Sky Ignite: A bespoke recognition platform for 12,000+ global employees

Most internal tools feel like they were built for the business, not the people using them. Sky wanted something different.

When Sky's Customer Service Group, a global team of over 12,000 people across the UK, India, Bulgaria, and South Africa, needed a better way to recognise great work, they didn't reach for an off-the-shelf solution. They partnered with MakeBuild to build one from scratch. 

Together, we created something that made appreciation visible and consistent, while making a platform meant for a global team feel personal. 

The result is Ignite: a custom employee recognition platform that exceeded every expectation, had tangible business impact, and proved what's possible when internal tools are treated with the same care as the best consumer products.

Key highlights

• Custom recognition platform built for 12,000+ global employees
• 2,000+ nominations submitted within the first day of launch, more than 2x predicted engagement 
• Multiple user roles with distinct permissions and workflows to accommodate staff hierarchy
• Built in Webflow and Webflow Cloud, extending its capability beyond marketing sites

The goal

Sky wanted to create a brand new recognition experience for their people, building on the foundations of their CSG Home intranet, which had recently launched on Webflow.

Rather than procuring an off-the-shelf platform, Sky wanted to partner with us to design, build, and launch a bespoke product together.

We worked towards three key objectives:

1. Drive culture change: encourage increased engagement with monthly recognition cycles to improve staff satisfaction
2. Experimentation: try out a tiered recognition model to reward different levels of contribution, and completely avoid email notifications
3. Learn: see what worked and what didn’t, helping to inform the selection of a recognition platform across the wider Sky Group the following year

In practice, that meant creating something that could work across a large, complex organisation while feeling personal to each team member.

Sky wanted peer-to-peer recognition to be easy and visible. They wanted nominations tied to company values, and managers to have clear workflows for reviewing nominations and assigning rewards. The project had to be delivered on a tight deadline, without the compromises that come with adapting someone else's platform.

At the heart of it was a simple idea, one that shaped every product decision along the way.

<quote>"Ignite is about the individual."

- James Battye, Developer, MakeBuild</quote>

The challenge

Sky already had a recognition platform but it wasn’t designed for engagement. While their existing tool handled the admin of recognition, it felt too transactional and corporate, and it wasn’t user-friendly.

The tension at the heart of Ignite was one we see a lot when designing complex internal products: how do you create enough structure to make a complex system work correctly at scale, without making it feel like a bureaucratic form-filling exercise?

The technical challenges were equally real. User data had to be synced with Sky's internal systems, mapped to the right roles and permissions, and kept accurate and up to date.

Through our discovery process, we uncovered multiple roles including colleagues, award managers, directors, and finance admins, each needing a different experience. Off the shelf wasn’t going to cut it.

<quote>"Data was the biggest challenge. Getting the right information to the right people, reliably, across an organisation this size — that was the thing we had to get right."

- James Battye, Developer, MakeBuild</quote>

And none of it could slip. The final challenge was the timeline: the platform had to launch by the end of Q1.

<quote>"We launched bang on time, which in itself is a huge achievement because this project was super complex and the scale is massive!"

- Dan Foster, Technical Director, MakeBuild</quote>

The approach

We built a lean, purpose-built system from scratch, designed specifically around how Sky's teams actually work. 

That meant handling real complexity such as offshore and onshore teams, in-house and partner staff, regional differences and reporting requirements, while keeping the experience genuinely enjoyable for the people using it day to day. 

And crucially, it would integrate seamlessly into the CSG Home intranet, already running on Webflow and already well received across the organisation.

MakeBuild handled the full project: from discovery and creative direction through to back-end development in Webflow Cloud and front-end build in Webflow.

The platform was built around a clear hierarchy of user roles, translating Sky's complex internal structure into something the product could manage without losing the human feel that made the whole thing worth building. 

Colleagues could post recognitions publicly to a visible wall with every nomination tied to Sky's company values. At the end of each month, managers could review nominations and assign one of three award tiers: Sparkle, Blaze, or Supernova.

The platform's visual identity leaned into a space theme and we brought the Sparkle, Blaze and Supernova award tiers to life with custom 3D and WebGL elements. It gave the product personality and energy that most internal tools simply don't have.

<quote>"It was a nice mix — front-end, graphics, interaction design, as well as back-end database and full-stack work. The kind of project you don't get that often."

- James Battye, Developer, MakeBuild</quote>

<quote>"This was a great project — a real mixture of creative visual work, interaction design, and complex UX challenges. It was very collaborative, and the Sky team were brilliant to work with. The product had a meaningful business impact, so it was genuinely rewarding to be part of."

- Nicola Hankins, Designer, MakeBuild</quote>

The build also pushed into genuinely new territory as one of the biggest Webflow Cloud implementations to date, with a completely unique use case. The team wasn't just delivering a product, they were defining how to do it.

