It is very easy for me to onboard people, I don't really have to do much training since the program is so intuitive. I am able to permission out who sees what. Widen's customer service is also second to none with any software company I've ever worked with.

There are a few minor things, but nothing major that would make me start looking into other solutions. One example being that I wish we could organize global collections better

We are able to archive and distribute thousands of marketing assets to a global audience very efficiently and with a sufficient amount of protection and guidance about proper usage. Portals have allowed teams to communicate out about curated groups of assets and instructions with a single url which has helped their ability to promote the most valuable and up to date marketing assets.

Assets are served up quickly around the world and it is a very stable platform. When technical issues do arise, they are very communicative about their progress of solving the issue. I like the dedicated customer rep as well as access to new features and feedback through their Trello boards. I also like the ability to extract metadata from image IPTC metadata and map it to our custom fields.

I like the ability to create portals in order to highlight and add info to curated groups of assets, but there are some weaknesses in portal functionality and portal creation capabilities. It would be ideal to be able to create custom dashboards/homepage without extensive use of html. The current wysiwyg is extremely limited in design/layout capability. We'd like a better way for our users to be able to search for portals.

Nothing

I could not get any support at all. I was on a deadline and there was no one home to help fix a simple sign-in problem.

Overall I would definitely recommend Widen to any company that has a large amount of photo files that they need to store and easily be able to send to others, either internally or externally.

Widen is a fairly easy and efficient way to store, archive, and distribute photographic files. In the year that I have been using Widen, it has changed the way I work. Now when I receive a request for a specific photo, I don't have to resize it and make sure it is the appropriate size to fit into an email. I just choose the file I want, send it to the recipient and they download it directly from the site instead of through e-mail. This is especially helpful to those who are always battling an in-box size limit! It has also made it easier to work off-site. Say I am out of the office on assignment or home sick. If I see a request come in, I can log onto Widen from anywhere and send the requests files out at any time! The search features also work great for us. Users throughout the university can now directly search for whatever type of photo they are looking for instead of requesting it through our department by phone or email.

Though I love Widen there have been a few minor issues we have encountered. The first is that it is a little hard to understand at the beginning. The back end of the program seems complicated to a new user. However, we have now figured everything out and so this really is no longer an issue for us. The other issue I sometimes run into is that the processing can be a bit slow. There are times when I upload my files and then cannot see the previews of my files for quite some time. This can be a problem when I am trying to identify people in the photograph to add their names to the keywords. The only way around this currently is to be patient and go work on something else for a while.

Reliability of asset storage, access anywhere, share multiple assets in many different outputs with ease.

It's the one place for all content to live and get shared out across multiple platforms. Support for project management (through Workflow) and creative implementation (through Adobe CC Connector) enhances our productivity and helps us get our jobs done faster.

The software seems sluggish and lags when you want it to go fast. File processing and scrolling through assets is where I've noticed this the most. The uploading process also needs to be cleaned up and more inviting to users.

I love the ability to weigh in on roadmap projects. Widen really takes the time to listen to their clients

Easy to use. Secure. Excellent support and development teams. Flexibility of features

I could really use the ability to link raw assets with compound documents. This is currently a manual process and time consuming.

We learned more about DAM management and learned to love it!

It's so easy and intuitive to use. The metadata search boxes on the side help narrow and refine the search. And the customer service can't be beat!

I don't like how the collections can't be edited between users. We have had to figure out a workaround to be able to share and edit the same collections.

The user interface is so simply we can add new users quickly and easily and they can find assets with a minimal amount of training.

Some of the role permissions arent explained ver well. There were a few settings we needed to have turned on in order for users to be able to use the system effectively.

Company-wide self service, insight analytics, and quicker webpage loads.

The tag and search functionality. We no longer have the chief marketing officer instant-messaging our team to find awards, accolades, images, and illustrations. Other departments can self-serve as their needs dictate, and we can track usage of key assets with Insights.

The Insites analytics are not intuitive to use. I would like deep practice, usability, and best practice webinars and or forums to better understand the power this feature.

Customer Support, website functionality, ease of uploading new assets and then finding them later, user control, sharing capabilities including the file type selection. Love the zoom feature!

Honestly, it's not with Widen itself. My biggest complaint is with my own team because I keep having to reset people's passwords for the site because they forget them. Luckily, it's really easy to do in the Admin functions!

From the beginning, I have 100% loved every experience I have encountered with Widen. I absolutely love everything about your company's history and philosophy. Because of such wonderful management, you know how to treat a customer! I always know I can count on your team to help me with my problems and offer solutions in a quick manner. I have attended 2 years of the Widen Summit and get SO much out of the experience. I learn so much and always go home with a notebook full of notes on how to improve my own DAM and my own user's experiences. You all energize me is a way that I never though was possible with image organization and metadata knowledge. LOL! Keep doing what you're doing, this customer is very satisfied.

