The Verse - Volume 23
return

Success Story – Kansas City Corporate Challenge

Challenge Manager (www.challengemanager.com) is a web-based software application that “manages” the Kansas City Corporate Challenge (www.kccorporatechallenge.com) events.  Before Challenge Manager came along, paper, pen, Excel spreadsheets and the occasional home-grown tracking system were the ways KCCC and the participating companies tried to keep track of dozens of events and thousands of participants.   Among other functions, Challenge Manager serves as an online participant sign up and tracking system.  KCCC first used Challenge Manager for the 2004 games and now other Corporate Challenge groups from around the country are considering adopting the program. 

Jason Terry, Versent’s Director of Technology Services, realized a long time dream when he created Challenge Manager.  "I have a personal history with Kansas City Corporate Challenge,” says Jason.  “I've been a participant and a company coordinator and I've even helped with other companies' cobbled together in-house systems that were used in the days before Challenge Manager.  Since I understood the challenges KCCC, the company coordinators and all of the participants faced, I felt I had to create this system to make being a part of Corporate Challenge a lot less work and a lot more fun."

According to KCCC’s stats, over 20,000 people have used the system so far in 2006!  You’ve got to love emails from clients with the subject line “so happy!”  Way to go Jason for making your vision come true with Challenge Manager and way to go Josh for taking the hand off from Jason and running with it this year! 

From: Katie R @ KCCC

Sent: Sat 4/29/2006 2:38 PM
To: Josh Bourdon; Jason Terry
Subject: so happy

Josh and Jason,

I wanted to again convey how AWESOME Challenge Manager is. We had our 2nd roster, and participation list deadline yesterday. I am in awe at how quickly that system does those reports. In a matter of a few minutes I had a report with 20,157 names of participants for the 2006 KCCC!! That used to take us soooo much time. And speaking of time, the roster saves us countless hours of time copying and pasting each of those into one document. In a matter of a few minutes, I had an excel spreadsheet with over 55,000 lines of info. Incredible!! We thank you for all you two do and have done for us-

Katie R.