Product Review of OpenWater Software

OpenWater is a software platform that helps you increase your number of awards, abstracts, fellowships, grants, and more. It offers a long list of powerful and effective products that are used for accepting and reviewing applications.
Website: https://www.getopenwater.com/
What Users Love About the App
“I love OpenWater. Not only is the system easy to use and to customize to your specific program, but the customer service is phenomenal. Any time i have a question or concern they respond immediately, and also do our external client-facing customer service as well.”
“OpenWater took on my association’s extremely complex and multi-layered awards program and has answered every challenge we have encountered with setting up the program initially, running it through the first two seasons and making it easy to use for our members. Their response and support have been top shelf.”
“The ease of use for managing multiple award programs has been great. Templates that can be used between different programs are easy to construct and reuse. Over the past 2 years, I’ve managed 7 different programs with different flavors.”
“We are managing several awards programs for the campus. This software has enabled our ability to manage multiple programs fully electronically without requiring paper applications. The ability to manage external judge evaluators through the platform asynchronously has also been very valuable where is was previously a substantial lift before using OpenWater.”
“It’s difficult to pick just one when the product and the customer support have both been exceptional. We initially chose the OpenWater platform to address our calls for proposals around around our events, but the flexibility of the product has allowed us to use it for a host of other programs that were all being run on legacy custom built software.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“Our complex program isn’t easy to replicate, so I find myself asking a lot of the same questions every year. OpenWater tries to anticipate with learning, but there isn’t a go-to resource library for my specific questions except the one I’m building on my own.”
“The number of clicks it takes to navigate between different sections can be a bit cumbersome. I’ve ended having multiple windows open just to work on different parts of the programs at the same time.”
“Most of the challenges we’ve faced relate directly to the SSO functionality with our member database platform. It’s sometimes difficult to parse when an issue relates directly to OW, when it’s our database, or when it’s a combination.”
“Some of its more rudimentary details, like moving and editing pre-fixed text make it difficult to use the platform for the different uses within the company.”
“There are some limitations on reporting and making judging assignments. There is no quick way to assign multiple judges half of a category without splitting into subcategories.”