Our DAM houses all of the images we use in our catalogs and online. I love it's ability to organize and tag image in order to search for them with ease.

I think the one thing that I struggle with was the update on how to upload images. My retouch artist and I are usually the main uploads, and we enjoyed the drag and drop feature that used to be on our main page instead of having to click through the Upload Wizard.

We've been using WIDEN's DAM for about three years now to organize and distribute marketing deliverables to other internal departments like sales, development, etc. It makes it so easy to have a single, definitive location to find marketing-related assets. People don't have to wonder where to look to see if they have the latest version of an asset. And we don't have to worry about people accessing things they shouldn't. It also cuts down a lot on the requests we get day to day, because folks know where to go to find things themselves. And the support team at WIDEN is awesome and super friendly and helpful whenever we do have to reach out to them (which isn't that often because their product is great!).

It makes keeping things organized (which is a complicated job) super easy.

It works really, really well, but as with any asset management tool, there is ongoing maintenance and auditing that has to take place. That can get tedious at times, but we realize that it has to be done to keep things current, delete outdated/redundant assets, or just to check things that might have been uploaded with incorrect metadata, for instance.

What I like best about Widen is that it is multifunctional. Not only is it a secure way to archive images, documents and videos, but it also allows you to share these files amoungst coworkers and clients with ease. Multiple people can be uploading, sharing and viewing files with no problem. It takes the weight off of one person having to manage the content and allows anyone to distribute items without a hassle.

The biggest business problem that it has solved for my company is it allows multiple people to do what once was a one person task. It saves time when being able to have multiple people have access to the same files and being able to send, upload and manage it all. Being able to easily send outside organizations images and documents has saved us so much time and has left very little room for error when sending. With Widen's recent website advancement's, it's given me an opportunity to create a creative brief for projects I'm working on. All within 1 website. It's great.

This doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes I will be uploading files and Widen will time out or freeze during my upload and I'll have to start the process all over. This could be a problem with my internet connection as well.

I've had a great experience with Widen. I can easily upload assets of all types. Tagging them, filling out the metadata, and putting longform descriptions in each asset makes it really easy for people to find what they are looking for. It also helps me keep track on similar image types, or batches of uploads.

We use Widen as an asset manager, giving our teams easy access to photos, videos, and illustrative elements. As the administrator, I can create different user accounts, letting some people have more access than others if they need it. I can also provide third-party contractors access to our resources too.

The admin side can be a little bit tricky to navigate, and it would be nice as the administrator to be able to change my view settings to spoof different levels of access, so I can quickly see what kinds of access my users have and make changes or alterations without needing to create multiple accounts for myself.

The convenience and logical layout of the site as a whole. Our sales reps, the Woolrich team, and our buyers all are able to use the site without any hiccups. I really like that I am able to control who can see and download what. Because of Widen I don't have to download every asset and take up space on my computer, I can send links to anyone and everyone that needs them, but also it makes it so our reps can take care of their accounts directly and aren't coming to me for everything. It reallly makes my job so much easier!

I don't really have any complaints except I wish I didn't have to change my password so much. I'm running out of ideas! :)

Prior to implementing the Widen DAM my colleagues and I lacked a truly organized storage system to access to our digital assets. As digital formats and social media continue to grow and become a real focus of our marketing efforts, not having a centralized, searchable system with metadata and versioning was becoming a real problem. As part of a larger institutional initiative the ballet reviewed several DAM solutions. In the end Widen was the best solution for us, because it provided the basic features we needed in the everyday, with a road-map of exciting updates and enhancements coming at a pace we can keep up with. The Widen DAM touches all aspects of our organization and will continue to grow with us. It is already helping us work in a more streamlined manner and more efficiently. In the long run it will help preserve the legacy of the ballet.

Intuitive, strong on basics, interesting road map for upcoming releases.

It would be nice for non-users to be able to approve digital assets for use when they are sent a collection. However, the road map for Widen Workflow shows promise as a solution for this.

I design marketing emails primarily. I work with a merchandiser who sends me products and she often times sends links to widen photo downloads that I can use in my emails. It is a super easy way to complete design projects.

I like that Widen is an easy way to find assets. It is helpful for a large company--because everyone knows where to find the assets that they need. It is easy for all employees to get to--IT does not have to come and install it--it is just an internet login.

I do not like how sometimes it is hard to find things with searches. I know that this has to do with the upload metadata and probably is related to user error. Perhaps if there was a more automated way to add search criteria when uploading, this wouldn't be an issue.