Very positive from the beginning - over 5 years ago - it was a significant "journey" for Trigraph as we enhanced our systems and processes over the years

It fits very well with our business needs - it's available on the Cloud, so no IT management issues, it manages our sales opportunities, our training events, our client communications etc etc

Nothing in particular - it helped us a lot in our business

Without question the customer service and account management is the jewel in the Administrate crown. I have worked with many software providers over the years and the team at ADM bring my personal customer experience to a new level. The team think outside the square, problem solve at a high level and are always transparent in their dealings with me. The fact that we have made such huge progress in the past 10 months is down to the relationship that has been built between our organisation and our Account Team at Adminstrate (Team Highlander).

Definitely it's ease of use. The software is reasonably intuitive and links information together in a meaningful way. It has changed the way we do business with our customers and we are now able to provide a far superior level of customer service. As the data in the system builds the reports we can build from Administrate are helping us make better business decisions and become proactive rather than reactive.

Being on the other side of the world and being the first country in the world to see the new day, we do experience challenges around time and date stamping. The ADM team have been working on this within the system.

We wanted Administrate to replace an existing booking system online, where customers could browse a selection of courses, book online and interact with date and location searching from our site, along with some level of automation for joining instructions and invoicing.

The best thing about the product is the way the courses are displayed to the customer, enabling them to sort by location, course, date easily in order to select the course and session they are looking for. It's not amazing and we needed to customize it quite heavily before we could use it, but it looked better than what we had, or so we thought initially. This is despite it not being possible to put the dates and locations anywhere else but right at the bottom of a course page. We then embarked on a lengthy setup process for the next 5 months to try and get it setup for our needs.

We were initially interested in trialing the software, which we did (for free) but Administrate would not give enough support for us to properly evaluate without signing up, and suggested we opt for a paid version so we could benefit from their support, which we did. We were assigned an implementation manager, who ran a number of calls with us over several weeks for us to get our data in, so we could try out the system. First point is that the software is complicated - it is not obvious how it works at all, and you need support to carry out basic tasks until you learn how to use it. You are encouraged to look at the documentation online, or via the help facility but these were very often out of date, yes - really. The system has a cobbled together feel and has obviously had changes stacked upon changes over the years, which means there are options that are still there but that don't work (for example delete event) and other options that are hidden under several layers of forms which are not at all obvious. We had a range of problems getting various elements of this software setup: email integration took 2 weeks, back and forth with their support team, which was eventually resolved as they had not verified our url, despite swearing blind they had. The communication triggers are complex, they do not allow you to test them without actually assigning delegates to courses (and getting billed) and all emails sent by the system are in plain text - this could be changed and just did not look professional. When a course is selected too, the pages where users enter their details look like really basic HTML pages from the 90's - it does not look right compared to today's slick styles on the web that people have come to expect. The system also allows you to specify custom url's, so that SEO would still be optimized for course pages already on the web. We spent another 2 weeks trying to get these to work with their support team, having anything other than the default name would result in all the copy disappearing from the main courses page. Part of the delays were down to the right people not being available - knowledge of the whole system is concentrated among a few key individuals and if they are not around, be prepared to wait. The interface is slow and laggy - which frustrates even further when you are trying to setup lots of data. We discovered that if a delegate changes the course they are booked on to, that we would be charged twice and there was no way around it. Administrate were inflexible and most people (not all) unhelpful, we did complain but there was very little interest. We really tried to make this software work, being an IT company, for us but in the end, we believed that despite the time we had put in, we did not have confidence in this product and will be looking elsewhere. It is very frustrating paying good money for bad software; in a final email from one of their directors, we were advised that 'adopting a new system comes both with new functionality and new limitations.' We realised this but just wanted the new functionality to work.

We implemented Administrate in order to replace the google sheets based approach that we had been using to run our global training business. Administrate did this very successfully and allowed us to understand the metrics around our business. It has enabled us to develop the business without having to recruit staff to do simple tasks such as adding students,

The reporting engine in Administrate is outstanding. It is training focused so reports on the measures that are important to me as the head of the global training business. The integrated LMS is simple but flexible and coupled with a good authoring tool can be deployed very simply. The most important aspect of Administrate is the REST API which we have used to build an entirely bespoke booking system that integrates tightly with our other core SaaS tools giving a single coherent view to our customers.

The financial module is in need of an update - which is coming. A lot of templates have to be re-entered each time as there are no copy functions within the platform which is a drawback when building a lot of courses. The pace of developing the platform is slow though. Something that is being worked on could be much faster. In some areas Administrate is falling behind newer platforms.

Before I used Administrate everything was on a scrap of paper, separate emails, pin boards and spreadsheets, I had too much to do and not enough time and no efficient system to organise my business. The benefits are that I have more time to speak to my customers, and planning new developments.

It is intuitive and easy to use, visual and logical, but not everyone's brain process things in the same way. Everything is in one place and available from anywhere in the world if you have internet access.

The reporting system warps my brain, it is a very powerful tool but can be frustrating to get out of it what you need