Problem
Ibility is a technology and business innovation company that helps organizations, especially government agencies, solve complex problems by crowdsourcing ideas and running challenge competitions it calls “throwdowns.” Its goal is to turn ideas into proven products faster by letting multiple teams pursue solutions at once.
To do that at scale, Ibility needed one platform to run its campaigns end to end: publishing challenges, collecting ideas from the public, forming teams, judging and scoring entries, and tracking participants. It also needed a way to manage its own sales pipeline.
What We Did
Vectr Solutions built Ibility’s challenge management platform on Salesforce from the ground up, going from kickoff to go-live in about 14 weeks in 2021. We used standard Salesforce functionality first and added custom code only where needed, giving Ibility maximum flexibility to grow. Later, we ran user experience workshops and delivered wireframes for a redesigned, branded version of the public competition portal.
Key capabilities included:
- Campaign and challenge management: organizers create campaigns for each client, each with multiple throwdowns that are approved before they go public
- Open idea submission: anyone can submit ideas, comment, and vote on a public Experience Cloud site without creating an account
- A participant community: registered participants log in to join teams, collaborate, and submit expense reports
- Judging and scoring: judges, judging criteria, and team scores managed in one place
- Sales Cloud for Ibility’s own growth: lead and opportunity management for its business development team
- UX/UI wireframes for a branded portal redesign that matches the Ibility look and feel
Outcomes
- One platform runs challenge competitions end to end, from launch through idea submission, judging, and results
- A lower barrier to participation, since the public can contribute ideas without signing up
- A faster path from idea to proof of concept, with multiple teams able to pursue solutions in parallel
- Organizers manage many clients and campaigns from one place instead of running each competition separately
- A design blueprint for the next generation of the public portal, built from user experience workshops
