Since 2012, SySt-Institut in Munich has been putting its trust in a program from the Swabian IT expert for education, easySoft, to manage its some 1200 customers. "This saves us an enormous amount of time. Simultaneously, we can also offer our participants better service," says Sabina Göschl, Commercial Director at SySt.

SySt-Institut was founded in Munich in 1996 by the certified psychologist, Insa Sparre, and the philosopher and mathematician, Prof. Dr. Matthias Varga von Kibéd. The Institute offers seminars and continuing education courses. Since 2003, training courses for systemic therapists or consultants have also been available. "Our approximately 70 seminars and courses can be booked individually. However, many customers also take part in training courses lasting up to four years," reports Sabina Göschl. She and two employees are in charge of participant administration including invoicing.

In the past, this was done with an Access database and a lot of manual entry work. "But in recent years, the number of participants has literally exploded," says the Vienna-born manager. The previous system had reached its limits. "Therefore, we wanted a new program that is user-friendly, high-performing and flexible."

Sabina Göschl was impressed with easySoft right from the beginning. She has been using the software from the IT developer based in St. Johann since 2012. "Our workload has been reduced significantly," as Ms. Göschl says. The staff have been able to reduce the amount of time they previously spent on participant administration by roughly 70 percent. Time that can now flow into increased service for their customers. An example: The training courses, which last up to four years, are offered in different modules, which are selected by the customers themselves. Usually, these are ten to twelve per year, so participants can sometimes lose track of things. According to Ms. Göschl, "That's why we used to gather and evaluate all the data for the attended courses for each participant twice a year in what was rather a time-consuming manual task. Then, the updated training status was sent to them." Now, all the courses they have taken to date are stored in the software along with their course results. The same applies to the modules that still have to be taken to complete the training. Every month, Sabina Göschl sends their customers the most recent training status by email at the simple click of a button. This way, they are always up-to-date.

The business woman finds the annual easySoft user conference very inspiring. Users from all over Germany attend the conference and discover where the program is headed in the future. The accompanying workshops also provide tips on how to use the program. Unlike many of the software company's other customers, who use the program to manage their entire seminar administration through to HR development, Sabina Göschl uses it almost exclusively for participant administration. "But this very efficiently," she emphasizes. The program has gained further plus points with the satisfied easySoft user in terms of invoicing. "We can record criteria such as the due date regarding individual courses and participants. This allows us to keep an eye on any outstanding payments from individual participants and keep a firm grip on our cost control," says Ms. Göschl. "This is absolutely necessary for a further education institution that receives no state subsidies."

Program features such as the duplicate search, which removes customers that have been entered multiple times in the database, or the class schedule, which is automatically created and updated for each individual customer, are just as attractive as the very practical ability to print out name badges for course participants for various events. She can no longer imagine doing her job without the software giant based in the town of St. Johann in southern Germany. The fact that easySoft invites suggestions and requests from their customers regularly at user conferences and implements many of these automatically shows her that she has put her money on the right horse. She admits that things did not all go smoothly when switching to the new software. "But in the end, the easySoft employees had a solution for all our problems. No can do was not an option." SySt participants register for their courses and events via a booking system integrated into the homepage. "The next step could be to create an interface to easySoft here," Ms. Göschl explains. Because at present, participants are still entered manually into the system.