ChampionsWay Software

Would be lost without it

Total automation of marketing and student management

Pros

It's like having a valued employee working on your school 24-7 for a fraction of the cost. I couldn't pay one person enough to do what this software does for me and my martial arts school.

Cons

It doesn't teach my classes for me! Other than that it's a no brainer. From software support to student retention, the Perfect Mind software platform has it all.

Above the rest in customer support. Unlimited flexibility in reporting. Excellent software!

Reduced time in managing testing/rank/promotion. Auto billing customers is easy.

Pros

Our primary reason for converting to PerfectMind/Champions way was because of the promotion/testing management. We have over 300 students so promotion management was cumbersome until now. There is also an endless variety of reports that may be generated/customized. We were delightfully surprised at the ease of automated student payments coupled with still allowing families to self pay in house (opt out of auto billing). Events management is a delight! Rosters are accurate and easy to track who has paid for what!

Cons

Cannot process multiple transactions in one payment submission (tuition plus equipment and/or event, for example) causing multiple smaller submissions thru processor cause us to pay three credit card transaction fees instead of one. Generating school-wide statements is not possible. Customers requiring statements must have them sent individually.

We really enjoy to work with PM, it's very easy and essential, great customer support

Pros

Easy to use , very reliable,and great customer support anytime we have problems it's very convenient , it's accessible from all devices.

Cons

It's hard to send an image to all the contact email,working with direct email is hard !i like to have an access to printing individual invoice too.

$500 a month to over $17,000 a month in less than 5 years. Championsway made this possible.

Championsway and their Perfectmind software (along with the wonderful support staff) makes it possible for anyone to achieve amazing results. You can count on the software to handle everything on the business side; billing direct, automated emails, lead nurturing & student nurturing, fully customized website, lead forms & landing pages, attendance tracking, campaign results, and financial reports, and much more. - This allows you to focus on the one thing that really matters - Teaching great classes, without worrying about the business side. I'm not going to lie to you, you still have to work hard to receive great results, but it's very reassuring to know that you have a company & software that will work just as hard for you. As my business grows, Championsway continues to be 3 steps ahead. I'll admit when I first started back in 2009 I experienced some lengthy wait times with customer support, but as they've continued to improve their software, they've also greatly improved their customer support with extended support hours, including weekends, and the response time is generally less than a minute. I truly can't say enough about how Championsway has helped me grow my business, by handling everything (and more) on the business side. In order to be successful, you MUST surround yourself with successful, knowledgeable people. Championsway provides this, along with a caring family atmosphere that really makes you feel welcome. To your success!

Really happy to found this software

Need see who is paying regularly who is attending my class

Pros

Organized my student and making sure you get fall on payment , who is miss classes's who is coming to.

Cons

Is really easy to seat account just hard for including family need termination the account and open new account

Customer service is very helpful with explaining the products and trouble shooting

Pros

Organizational features, customer service and all the customizable options that Perfectmind staff can help you create

Cons

What I like least is there are many different "views" that I find useless, also you can only put 1 email into each students profile.

A very useful and necessary tool to manage our memberships

Pros

User-friendly.
Web base so we can use it anywhere and in any device.
So far it has all features we need to control our membership

Cons

I wish we could delete some of the standard documents or emails (ie.: membership agreement)
Attendance without a membership card is not very friendly and quick to use.

Consistently impressed with what the CRM can do and the support given by PM in my times of need.

Organizing a student base of close to 200. Without this CRM, I don't I would have been able to continue the growth that we are experiencing.

Pros

Flexibility of application in real time of the CRM for my needs managing the International Headquarters for the art I represent.

The ability to communicate with support, suggest ideas and see them applied is second to none.

All my franchises moving forward will build their business thru this product.

Great support team. Always available when needed. Quick response.

a feature in the program that would sort & group last names and family members together in the contact list to manage their memberships etc. much easier and faster

Pros

The auto billing feature saves me a lot of time and I no longer have to keep track of Exell spreadsheets.

A little tricky to learn how to use but luckily there is great customer service support.

Pros

We have had issues in the past trying to figure out the software and what it can and cant do, luckily they have great customer service to help and walk us through on what it can and cant do.

Cons

Doesn't have all the features we need, especially aspects to some reports for filtering. Each school is so unique so more filtering options would help.

Improving with time...

For me, the opening training was almost pointless. I need to be doing more and listening less. I feel like I would rather have been forced to do homework before my opening tutorial sessions than watching someone explain to me how to do things without ME interacting with the system. The system has a steep learning curve. I'd imagine I'm utilizing about 50% of the system's potential after 7.5 months of use. The Pros: The look The automation The possibilities All of the above make me feel a little more comfortable running my dojo solo. The Cons: The complexity The non-so-intuitive layout All of the above makes me feel like I'm paying for some things I may never need/use, but if it was really simple to explore and get good at, I'd use them more and be even more energized about using this product. Overall, I think the system would probably take me a few hours a day for the next month to really digest all of the possibilities. Instead, I'm lucky enough to have an hour a week for a one-on-one session with Haley Stich that doesn't get pinched to 45 minutes with my busy schedule.

