As we jump into 2018, we wanted to take a look back at 2017 with you. We’ve made new friends, engineered new functionality, hosted events, and even won awards for our software and company culture. We’re so grateful for all the hard work and collaboration our teams and customers put into 2017 to make it the success it was.

Customers shared their success stories

We have to start off by thanking you, our incredible community of 3,000 admins and hundreds of thousands of users across 600 customers for your loyalty, evidenced by increased customer satisfaction rates and participation in the Widen community.

You shared their success at events and on the web. Progressive Insurance, Trunk Club, and Cornell University spoke at the Henry Stewart Chicago digital asset management conference. (Some of their highlights and videos are available on the blog.) The University of San Francisco shared how they reduced brand asset request fulfillment from two weeks to on-demand. And with Widen Workflow, Spectrum Brands found new collaboration with their legal team.

Here’s a look at use of the Widen Collective across all of our customers by the numbers.

• 25 million assets managed in the Assets app
• 20 million embed views per day powered by Assets
• 2,500 deliverables created through Workflow
• 4,000 portals curated and shared
• 900 templates customized
• One million API calls per day

Widen events generated new ideas

You brought energy and new ideas to the Widen Summit and Widen Workshops.

With over 200 DAM professionals in attendance at this year’s #WidenSummit, we hosted the first Best DAM Contest. Five customers shared how they are advancing DAM at their organization, then attendees voted to influence our judge’s panel. Jane Leuchter, Content Librarian at The Institute for Functional Medicine, won this year’s contest with her impressive organizational strategies for multiple points of access and user engagement tactics. Congrats, Jane! This year’s Widen Summit also offered trailblazing lessons on DAM adventures, advice, and creative solutions.

We hosted Workshops in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Madison. Workshops offered a way for local DAMsters to come together, share best practices, and see what others are doing with the Collective.

Also Read: DAM Through the Ages – What’s Next?

Widen Collective continues to evolve

The UX team focused on simplifying and unifying the Collective user experience across Assets, Insights, Portals, Templates, and Workflow. The Product team encouraged customer feedback with customer-facing Trello roadmaps, user testing, and on-site research. The Development team implemented feature and functionality enhancements to deliver a best-in-class product experience.

Some highlights on updates to the Collective.

1. Assets: Assets now offers 360-degree video support, pinpoint asset cropping, and integrations with AI technologies to support auto-tagging.
2. Workflow: Enhancements to the proof annotator and automated workflow email reminders help your teams to stay on track.
3. Templates: Take one InDesign file and lock down all content that cannot be modified.
4. Portals: Create a microsite for your content with Portals navigation, CTAs, and branding.

Also Read: Widen Wins CODiE Award for Best Digital Asset Management Solution

We have new and growing teams

We opened an office in London, U.K. in 2017, and have a team there to support customers and buyers in Europe. Here’s a look at some of our team members from the U.K. and Madison offices and our remote team doing holiday cheers.

We’ve added new talent to our Customer Experience Management, Professional Services, Onboarding Coach, Central Support, User Experience, and Advisor teams.

Our Training team offers Widen Essentials courses for accelerated onboarding and admin training for critical concepts. Our onboarding coaches refined the 12-step onboarding program proven to create ready-to-go DAM success agents. The expanded Professional Services team offers full-service implementation, managed services, data migration, and site refresh services, advancing our caretaker philosophy and do-it-for-me approach.

Our Widen Community Cares team lead us in donations and volunteer opportunities. We volunteered at Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin, supported Community Support Network with donations from our monthly drink cart, and provided gifts to a family through the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County adopt-a-family program, just to name a few.

We won awards

We were honored with awards for our product and company culture, including awards from. EContent and Comparably, which put us on the same lists as companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Salesforce. Check out a few honors we’ve received:

• WorldBlu certified (three years running)
• One of Madison Magazine’s 2017 Best Places to Work (three years running)
• Comparably’s Top 50 Best Places to Work
• Comparably’s Best CEOs of 2017
• Comparably’s Best Team Cultures of 2017
• CODiE Award for Best Digital Asset Management Solution
• The Top 100 Companies in the Digital Content Industry
• Codified DAM Consultant’s Vendor of the Year

We’re thrilled to build on the successes of 2017 and to tackle new challenges and opportunities, and we look forward to working with you in 2018!

Recommended Read: Tech vs. Touch: 4 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2018