OpenWater

OpenWater has no competition

Commenti: Pain-free. They are highly responsive to questions and suggestions. Contest management is an added part of my workload. OpenWater's system keeps it from getting too out of hand. My supervisor deals with the financial aspects. I don't know the details, but she has been able to secure multi-year discounts.

Aspetti positivi:

OpenWater's system is powerful and elegant. I'm only a daily user fwhen our contest is live, approximately half the year. I'm always pleasantly surprised by the improvements they've made when I open the next year's contest. I suspect that we are not using OpenWater's system to its full potential, but what we do utilize more than works for us. Their self-help guides are useful and when they're not, customer service is available (see caveat below). I have had several different dedicated service advisors; all have been uniformly excellent. Our entrants and judges find the system easy to use.

Aspetti negativi:

Communication is mostly by email. If you want a phone call, you need to make an appointment. That said, they are highly responsive when rare problems arise.

How Open Water Saved the SME Awards and Scholarship Programs!

Commenti: It has been a wonderful relationship working with the Open Water Customer Service and OW IT department.

Aspetti positivi:

Top Notch Customer Service Representatives. I never had to wait for someone to help when I needed it. Ease of implementation. User satisfaction. Virtually effortless to maintain and copy to the next year award cycle.

Aspetti negativi:

I have not found anything to complain about or wish I could have. Our last awards and scholarship was such a horrible software--Open Water has been a dream come true. The obstacle we have had the most problem with is our emails from the Open Water system getting through to our customers/users and not going to their spam accounts.

Needs to be User Friendly

Aspetti positivi:

Customer support was responsive when we had any issues

Aspetti negativi:

I did not like the way it is designed, it is not easy to navigate.

Data Management

Commenti: Overall I have been satisfied with the excellent technical support I received during the height of my event planning and management. I really appreciate having one dedicated support person[sensitive content hidden]). She's great!! The platform does a great job of being my central hub for collecting submissions.

Aspetti positivi:

I like having all my symposium submission data in one place and the ability to run reports.

Aspetti negativi:

There is a steep learning curve if you are brining new team members on to manage the platform. It is not an intuitive platform. I don't like the website platform. It lacks the ability to have more customizable features. I end up not using the website for my event because aesthetically it is not appealing. I wish the virtual display of submissions. Public view was better. It looks outdated.

A very adaptable solution.

Aspetti positivi:

We weren't actively looking for a contest management solution but a Sales representative reached out to gauge our interest in OpenWater, after hearing about our Construction Intern Awards scholarship program. Up until that point we had been using Wordpress to manage this competition, which included a lot of manual maintenance, popular voting plugins, a bulky media gathering process, entry content display delays, and several other headaches. On top of that, we had to use other solutions to manage the judging portion of the contest, which involved either rigging survey products or creating a mess of spreadsheets but both caused confusion for the judges. What we liked most about OpenWater is that it addressed all of the above problems we were facing and allowed us the freedom to customize almost everything. Every other contest management software that we looked at wouldn't let us use our own CSS/HTML to style the site, relying on some sort of WYSIWIG instead. After the initial setup, OpenWater was a huge timesaver. We have also had outstanding support reps since the beginning of implementation. We've asked for a lot during our time using OpenWater and they definitely come through for us.

Aspetti negativi:

Our contest is set up in a pretty unconventional way (weekly popular vote-based contests combined with a separate traditional scholarship application), and OpenWater has done a good job of keeping up with our requests. There are several smaller, nit-picky things about the popular vote functionality that could be improved but it's still better than what we were doing before. Another factor that we've had to work around is the fact that the contest dashboard looks the same for everyone who visits the dashboard, regardless of user type (applicant/judge/voter), which can be confusing for some users.

Good Platform for Capturing Information from Applicants

Commenti: Overall I have had a good experience with OpenWater. We've always found their staff to be helpful and polite, and generally it's a good system and accomplishes what we need.

Aspetti positivi:

We like OpenWater because it is a good platform for capturing information from our applicants. Customizable forms allow us to streamline operations and reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks... items like acceptance forms, photos, bios, and the like can all be collected in a passive way that makes it easy to collect and store in one place and now I don't have to worry about losing this in my inbox.

Aspetti negativi:

Some items can be a bit difficult to set up. The e-mail system is a particular issue - other submission systems and CRMs have one central email module where emails are generated using substitution variables, and are able to be created from a template. OpenWater's system is program-dependent (as opposed to being uniform system-wide). Wish this would get fixed.

Super Functional

Commenti: I have been using open water for the past 4 years and it has been great! We have a number of programs in Open Water.

Aspetti positivi:

The options and customization for each program. The support team is also great.

Aspetti negativi:

Finding where to update items. When you copy a program it can be difficult to find where to update items. For example, when changes need to be made in public settings.

OpenWater review

Aspetti positivi:

I like the ability to edit the submission page and customize it to each of our meetings - we do two per year with the abstract submissions. I like the ease of the review process as well.

