OpenWater

Pros: OpenWater has great customer service and quick response times. This is a huge benefit to us as when there are bugs or we need help with something quickly, they are right on it!

Cons: $8d

Pros: OpenWater has been a huge timesaver for our team! We used to have manual spreadsheets and scanning of documents, and now everything is in one place! Another pro is the ease of use for judges! Judges are now able to enter all of their scores and we can use OpenWater to calculate and weight things as needed versus having to do all of this manually before!

Cons: One of the cons of OpenWater is the UI. There have been several times where my team has needed to set something up and it isn't in a place that we would think it would be in. Thankfully their team is quick to respond when we have questions! Another downfall has been the number of programs and what is considered "active" versus "Inactive". I'd love to be able to work on a future program without it being "active" and counting against our program numbers, but find myself having to activate and deactivate programs to make quick changes that I want to remember for the following year, but needing to keep the other one as our active one to continue collecting information from winners, etc.

Pros: There are many things I like about OpenWater. Before using OpenWater, our organization did everything via email. When you have 400 or more students and businesses applying via email, that gets very overwhelming and becomes inefficient. OpenWater has allowed our organization to streamline every one of our programs and application processes. Not only that, but creating the applications and procedures on OpenWater is clear, straightforward, and efficient. On the user side, we've been told that the software is easy to navigate. Lastly, the customer support has been stellar! Once we began using OpenWater, we've worked exclusively with the [sensitive content hidden] , and she's been amazing! She answers every question or concern I have. It's felt very much like a collaborative process as my coworkers and I learn to use the platform. OpenWater has gone above and beyond for our organization.

Cons: I have yet to find a downside of using OpenWater. They have met our needs and continue to collaborate with our team to ensure program delivery and success.

Pros: the customer service [sensitive content hidden] is AMAZING!! She answers all my questions within like 5 minutes, it is impressive

Cons: The platform is a little clunky to navigate, so it took me a moment to get familiar with it. Now I am able to solve 85% of my questions through trial and error.

Pros: Open Waters Customer Service is second to none! They always respond quickly, ensure coverage and communication when a team member is out, and find a comprehensive solution.

Cons: The system is quite extensive... It took me too long to learn about the Essential Training for All Admins.

Pros: We use Open Water to plan and organize a very large conference. We love that we can do almost everything we need to prepare for the conference using Open Water. We use it to collect, score, and approve/reject potential conference sessions, schedule conference sessions, and collect session presentations and resources. The customer service is top-notch. Open Water representatives help us build presentation applications and help us come up with solutions when any issues arise. They also help us build our conference website and app. They are always friendly, fast, and efficient.

Cons: The email wizard could use some work. It is nice to be able to send out emails in bulk, but it would be nicer if there were an easier way to send bulk emails to new groups of people without the email also going to groups that had already received it. It would also be great if a bulk email could be sent to one person. To keep emails from being sent to the same people multiple times, we have to go in and individually mark that each presenter has already received the email--the process is very tedious and time-consuming. I wish they had an interface with a conference web app other than Guidebook. The Guidebook app is too difficult for attendees to download to their phones and log in to. It causes problems every year.

Pros: The customer service has been wonderful and I really appreciate my personal representative. As I learn more it gets easier.

Cons: The platform is a little tricky, but they make updates every day, so I'm hoping while I learn it also gets easier.

Pros: Getting started is intuitive and after some playing around in the system I was able to start creating programs in no time. I use this to manage two programs and the system it easy to use throughout the process. Checking statuses and judging are well designed.

Cons: While the system provides a great tool to manage these programs, the price increase for the service isn't matching additional benefits that are being released for my purposes.

Pros: OpenWater serves our purposes to administer and manage a large call for submissions program and grading. The flexibility to build out the rounds and approval levels/types is a great feature.

Cons: The interface and moving around inside the product is still a bit clunky. Once you know where to look, all the features are there, but it's not super intuitive or easy to train new users as a result.

Pros: OpenWater is user-friendly and easy to use. The applicants have no issues submitting applications. Also, the judging process is easy to use, and whenever we have questions the support team is easy to access and quick to respond via chat.

Cons: The only thing I wish OpenWater would have done better would be to edit the home webpage for the applications. It would be nice to be able to customize the homepage more.

Pros: The product support is outstanding. While the product is super easy to use, if any questions or issues come up, the support team is fast and efficient to respond.

Cons: The reporting could use some improvements. I feel like there are some key reports that don't exist or could be more effective for admin users to manage programs, specifically reports related to judge interactions on a specific program.

Pros: The support is excellent. All of my questions are answered and taken care of right away. [sensitive content hidden] is an excellent rep for Openwater and is super responsive.

Cons: No phone call support, its all via email. It would be nice to be able to call for support but not a deal breaker at all.

Pros: I've truly enjoyed not only the product that OpenWater provides to us, but the ease it presents to our members.

Cons: It's expensive, but the value provides to our internal and external audiences continue to transcend the cost.

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

Cons: 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.

Pros: 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.

Cons: 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.

Pros: Customer support was responsive when we had any issues

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

Pros: The ability to access previous forms, categories, etc.

Cons: 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.

Pros: 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.

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

Pros: 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.

Cons: 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.

Pros: Flexible tool to support award nominations and objectively evaluate nominations

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

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

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

Pros: 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.

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

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

Cons: Not intuitive, the learning curve is steep.