OpenWater

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

Customer support was responsive when we had any issues

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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 It looks outdated.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à OpenWater

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Alternatives envisagées 

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

The ability to access previous forms, categories, etc.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

Not intuitive, the learning curve is steep.

Avantages

Flexible tool to support award nominations and objectively evaluate nominations

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à OpenWater

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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).

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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