Aspetti negativi:

Sometimes our members have problems logging into OpenWater, even though we use a single sign on that should be tied to our membership database.

Grant and Scholarship Management

Aspetti positivi:

I like the customization, quality of support via Open Water support specialist, ease of use, and ability to pull data

Aspetti negativi:

More training sessions offered, more information on grant tracking, integrations with salesforce and MailChimp. Email Wizard can be tricky.

Contest Management for Journalism Organizations

Commenti: Someone asked me about Open Water because they were looking for a new awards management program and I gave it a major thumbs-up because the experience overall was great.

Aspetti positivi:

It's very easy to use and works intuitively in a lot of ways. When I took over administering the contest, I had to learn how to manage it on my own and it didn't take a lot of work to do that. The customer service overall has been excellent.

Aspetti negativi:

I'd like more options for customizing reports. For instance, entries are often submitted by contest coordinators who don't need to be part of the reports. We'd like to focus on the entrants themselves but the report configurations won't allow that.

Ease of use

Commenti: It's wonderful! I have no complaints. Anytime I run into a question I cannot answer or something I can't figure out via the very informative website, our customer service agent, Genevieve, is OUTSTANDING!

Aspetti positivi:

OpenWater is so easy to set up specifically for our awards program. Then it is easy for the entrants to navigate as they enter our program and the judges to use as they remotely judge our entries. Finally, the winners' entry materials are used to create feature stories in our magazine, so we have everything we need for our stories, including high-res photos, at our fingertips thanks to OpenWater.

Aspetti negativi:

It's pricey but you get what you pay for.

American Advertising Awards Competition

Commenti: Overall, it is a user-friendly platform. There could be changes to uncomplicate the process, but I honestly don't know how to do it.

Aspetti positivi:

The ability to access previous forms, categories, etc.

Aspetti negativi:

It can be a little clunky to navigate. It takes a while to figure out the system. I have been managing our competition for the past six or more years. Each year, it takes a bit to remember how to set up the competition.

Review of OW

Commenti: Not my favorite program to work in, but it does a good job of managing what it is supposed to do.

Aspetti positivi:

Once you have it set up you can clone forms, automated emails, etc.

Aspetti negativi:

Not intuitive, the learning curve is steep.

Used Openwater to administer an awards program

Aspetti positivi:

Flexible tool to support award nominations and objectively evaluate nominations

Aspetti negativi:

For new users there is a bit of a learning curve to learn to use OpenWater

Gets the job done

Aspetti positivi:

judgment rounds were nice since each entry need to be reviewed by multiple people.

Aspetti negativi:

I did not like how I could not get the scores to automatically averge.

Our Members Thank Us for Implementation

Commenti: While a tough sale internally to implement the technology for our Association, once installed and deployed to our membership the feedback was beyond what we hoped for. Working with [sensitive content hidden] on the OpenWater team improved every aspect of the process from initial scope to closing out this year's program.

Aspetti positivi:

How it integrates with our current database and how this translates to making the process much easier for our members to submit applications each year.

Aspetti negativi:

While this was not our experience, if do not have a strong liaison within the OpenWater team, it can be daunting to implement the system for a first time user.

Useless Split Screen

Commenti: I hated using it. It slowed me down, was cumbersome and had no option to get a printout of the application to review off line.

Aspetti positivi:

The split screen for reading the application and answering review questions is nothing short of useless - constant needless scrolling back and forth.

Aspetti negativi:

Split screen - lack of options to download the application as a pdf - need to be online to use this.

Best of the Best

Commenti: We've been with OpenWater for about 7 years now. We haven't considered looking elsewhere for our Awards needs. The program has the functionality we need, the price is extremely reasonable, and the customer support is above reproach.

Aspetti positivi:

OpenWater is very easy to use. The training videos and knowledge base are extensive and easy to use. The support team is superb - always available and willing to help. I have a dedicated support member, so there is excellent consistency. She knows our organization, she knows our program, and she knows our needs.

Aspetti negativi:

I would like more user-friendly reports. It would be nice to create my own custom reports a bit more easily. But this is not a deal-breaker. It likely has more to do with the kinds of complex reports I'm looking for than OpenWater's ability to provide good reporting.

3 Years of Loyalty and Counting

Commenti: 10/10 would recommend.

Aspetti positivi:

So easy to use, the software has self explanatory navigation, intuitive organization and all the functionalities we need for our awards programs. If issues do arise (though not that often!), the immediate customer support and service streamlines our work-flow and save us time and headaches. The OpenWater team truly does respond within 10 minutes of opening the chat box, which hovers conveniently but covertly on every page of the site when you are logged in as primary admin. (Shout out to the rep who always provides instant solutions!) The platform is ever improving. We are always finding new updates within the interface and its capabilities that are obviously informed by customer feedback. They truly are the most receptive and adaptive team we've worked with.

