OpenWater Awards Reviews

It is easy to customize a program to your needs after learning the basic setup. It is straightforward for users and has complex features if/when needed. The previous platform I used made it challenging for admins to extract only the necessary information and did not allow this much customization.

There isn't much to say here. Even the basic features are great. We've received support for more complex customizations to our programs so there are things I wish we could easily implement as customers but it's not realistic to expect a platform to be exclusively tailored to a company's needs.

Our team deals with over 80 different programs that are reviewed by 80 different committees who each have 3-12 volunteers. OpenWater makes it easy for us to collect the information that needs to be reviewed and enforce unique and diverse applicant requirements. This year, OpenWater has allowed our team to process over 1,200 applications reviewed by around 320+ volunteers. The cherry on top was being able to easily access and export any/all data needed for our team to do reporting.

Our abstract submission has been greatly simplified by using OpenWater. the process used to be very manual and labor intensive.

The only downside is learning to manage the system and learning all the short cuts!

OpenWater saves time! I am able to sort data and build reports quickly.

Client support is great. Their reps are very responsive and helpful.

The interface can take some getting used to.

OpenWater made it easy to collect entries, set up a landing page for users, and organize submissions.

From a developer standpoint, I was expecting some level of interaction to get parts of the project off the ground. Thus far, OpenWater has been incredibly easy to produce applications/forms.

Parts of the interface aren't where I'd normally think they were. There's some thought behind the placement, but as a new user, given the amount of use, it would take a daily user to navigate without issues.

It allows the organization I work for to put all of their assets under one roof, instead of reinventing the wheel each year and relying on host institutions to fill in those gaps.

Beyond being fully customizable, Openwater is reliable as our centralized tool for all aspects of program management

There are a few small cumbersome features, but the customer service team is always readily available to assist.

Application collection, management and the entire judging process.

Increased our capacity for giving awards 10-fold. Organized, cloud-based, data retention. Great training modules and superior help-desk and on-boarding.

The fact that I did not prepare to grow as fast as we did. Still requires staff management and wished I had prepared for additional staff to manage to increase in capacity - this is a good thing ultimately.

The capacity to onboard and manage sophisticated awards.

OpenWater is an easy system to use, learn, and implement -- we don't have to worry about lost data or site speed

I wish there was more customization for the display of the judging view. I also wish we could add pages for reviewer questions for long programs

We are able to manage our main awards as well as some of our grant programs through this software

OpenWater's customer support is outstanding. They are just a message away and always keep me moving forward in the process.

I am not the most robust "backend" user of the software, so when updating everything section by section - I feel like I always miss something in an area and need to go back in when a user finds an issue.

They just keep me moving forward.

I love that I can set up the system (mostly by myself now), but if I need help I can reach out to my tech who is ready to help and is very responsive. I feel very accomplished when I can triage issues on my own.

There are some things like adding a headers that don't work easily and I always need help with. Perhaps it's just not intuitive enough for me. Also, reviewers have a difficult time accessing the system often and need to clear their cache and refresh before it works. This is frustrating for them and me.

Collecting abstracts and sending automatic emails to authors and reviewers takes out the manual process we used before so it's definitely a timesaver. I think it could be even better if I new more tips and tricks. I would love it if OpenWater offered a course to planners on how we can use the system better.

The software is easy to set up and manage for the applicant, judges and administrator.

The most frustrating is that emails from the Open Water software either do not reach the intended receivers or are blocked by internet security systems. This creates additional work for the administrator to try to make contact with recommendation letter writers.

Open Water has eliminated many manual tasks that I had to do with our previous software. Frees up valuable time to focus on more important tasks and I am able to provide better service to the users.