Widen Collective Reviews

My team has to manage over 15 different categories of assets. Most of those categories are individual brands within our company. Some are segments of the brands. All of that to say that we have sliced up our asset offering in many ways to best serve our customers. By being able to segment those brands, we are able to get the right asset served up quickly in a variety of formats to fit most every need. In addition to that, we can make it so only certain assets can be served to certain customers. All through the use of Widen's "role" and "asset group" functions. We have well over 1000 end-users that we can easily manage.I've used quite a few DAM solutions in the past and Widen is by far the best one I have worked with. The thing that I like the best is the ability to manage the metadata just as easy as it is to manage the assets themselves. On top of that, the ability to assign permissions to access and administer assets by role has proven to be very valuable. We have assets that are only applicable to certain customers, so I can easily manage that through the admin tool. The time that we spent managing assets went from a full-time person's job before implementing Widen to only an hour or so a week once it is up and running. My team has to manage over 15 different categories of assets. Most of those categories are individual brands within our company. Some are segments of the brands. All of that to say that we have sliced up our asset offering in many ways to best serve our customers. By being able to segment those brands, we are able to get the right asset served up quickly in a variety of formats to fit most every need. In addition to that, we can make it so only certain assets can be served to certain customers. All through the use of Widen's "role" and "asset group" functions. We have well over 1000 end-users that we can easily manage.

Read the full review

Our challenge was that duplicate files were everywhere. Our employees had no idea what assets were current or expired - so image and logo requests were constantly directed to the Creative Department cutting into valuable time for designing. By purchasing a DAM system, we were able to centralize our assets, and provide users, controlled access to the most current files which, in turn, maximized productivity and efficiencies. In addition – our global offices are now connected with the most up-to-date materials they need, in any time zone, which has improved the current process. You will find that the customer service is amazing. Widen's team will help guide you through all of your challenges to ensure you build a successful DAM. In addition, once your system is built – Widen continues to build a relationship with you - providing full support even after the on-boarding process is complete. They are dependable, accountable and extremely customer focused. The DAM interface is quick and easy to use, the reporting capabilities are robust, and the security allows a lot of flexibility. In addition - we love the Portals - which allows us to provide assets to our non users.

Read the full review

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.

Read the full review

One of the best things about Widen is their customer support. Every team member I've interacted with has been incredibly knowledgable and genuinely wants to help me. For example, I had a vision for our Dashboard page, and I wasn't sure how to achieve it myself because it involved a fair amount of coding. One of the customer support staff worked (very patiently) with me to literally build my vision. I even hand drew a picture and emailed it to him so he could see what I wanted. Thank you Tyson Purcell! So whether it's through the vast information on the Support Page, the direct chat, or emailing or talking with very responsive Widen staff, I have found a solution to just about all of the problems I have encountered. It's not just admin who love Widen, our users have told us how easy it is to use to search and share assets.I love that it is cloud-based and you can access it from any computer, phone or tablet. It's super easy to create collections and share media with internal and external clients.

Read the full review

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.

Read the full review

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.

Read the full review

Our company uses Widen as our Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. Our employees and reps can easily find the media content they want using a very nice search feature and it allows them to download the content in various formats and sizes. The application is very intuitive, fast, and easy to use. Widen offers flexible integration which easily allows our applications and websites to pull media from the Widen DAM so all our companies digital media needs can come from a single repository which makes maintaining data an easy process. I've used Widen's technical support in the past for questions with integration and learning more about what their solution offers and the support team has always very helpful, knowledgeable, and quick to respond. I like the ability and flexibility Widen offers to integrate the digital media content with our applications and websites. It also offers nice tools and functionality to add, maintain, organize, and secure content.

Read the full review

We store digital assets on the system for company wide collaboration, we also started using the Media Collective as a web host for external forward facing websites. Widen makes it easy for us to accomplish these tasks as painlessly as possible.The Media Collective software is easy to use and is easy to configure. If you need some help there is an extensive online help library full of things which can help you, but if you need to talk to someone directly you can web chat, email or call. The help associates are always very friendly and will work with you to understand and fix the issues that you're having.