Use this software to manage a martial arts school

Pros

Customer service was friendly, they weren't helpful, but they were definitely friendly. Software had the capability of taking attendance with the use of a scanner.

Cons

I really didn't like this software at all. For my "real" job I provide technical support for multiple research projects. That being said, this software was one of the least user friendly products I've ever seen. It had weird date formats, features were buried under multiple layers that were not intuitive to find. We got lured away from another software to use this and we regretted every minute we used this product. Our previous software company offered to give us free service until we were out of the contract with this company.

Most powerful management package on the market!

I've been with Championsway for six years or so and have seen the company's product evolve from a simple database management program to fully integrated management software, website, and marketing services. I've been approached several times over the last few years by among others, MindBody and Rainmaker. I've found many offer similar services at a lower price, but none have the degree of integration and technical support that I've found with Championsway and its companion programs, PerfectMind and Mr. Marketer. The major drawback is that it has more power than a new school can be expected to harness. Even now, ten years into running my school, I'm still not using all of the power of the Championsway product. But, it's better to have room to grow than to be limited by less powerful systems. Bottom line: if you can afford it and have the time to maximize it's functions, this is the most powerful management package on the market.

Not all it's cracked up to be

I signed up for Champion's way after being assured that my very specific scheduling and payment needs could be managed by the software. After a lot of wasted time, effort, and money, I realized that it does not. I was also told that set up would be easy and that Champion's way would do a lot of the work. After a few "training sessions" intended to guide me through the process, I realized it was going to be more work to set up than I could manage in a short time. Meanwhile, I am paying for the software and I can't use it. It is clear to me now that this software is built based on very limited expectations of use and is not as flexible as advertised. The supposed free trial turned out to be a week with such limited access that I couldn't even assess the features fully. Everyone from Champion's way was friendly, helpful and patient, but they never really looked at my business or my needs, despite having made that a point of signing up

After a few months it was clear, this was a big mistake

Pros

It offers many options. The Mr.Marketer option is actually very good. They offer valuable webinars which I liked a lot and got a ton of good info from.

Cons

They double billed my members, admitted to over billing me and still have not payed me back. It is not good for families with multiple kids to register. Customer service is farmed out to another country and most often did not know the answer to the questions we had.

5 Years & Loving it!

ChampionsWay software is amazing. It's scaleable for use by small martial arts schools like we were when we got it and is really showing it's true colors as we grow. From managing your student information, to testing and rank promotion, to email management and campaigns, to point of sale, inventory management, employee management, plus your web presence (&More), they excel in all areas. I love that we don't have double entry into other systems to manage a specific area of our business. I love that ANY time I need customer support, they are there and help until it's resolved. I'll admit, I've looked at other software over the years, but none come close to touching what we get with ChampionsWay.

I use the software for school management, sales and communications.

The versatility and excellent customer service of the entire ChampionsWay Team makes this software/company incomparable to whats out there in the market. If we have a question, they are there. If we need something customized, they are on it. I am continually impressed with the functionality, efficiency and service. All my staff members are able to focus on whats important, teaching great classes and providing excellence in service! My members and prospects love the social site feature because it makes registering and buying items easy and seamless. I am very happy with the ChampionsWay program and look forward to growing my business and our relationship throughout the years to come.

Stay away from this product

Several years ago I used this software when I was a manger for my instructor's martial art school. It was a very bad customer experience along with bad programing. When I opened my own school several months ago, I decided to try and work with them again. It seems like nothing has changed. I ran into several issue right away and when I would call for help, all I would get is a trouble shooting company that didn't seem to know that much about the product. However, the final deal breaker was the lack of security I came across. I happen to put a username and password that was similar to another company and was able to log into their customer account. I had full access to names, emails and other private information. This was the final straw and I sought to get out of the contract with them for good. I will not use them again nor would I recommend them to anyone.

Cons

Extreme poor network security

Always Looking to Better meet our needs

I have been with Championsway for over 13 years. I have seen them grow and adapt to the ever changing technology. I left for about a year to 18 months about 10 years ago and came back after trying many other companies that didn't fit my needs. The have always been there for support. I use them for my management software for our organization, Website development (Their customization is A+), email system, Billing, Reporting and more, seamlessly. That is one of my favorite things about Championsway is I can have them do everything instead of having 4-5 different companies that don't communicate and nothing is tied together.

Quality assurance testing totally missing

Poor. It took them a while to get back to me and would then argue with me with the issues I found.

Pros

The actual look of the software was nice, but that was about it.

Cons

Extremely buggy. I actually found a huge security error which was the final straw for me to drop them.