Acquia DAM (Widen) vs. Ergonode

Widen is a great digital asset manager internally. I loved the framework that the platform has. However, we created a main portal to share with our external partners so we could control what was private and what was public. The portal framework was not as user-friendly and we tried too much to make it like a website when it was meant to be a DAM. The main reason we switched providers is that we wanted to have the option to have a consistent framework internally and externally that was more user-friendly with better search capabilities.

Incentivized

Configured products are generally available in several versions. A furniture set that has multiple finish options or a TV that comes in several sizes and resolutions all have multiple SKUs behind them. Typically, these SKUs are bundled together into one Product ID. With an offline-first, bulk PIM, they usually import all their data through CSV or XLSX files. Different types of products have distinct products quality data. Although. It's inappropriate for small teams with a simple static catalog or for businesses that don’t have access to dedicated technical resources. If your company needs a full-fledged pre-built solution with loads of out-of-the-box analytics or is mainly looking for production of print catalogs, the developer centric, build-it-yourself approach, and extremely limited reporting will be difficult for you.

• They offer valuable guidance and educational resources to Administrators
• Their I.T. support is knowledgeable and responsive. And friendly!
• They build community among Acquia DAM (Widen) Admins
• They aren't as salesy and pushy as many of the other DAM Vendors that we considered. I don't feel like they are constantly trying to upsell me or take advantage. I hope this continues to be the case with the acquisition by Acquia.
• They're just plain nice people to work with.

Incentivized

• For starters, it elegantly manages intricate product affiliations. We sell bicycles of different frame sizes and colors. This results in hundreds of SKUs. However, we do not produce a variety of items. Only one "Bicycle model" product. Next, we take advantage of the Ergonode binding system for attaching simple records for each size and color. When the client chooses “Large, Blue” on the web page. The text, images, pricing and stock of the product, are okay. Those bound records will automatically get this. An alteration to the description of “Bicycle model”. For example, the switch for "material specification" icon. This alteration affects every size and hue. Component graphics and pricing remain individual, so there’s nothing lost. It entails no copying by hand and risk, and total consistency.
• Moreover, it enforces the business rules by offering smart workflows that seem natural. Think about our product approval procedure. When a product manager selects an option for “Ready for Review,” Ergonode does not just change a status. When the data contains a specific claim of “Dermatologically Tested”, it automatically routes the product to a specific person in the legal department. If there is no such claim, then the workflow bypasses the legal step and automatically sends it to the marketing team. In order to decide which path to follow, the system checks the content of the product record. To summarize, human error has been taken out of process compliance and we can all sleep easy knowing no product will go live unless it gets the proper validations for its attributes.
• Thirdly, its event-driven character makes our PIM an animated product data hub. As soon as one fact gets changed – price altered, image replaced, translation done, etc. – Ergonode sends out a signal to the whole digital universe. It has been implemented into our e-commerce search engine. When a merchandiser fixes a typo of a brand name in Ergonode, we fire a tiny event deep down into our search index in a matter of seconds. The changes show up on the live site immediately not in hours, days, or anything else.

• Improvements in the cropping and editing features within Acquia DAM are essential to ease the workload for our graphic designers. The current functionality falls short in providing the necessary tools and precision required for efficient asset manipulation, not helping with that time management at all.
• Enhancing the onboarding experience, we propose creating more video tutorials for Acquia DAM. These visual guides, covering topics from account setup to collaboration features, offer dynamic, step-by-step learning.
• To improve the onboarding experience, we recommend expanding introductory tools and templates in Acquia DAM. Introducing more user-friendly features and providing a variety of templates will empower new users to navigate the platform with ease, fostering quicker proficiency and enhancing overall usability.

Incentivized

• It takes a lot of effort to learn Database modeling. The flexibility of Ergonode allows for a complete recreation of your own attribute taxonomy, category tree and relation system from scratch. For example, let’s say you decided to make a key property of your product a simple text field and not a select. You'll come to wish otherwise later but you have data in there and you have concepts that are built on it.
• Operational reporting and data quality analytics are absent from the Ergonode application’s core open-source product. Even though the Ergonode software stores and shares data well, it provides little in the way for native systems to assess how ‘healthy’ that data is. How can I find out that “What percentage of my products do not have key images? Which categories have the most number of uninformed attributes? This requires writing custom database queries or building independent dashboard applications. When a software system claims to be the one source of truth, the fact that it doesn’t allow you to easily audit and measure that truth within the system itself is a real gap.
• The business language of a modern app is often intelligible to its business users in the way that the engineers can understand. Because they are powerful and capable in specific domains, it is no surprise to hear the system talk about bindings, inheritance through segments, and event-driven workflows. This is not how merchandisers, catalogue managers, or marketing people communicate. This is a layer of abstraction that the user has to pass through every time they perform common tasks in business. When you discuss automation in this way, the business users will only enter basic data points, nothing further than that. They are afraid to trigger the automation that will violate some logical rules they do not understand as it is.

