The Information Technology Certification Council (ITCC) is now accepting submissions for its ninth annual Innovation Award – an award recognizing leadership initiatives that have positively impacted the IT certification industry or your company.
We’d like to highlight some of the award’s past winners and share how the award changed things for their organization. In today’s blog, we’re catching up with 2021 Innovation Award winner Certiverse, who won for their innovative virtual platform that applies a unique combination of crowdsourcing, automation, and AI-assisted technology to enable more efficient and cost-effective test development.
Launched in 2020, the system was built from the ground up to revolutionize the exam industry by creating new tests faster, less expensively, and with more current content while still retaining rigorous psychometric standards. Because of the time and costs savings for test sponsors, Certiverse generates more competition and innovation, enabling greater access for test-takers entering or advancing their academic or professional lives.
Keep reading to hear from Andria Brown, Chief Marketing Officer at Certiverse.
How has winning the award helped you/your organization within ITCC or the industry? Has it opened any doors or created opportunities/connections?
When we won the ITCC Innovation Award, we hadn’t yet completed a full year of client work. Joining the company of the previous winners was a tremendous boost to our credibility as a startup and validated our vision to the wider marketplace. We definitely gained more attention and opportunities by having the ITCC’s recognition of our concept.
How has winning the award helped you/your team within your organization?
Although the Marketing team was certainly appreciated for compiling the winning application, the award was rightfully seen as an honor for every person within the company, all of whom had been diligently creating the product we nominated. In those early days, when we were still constantly explaining the need for our groundbreaking solution, it was a boost to know that IT and certification leaders saw and understood the relevance of our innovation.
What made you/your organization decide to apply for the Innovation Award? Did you know all along (as you were working on the project) that it would be a good fit for the award, or did the idea come to you later?
As a company designed to disrupt our industry, anything openly welcoming and recognizing innovation in certification caught our attention. We became aware of the Innovation Award while our platform was in development and immediately began working on our application. We only had results from one exam development project to share, but we felt they were compelling enough to prove the value of our solution.
What was the hardest part of the application process and how did you get through it?
In all honesty, it was not a challenging application process, because essentially everything we were asked to explain or demonstrate were the things we were already sharing with investors and prospective clients. Probably the hardest part was getting sign-off on the application just because everyone was too busy building the platform to review a document about why we were doing it.
What advice do you have for others who are considering submitting an application? Any tips or insights to share?
Our experience-based advice is not to be daunted by the size of the organizations that previously won the Innovation Award, because great ideas aren’t limited by number of employees or annual revenue. The ITCC clearly gave our application the same thoughtful consideration as any other company, and then recognized not only our innovative vision, but also the drive and diligence it would take to make it a reality. Demonstrating all those pieces was likely an important part of our application too.
Learn more about the ITCC 2023 Innovation Award
If you or your organization are interested in submitting an application for the 2023 Innovation Award, visit the 2023 Innovation Award page on the ITCC website for all the details. Submissions will be accepted through January 13, 2023.
