The Situation

New York Business Plan Competition (NYBPC) is a statewide, intercollegiate entrepreneurship competition showcasing the most innovative student-led start-ups in New York. The NYBPC starts with 10 regional competitions where the top teams advance to the state-level competition.

The Challenge

Managing the hundreds of applications and associated presentations and materials from across the state was an organizational feat of strength. The NYBPC organizers managed the materials across multiple Google forms and folders. Multiple copies of applications, presentations and materials were a headache to keep track of and the hand-off of regional winner information to state organizers was in various emails and spreadsheets. All emails to teams confirming their acceptance into the competition and requesting materials was done manually.

The Solution

NYBPC engaged Burke Consulting to design, build and train their team on a custom system that enables all applications to be organized in one central database with region-specific interfaces. The system enables student applicants to upload their own materials and have them be immediately accessible to the appropriate regional organizers and judges. This solution leverages the deep integration between Airtable and Fillout Forms for collecting both student and judge applications. Once regional winners have been selected, it’s a simple push of a button for the regional organizers to identify the winners and have those businesses appear in the State-level competition interface. Email communication to student teams that shares their acceptance, requests materials, shares judge feedback and competition wrap-up is now fully automated.

The Result

The NYBPC director and team of organizers have a single system that allows them real-time access to business applications with all of the materials submitted. No longer do they have to wonder if the version they have is the most recent or click into several google folders to find what they’re looking for. Each region has real-time dashboards that provide insight into the distribution of teams across their region by university and demographic. The NYBPC State-level director has visibility into each region as well as administrative control and over the competition planning as a whole. Now that’s a winning idea!