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Acquia DAM (Widen)
What Is Acquia DAM (Widen)?
A highly configurable metadata schema provides powerful, business-specific search and workflow capabilities. Plus, AI-powered auto tagging makes assets instantly findable. Sync content across systems using the API or pre-built integrations with over 50 tools, from creative suites to project management. Product-based companies use Acquia DAM to build a unique 360º view of their product content. Acquia DAM is available standalone or as part of Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
Who Uses Acquia DAM (Widen)?
Medium-to-large businesses with a marketing focus. Key verticals: Manufacturing, Consumer Products, Food & Beverage, Apparel & Fashion, Healthcare & Medical Tech, Hospitality, Education, Agencies.
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Acquia DAM (Widen)
Reviews of Acquia DAM (Widen)
Great customer service, early communication around big and small changes, the best DAM tool we use!
Comments: Reliability of asset storage, access anywhere, share multiple assets in many different outputs with ease.
Pros:
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.
Cons:
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.
Widen is a responsive and powerful DAM with bonus features and very attentive customer service
Comments: 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.
Pros:
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.
Cons:
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.
no one home
Pros:
Nothing
Cons:
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.
Widen Collective Is Your Digital Asset Filing Cabinet
Comments: IT's hard to to quantify the value this project brought to our organization-but it was incredible. We have reduced the amount of time spent looking for images, we have given access directly to our agency (reducing the number of emails back and forth requesting assets) and since partnering with Widen we've improved the quality of our assets. I would absolutely recommend Widen to any organization looking for a solution to a similar problem.
Pros:
As someone who loves to have everything neatly organized and labeled, I really appreciated the ability to easily organize, categorize and tag all of my organization's digital assets. It's a daunting task-hundreds or thousands of images and video files, all had to be housed in a cloud in a manner that was intuitive and retrievable. Yet, Widen Collective helped me make that happen.
Cons:
As with any software, there is a learning curve. But, Widen offers comprehensive training and excellent customer support. Don't let this hold you back!
Widen has changed the way I work
Comments: 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.
Pros:
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.
Cons:
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.