Read the full review

We've been on Widen for about two years so far and it has been great! Back before we were with Widen, we could make due with what we had...barely. Our team sat down with all the stake holders who would be using it on a regular basis and mapped out our needs, wants, etc., and then started doing some research. We went through three or four DAM system and had representatives from these companies explain what their systems could do, but they always seemed lacking, especially with the price tag they were quoting. Some of them we did like, but there would have to be equipment that was brought in to hold the assets and such, which would be ok, but then we would have to maintain the equipment. And then if there is an equipment issue we would likely have to wait for a representative to come fix it and hope it works. Just too much hassle for something we basically wanted to put assets on and keep them there for distribution. Then enter Widen. From the first demonstration of what their system can do, and the abilities we would have with setting permissions and distributing all the image, audio, and video assets, we were giving each other high-fives. Literally, we had the phone on mute and were high-fiving each other over and over again! The on-phone rep from Widen had no idea. We LOVED that we could upload assets onto Widen's cloud and our trainers all over the world could easily search, preview, and download any files we allowed them to. And there is zero maintenance on our end, other than uploading the assets, setting permissions, and making sure the proper metadata is typed in. And any time we have had an issue, Widen has been great about making sure a representative is there to help walk us through it. So, now we're into Widen about two years and I almost forget it's there sometimes. Whenever there was a video request, we had to manually get a video out to a trainer or someone, which takes time that we don't seem to have. Now, they can just log onto Widen, search for an asset, and download it. Seriously, get a Widen representative on the phone see what they can do for you.

Read the full review

Beauty and brains - the dashboard is legit! You can personalize it to your needs, it's visually appealing without the clutter. The activity feed and the spotlight collection is useful for me and the other admins. Love the idea of the brand portals and can't wait until we can implement and launch it.

Read the full review

Speed. Since the beginning we've upload thousands of images and added hundreds of users across our company and partners. It has not slowed down with all of the added weight and burden. It's still as snappy and responsive searching for assets in the beginning. Narrowing the search results and downloading images is very quick.

Read the full review

I would definitely recommend Widen to those familiar with DAM as well as those who are just starting out. The Widen team is also a great group to work with from start to finish and are there for you every step of the way, even for a company like ours that have been using Widen's services for over 7 years now.I have been very pleased with using Widen for our DAM tool. Their support team is phenomenal! Anytime I have a question or issue, they respond immediately and are very helpful to get to the bottom of any issue I might be having, or explain a feature I may not be knowledgeable in. Their entire team is always looking for ways to improve the tool based on user feedback and suggestions. It's great to have a company so open to what the users are saying. I have also found that the tool itself has been great in meeting our DAM needs. By building out a thorough and intuitive organization structure through categories, asset groups and metadata, we have been able to greatly increase the use of our tool and have received numerous compliments on the improvements. That along with Widen's new interface launched in 2012, the collective is now a much more user friendly and intuitive tool for both users and administrators alike.

Read the full review

Using Widen software has allowed our creative teams to manage content more effectively. With it, we are able to track asset revisions and popularity. This has made it easier for us to be more strategic in the creation and placement of our content. Additionally, with the Workflow management tool, digital proofing interface and Digital Asset Management library, our users only have to visit one site to enter jobs, proof and collaborate on new content, and access current assets and media.

Read the full review

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!

Read the full review

Our company has used this platform for several years now and it's been increasingly important in our marketing communications strategy as we move from print to digital. The more I learn about the tool the most impressed I am, and there is always something new to learn because they not only keep pace with the latest technology -- they actually stay ahead. There is no need to build costly new platforms from scratch, we just need to rely on the experts at Widen, learn from them and deploy. Great value for anyone who is serious about digital marketing.Easy to use and getting easier every day..

Read the full review

Many time-saving features in asset searching and sharing both within my organization and externally with customers.What I like most about Widen is that they are very open to receiving feedback and improving the software based off of user comments. They host annual events to bring other clients together to share ideas and knowledge of how their users work in the software. All of the Widen staff is available for comments.