MakeBuild worked closely with the Webflow team throughout to shape development workflows and solve implementation challenges in real time, as much a research and development project as a product build.

<quote>“Ignite is a great example of how you can build a full-stack, authenticated application for a household-name enterprise on Webflow and have it perform at production scale. MakeBuild used the best of both worlds: Webflow's visual building capabilities for the front-end with code components for a richer developer experience, and Webflow Cloud for all of their API endpoints. Historically that would have meant pulling in external infrastructure and maintaining a custom reverse proxy in front of it to power both sides of this kind of application. This project eliminated all of that and showed what Webflow and Webflow Cloud can do as a complete platform at enterprise scale.”

- Jordan Maslyn, Lead Solutions Architect, Webflow</quote>

<quote>"There were a lot of things we were doing that Webflow said they simply haven’t seen yet at this scale. We're building rich, interactive web apps in the browser with Webflow, and this project pushed that further than anything we'd done previously."

- Dan Foster, Technical Director, MakeBuild</quote>

Throughout, Sky's team was closely involved. Regular workshops and working sessions shaped product decisions together, particularly around user roles, permissions, and the experience for different parts of the organisation. 

Kicking off the project in December with an in-person workshop was a brilliant start to the project; we subsequently held an interim session before coming on-site for a launch day "war room" at Sky HQ, just in case there were any issues. 

This collaborative spirit showed up in the outcome too. Despite the complexity and the number of moving parts, the architecture that was designed at the start largely held all the way through.

<quote>"One of the things we were particularly happy with was how little changed. The early thinking was solid, and the product we shipped was really close to what we planned."

- James Battye, Developer, MakeBuild</quote>

<quote>“The MakeBuild team was a pleasure to work with. They came in with a clear architectural vision and looked to leverage the entirety of the Webflow platform to make the project a success. It is such a delight to partner with a team that is so equally excellent in their technical sophistication as well as in being great humans.”

- Jordan Maslyn, Solutions Architect, MakeBuild</quote>

The impact

Since launching Ignite, the response has been incredible.

More than 2,000 nominations were submitted on the first day alone, more than double the predicted level of engagement! Within the early launch period, 3,450 nominations had already been shared on the recognition wall.

The people inside Sky said it best:

<quote>"In my 10 years at Sky, it’s the best launch of anything I’ve ever seen.”</quote>

<quote>“The enthusiasm of how people have gotten behind this has been exceptional, and so much of that goes down to how it’s been planned and delivered - well done team.”</quote>

<quote>“Love the new platform. Really easy to use and love the wall of fame.”</quote>

The effect on teams went beyond the numbers.

<quote>"For our retail teams, not only did it ignite the staff around recognition, but it also ignited performance! Sales on the Ignite launch day shot up massively."

- Mark Walker, Change and Projects Lead, Sky</quote>

Sky backed the launch with on-site activations across call centres: balloons, cakes, t-shirts. It felt less like a product release and more like an event, which is exactly the point.

<quote>"What we created is a movement — trying to spark more recognition, more reward, more excitement across Sky."

- Dan Foster, Technical Director, MakeBuild</quote>

The outcome

Ignite is now a live, growing platform with over thousands of users and more than 9,500 nominations submitted per month. A second phase is already in progress, adding features to drive even greater engagement with the platform.

<quote>"We're still working on it, still improving it. The platform keeps evolving."

- James Battye, Developer, MakeBuild</quote>

For Sky, it means recognition that's visible, consistent, and tied to the values that matter. For their people, it means feeling seen. And their team is over the moon with the results.

<quote>“Ignite is already landing really well, and that’s down in no small part to the care, craft and problem‑solving [the team] brought throughout. We’re genuinely proud of what we’ve built together, and it felt right to properly recognise the impact your whole team has had on this. Just as importantly, it’s been a real pleasure working with [the MakeBuild team] – genuinely refreshing. The relationship, trust and momentum we’ve built makes us excited about future briefs and continuing to work together as Ignite and CSG Home evolve. This definitely feels like the start of more good things.”

- Ali Savage, Head of Creative Studio, Sky</quote>

Conclusion

Ignite is what happens when an internal tool is taken seriously.

MakeBuild brought the same creative craft and technical rigour to this project as any customer-facing build, and the results speak for themselves. A platform that launched on time, exceeded engagement targets by 2x, and is already evolving into something bigger.

It also points to something broader.

<quote>"This is absolutely our biggest Webflow Cloud build and I think it's probably one of our most impactful Webflow projects globally right now."

- Dan Foster, Technical Director, MakeBuild</quote>

Large organisations have complex internal teams, real challenges, and a genuine need for digital experiences that most enterprise software simply doesn't deliver. Ignite is proof that it can be done and that when it is, people notice.