Acquia DAM (Widen) is changing its pricing model and at this point, we are unsure whether it is a good thing for us or not. While we consider this a robust tool, we will take our time to evaluate the competitors.

Incentivized

We used to have to respond to any email questions from our library users about how to find assets. With Acquia DAM (Widen), the system is similar to online shopping, workable with keywords for those who like to search that way, or with filters for those who like to browse.

Incentivized

One of the most important things to look for in product information management tool is that it is effective. PIMsystems is a SaaS (software as a service) online software solution, which organically manages data and improves productivity. In effect, it is the winner of the G2 for PIM systems. The core interface was designed to avoid complicating things. While the solution is designed for class codes, you cannot enable class codes on your site to use the solution. The steep initial learning curve and conceptual barrier costs the game a point. In addition, this vast flexibility actually requires you to make very specific architectural decisions in advance, and this is not user-friendly to configure or change. The basic framework that offers it is similar to that of spreadsheet logic

Never had an issue where I was unable to access Widen.

Incentivized

There have been a couple of rare instance where after I uploaded an asset, I was unable to rename it, or after uploading it it took a while before it actually appeared and can be viewed in the DAM.

Incentivized

It's very seldom that I have to reach out for support, but when I have, there are quick solutions and follow-ups to make sure the system is working how it should be. My customer support team is also great at reaching out on a regular basis to keep me up to speed on emerging features I may be able to leverage to improve my experience.

Incentivized

The training was very thorough. The recordings for all our traning sessions were provided to us so that we could go back and review. Our trainer was always available for follow up questions. Our trainer shared a spreadsheet with us as a checklist for all things that needed to be done to ensure proper import and setup of our assets and DAM.

Incentivized

It was a lot of work! But worth the effort to get our assets cleaned up and organized. Enough time and personnel need to be allotted for any implementation, but we had some advantage in having our assets in a previous DAM with attached metadata in XML, and our users were prepared with knowledge of our existing DAM at that time. Though old habits present their own issues, a company that is starting from scratch with no DAM has to think farther ahead about how it will organize and collect assets. Far more pre-planning with stakeholders would be needed for a company starting an implementation from scratch.

Incentivized

We decided to stick with Acquia DAM (Widen) in the short term but will be reviewing the options this or next year to better integrate with Social, Web, and Creative team needs. We use Sitecore for all our web services, so it needs to be compatible with that, Social also needs to integrate but is not fixed on a single system, but Canva would be a good fit. The creative team always prefers local storage to link to rather than the cloud due to speeds.

Incentivized

Undoubtedly, Akeneo has mature capabilities with complete PIM capabilities. The building's architecture, while well reinforced, is more traditional, more fat, more monolithic. Although customization was easy, users had to follow the system’s guidelines. Pimcore can also be described as very powerful. However, it is a DXP with a PIM module, not a PIM. It seemed to be a choice that was overly engineered. The decision for Ergonode was driven by its contemporary design. This means that it has API-first and built on microservices. Other PIMs are systems you must adapt to. In other words, they have a rigid data model. Accordingly, our complex business logic could exactly model the data. We could integrate it into our customized technology stack as a live engine.

Can not give an accurate rating.

Incentivized

• The Acquia DAM (Widen) helped our company transition more quickly to remote work, giving users access to files much faster than the company servers could.
• The Acquia DAM (Widen) has given non-web devs the ability to quickly build clean web pages that share out marketing resources and information.

Incentivized

• Positive ROI considers efficiency in operation and speed. The company shortened time to market for new products by 40% as well as, due to accurate central data, decreased customer service tickets relating to data by 25%. The organization’s income is also affected by this.
• The initial costs and technical challenges are negative impacts. We had to spend quite a lot on special engineer and DevOps resources to implement, customize and bare-metal host this platform to get this ROI. The growing complexity will increase the time to break-even.