A platform to create, judge and manage an awards program

This platform powers SPASA’s annual awards program – from entry collection and multi-stage judging to regional management and comprehensive reporting.

We approached the build with three core aims – to create a flexible, future-proof platform that’s intuitive for all users, including administrators, entrants, judges, and regional managers.

The platform includes a full suite of features designed for scalability and ease of use:

• User registration and profile management with enforced two-factor authentication based on user roles

• A mobile-friendly entry process with support for uploads directly from mobile devices

• Secure online payments via Stripe

• Granular yet easy-to-manage season setup – including entry fields, award types, and judging criteria

• Online judging with weighted scoring and semi-automated award assignment

• Seamless setup for future award seasons

• Detailed reports and data exports in real time

Each awards season is built on a central store of award categories – enabling the reuse and customisation of configurations year after year. Entry fields, pricing, judging structures, and regional eligibility can all be tailored to suit the evolving needs of the business. This data-driven flexibility ensures the SPASA team can scale and adapt each year’s program without needing to rebuild from scratch.

The platform enables the admin team to delegate access to their regional managers to help oversee their specific entries, with strict access controls in place to ensure security and accountability. Managers are able to help users with their entry details, review submissions, and provide technical support to their direct customers.

For judging, each award category can be assigned a group of judges, allowing multiple reviewers to evaluate submissions against weighted criteria. This results in a calculated total score that determines the category winner. The platform also supports Major Awards – which can be configured to automatically include winners from selected categories, upgrading these winners to Major Award Finalists - and for one lucky entrant, Major Award Winner. This is reusing and sharing the existing entry data, and effortlessly managed by the admin team.

When judging is complete, all of the judges’ scores are combined to help the admin team allocate the winner and finalist awards for each category with a single click. After winners are announced, entrants are able to log in to their account see their awards - including past years - and download certificates and dynamically generate badge and social media artwork following the platform (and season’s) branding.

Throughout the whole process, we’ve including validation against each entry field to ensure required information is provided, including high quality images and content. To keep data accurate and entry submission simple, we’ve integrated a leading address lookup service – ensuring clean, structured location data, and use Stripe for securely handling all payments - including full coupon support.

We chose Laravel and Inertia.js to power the platform – giving users a modern, responsive interface, and allowing us to build on Laravel’s best-practice foundations. This includes robust authentication, clean data modelling, and a thoroughly tested codebase.

We’re passionate about building web applications that support real business processes – and deliver intuitive, rewarding experiences for all users. Our team takes pride in long-term partnerships, ongoing support, and development that grows alongside your business.

To learn more about the SPASA platform or our Laravel web development capabilities, give us a call – we’d love to chat.