Aspetti negativi:

If the software team weren't so amazingly immediately responsive, we could have small grievances to list in this cons corner, but all gripes are attended to and abolished within the same day they are discovered. So the only issue this leaves us with is one that really does have a solution, but one that requires more funds: We have multiple awards programs running at once, and although the upgrade is available to have additional programs open simultaneously, it would be an economical advantage to be able to have at least one more program live within the payment plan we are currently using. This wish aside, OpenWater and their team have been nothing less than one of our best investments to date.

Continues to be a great return on investment

Commenti: The entire OpenWater team from implementation to ongoing support have been terrific to work for. They put a great deal of effort into understanding our business needs to help us build programs that best take advantage of all the robust tools available through the platform. They also go to pains to solicit client feedback for new functionality and features, which only builds on the value of what has already been a terrific investment for our association.

Aspetti positivi:

We purchased the software primarily for abstracts collection, which the OpenWater platform excels at, but what we have found most appealing about the software is that its flexibility and ease of configuration have allowed us to apply it to many other areas to replace aging legacy, custom built software solutions (awards, elections, nominations).

Aspetti negativi:

There's very little negative I have to say, but if I had to quibble with anything it would be sometimes the form and report building tools are a little clunky for nontechnical staff, but that's a pretty nitpicky complaint for such a powerful tool.

Excellent product, people, and support!

Aspetti positivi:

Although OpenWater is already very intuitive straight out of the box, I really like how support is just a chat button away. I receive instant, friendly, expert support whenever I have questions or concerns. No waiting on support tickets! They also have an excellent collection of pictorials, videos and docs on their academy site: http://academy.getopenwater.com/v2. Last but not least - OpenWater actually listens to their customers. If we have an idea or would like to see something changed, they submit it into a queue for review and if approved, it's implemented. They have used a couple of my suggestions in the past two years.

Aspetti negativi:

Some areas could use better means of access. For instance - I think that project-related themes and websites should be available from within their own navigation menu. This is really not even a "CON" for me. It's just a matter of opinion. I'm also not particularly fond of the checklist process that was recently added, but I can see how others could find this useful, especially new users.

OpenWater is the most dynamic way to achieve an active work team

Commenti: Without a doubt, since we have OpenWater in the company, our projects are more dynamic, the work teams are more motivated to accomplish their goals and tasks, and the way in which projects and sales are presented, through notifications, templates, competitions and games, drives us to improve the performance of the activities we perform.

Aspetti positivi:

It has multiple templates of contests to improve sales, fulfilling different activities and goals. It also has templates that are customizable, to create our own contests, according to the goals, projects and sales, we have. Administrators have a module to see the competition, the progress of each person, and can include other activities. One of the most recommended software for the sales department, as it is a fun, effective and entertaining way to get employees to be always active with their sales and focused on improving their performance and earning the rewards they are offered.

Aspetti negativi:

The system gets a little slow when logging in and sometimes when entering information and progress of participants. Updates from other users also take time to be reflected on the screen, so it is almost not in real time. It could be a little more customizable, since there are not so many options when creating profiles.

Always helpful!

Commenti: The customer service is on point and that is AMAZING. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] is always available when we need her and works so well with us. She makes using the system easier and provides slight suggestions for improvement while maintaining professionalism. I would not be taking this survey if it weren't for how awesome she is - because it needs to be said. With that being said, the overall software is great - but wouldn't be as amazing if I didn't have the customer service aspect of someone being available to guide me in the right direction. Once I am there, the system is user friendly and easy to operate. The massive collection of FAQ's available is very valuable and appreciated.

Aspetti positivi:

It is fairly user friendly, which is always very nice and allows for us to continue to use and learn the program.

Aspetti negativi:

Sometimes updating the website portion is difficult and you do need to know how to code/html coding. If you don't know that, you aren't able to fix small issues because they are buried in the background of the coding.

Great service and even better support.

Commenti: It reduces the amount of time and effort it takes to run a program and extract the data collected.

Aspetti positivi:

It is extremely configurable and the company is very responsive to the needs of the customer. They have added features and functionalities that were not available so that they could suit our needs.

Aspetti negativi:

Some of the native reporting features could use improvement but were created for us at our request. It would be nice to be able to duplicate entries from a 2 step program into a 1 step program.

Amazing support

Commenti: Awesome products.

Aspetti positivi:

This is the most reliable award software I have got till now. The things I like most are the function duplication, custom forms, the internal linking of the form ect. Email notifications and form management features are really helpfull. It gives all possible customizations. On top of all these things, if you are stuck with anything, you can simply contact the support team and my experience with them is just amazing till now. They provide you complete support technically and that too in poliet way. If you want anything that is out of the product customization, they will ask for the flow and will try to implement it. The most friendly customer support I have came across till now.

Aspetti negativi:

Nothing as such till now. Iiked this software as I have experienced other bad quality award softwares and just fade up with them. Also the website takes more time to llad