Case Study: IMA (Institute of Management Accountants) achieves faster program setup and centralized reviews with OpenWater

How IMA cut setup timeby 75% using Open Waterto centralize awards, grants, and nominations

IMA | Institute of Management Accountants, a global professional association with 120,000+ members, was struggling with a manual, inflexible application process that depended heavily on IT. Basic updates took two to four weeks, and disconnected systems, spreadsheets, and emails made it difficult to manage awards, grants, nominations, and volunteer programs at scale.

OpenWater centralized IMA’s 27 programs into one platform, enabling staff to launch applications in less than a week without IT support. With OpenWater, IMA cut setup time by 75%—saving three to four weeks per cycle—processed more than 840 applications in a single cycle, and automated acknowledgments and approval letters to reduce manual work and improve accuracy.

IMA | Institute of Management Accountants