team members to access the data they require
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An interface that is accessible to users with limited IT abilities
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A vendor with a responsive support team
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Ability to audit the data
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Easy for staff to configure but still provide the flexibility to customize the submission form, gallery, etc.
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Allow the public to vote for their favorite entries
Challenge
Provide a delightful experience for nominees, judges and voters
Needed to scale the solution within an affordable budget
Wanted to ensure that all team members manage the solution without IT support.
Solution
Provided a polished and easy to use awards website
Provided secure nomination, public voting and judging scoring.
Provide exceptional support
Services Offered
ContestPad Premium Package
White labelled website
Results
Whole team now empowered without need for IT skills
Sped up the entire judging process
Provided a central location for all the information they needed that HBAA could trust
LAUNCHPAD6 DELIVERS
The hunt for a new solution ended the day HBAA found a site using Launchpad6's ContestPad. Candi Stroh, HBAA Web Specialist, noted the ease of use and appearance of the contest site and after discovering the solution was provided by Launchpad6, Candi immediately set up a call.
The Launchpad6 aligned to exactly what HBAA were looking for. PLATFORM CAPABILITIES MATCH REQUIREMENTS
✓ Launchpad6 natively supported a nominee gallery for people’s choice voting,
✓ Launchpad6 provided a great polished experience for nominees,
✓ Launchpad6 made it easy for nominees to promote their submission,
✓ The platform supported the complete process, from nomination, voting and judging panel scoring,
✓ The platform was fully supported to allow the event to scale without any technical knowledge from the HBAA team,
✓ The solution was extremely cost effective.
AN ONLINE AWARDS SUCCESS!
The structured workflow provided by the ContestPad platform means HBAA no longer relies on one person to coordinate contest actions and supply data to other team members. All team members can access the data to check the state of entries, voting or the judging processes within a few clicks.
The platform is trusted by the HBAA and AREA team, with the feeling of 'Set and Forget', acknowledging the system will collect the entries and alert admins if there are any issues.
An unexpected bonus to the team was Launchpad6 constantly releasing new features, as customers loved the 'Saved as Draft' feature and team appreciated the new Website Builder. Adding to this was the excellent customer support.
”The customer support provided by Launchpad6 was like night and day compared to the competitors” says Candi.
The Launchpad6 solution was able to scale the AREA to another level and the team are looking forward to even greater results for the future awards leveraging and partnering with Launchpad6.
“The customer support provided by Launchpad6 was like night and day compared to the competitors”
CANDI STROH
Web Specialist, Home Builders Association of Alabama.