Read the full review

This software completely changed our office workflow. Finding assets used to be very painful, but with all of our assets in one location and users connected to the DAM it makes finding things easy for our office, as well as external clients. By empowering our users to find their own assets it frees up our designer time, for things like DESIGN! Ease of use, ease of empowerment for the user. I LOVE being able to share collections with clients. And I LOVE when someone asks for an asset, I just add them as a user on Widen, and tell them to find it themselves!

Read the full review

We find the largest benefit for us is elevating our brand presence to our accounts. It really has enhanced how we deliver digital assets around key product launches and other crucial moments for our brand. The aspect I like the most about the Widen platform is the portals feature. The ability to customize content around branding just elevates our brand presence and provides us with exactly what we need to best serve our accounts. An easy to navigate and integrated feature such as portals has served us very well.

Read the full review

We now have ONE place everyone in the company can go to for assets to add to presentations, advertisements, blogs, websites, collateral and more. The Marketing team can work more efficiently and employees within the company are embracing the brand more consistently. Customer and technical support are world-class. Widen is always looking to its customers for roadmap enhancements and give honest, helpful feedback to all inquiries.

Read the full review

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.

Read the full review

Gee, it makes work easier. We have dealers and marketing teams around the world. This makes distributing those assets not a pain in the ass. Also, WAY less questions than before we implemented about 'where is is this asset?' It rules.The customer experience team and help desk teams are great and make you feel like a real person instead of a cog in the giant machine of software life. The portals. The PORTALS! Portals rule. They really do. Best way to organize brand stuff.

Read the full review

I'm part of a small, internal corporate video team. We have presenters around the world who often need access to some of our video assets on short notice. They used to have to contact us, and we would have to drop what we were doing to send a file to them. Now they can just log on to Widen and easily find what they need. Quick note about what kind of company this is: A few weeks after we first joined Widen, we asked our representative if a certain feature existed (sorry, I don't remember exactly what it was'it was something that would make things easier for some of our users). He said no, it doesn't, but he would suggest it to the development team. Just a few days later he called us back to let us know that he had talked to the development team and they were going to incorporate that feature into the next release, which was just a few weeks away from launching. Great news! So here is a company of people who listen to their customers and genuinely want us to have a good experience. The interface is easy to use, I like the upload wizard, I like uploading new versions of items--the asset's url stays the same. The only 'con' I can think of is that there was a bit of a learning curve at first to figure out how to, for example, send one or more assets to someone to download (not just view). For the most part, it's intuitive to use but plan to spend at least a few minutes familiarizing yourself with it when you first use it. We looked at other DAM products out there as well (don't remember their names). If anyone else out there is looking for a good DAM system, this is what worked for us. I could see it working for a large corporation or even a business like ours of ~130 people (plus over 100 presenters and international associates). The best value, best features, best customer service, a perfect fit. Thanks.

Read the full review

Incredibly intuitive front and back ends, with strong client support. Moving forward, we're planning on eliminating multiple, redundant digital distro solutions with a single Widen DAM workflow.The Admin GUI is an intuitive mix of front-end and back-end Admin Tools, with STRONG client support accessible via Chat, email, demos and structured training sessions.

Read the full review

Everything about this product is easy! We initially chose the software after closely reviewing more than 7 different solutions. Widen accommodates all of our needs where others came up short. Ultimately the deciding point came down to the out-of-the-box video streaming feature, this is what makes Widen different. The Widen team has the roll-out process down to a science. They worked with us to define a solid taxonomy which paved the way for an easy initial asset upload. Training and the on-boarding process was seamless. The application is easy to use but, when in doubt, they have a fully loaded training library (Widen University) which has video tutorials and easy to find articles. We are very pleased with Widen and would definitely choose it again!

Read the full review

I have been a constant user of the Widen Media Collective for almost 5 years and have no problem saying that it is the best digital asset management system that I have used in almost 20 years of DAM experience. Not only is their product superb, but what really sets them apart from other vendors is the quality of their customer service. When you become a Widen customer, you become part of the Widen family, and they take care of you. I honestly can't say enough about them.Very user-friendly UI, free functionality upgrades, wider range of customizability than other DAM systems.

Read the full review