Massage College loves Timely appointment scheduling!
Andreas Kasoulides is the IT Manager at the New Zealand College of Massage. The decision had been made to change their booking software, and Andreas was tasked with finding the best solution for their needs. He and the college’s CEO did a lot of research into a range of booking system providers around the world. Andreas found Timely and liked what he saw and agreed with the CEO that this was the right option for them.
“As a multi-site organisation, central management and oversight is important, and we need to make sure that procedures are in place across the board. We can keep an eye on everything, from anywhere, with Timely.”
Being from the IT industry himself, Andreas knew what he was looking for in a scheduling solution. His research showed him that the developers at Timely had some really good experience behind them. The College had also had enough of Kitomba, as it created all sorts of headaches for Andreas.
“Kitomba was a drain on our systems, we invested in an additional server to run it that needed due care and attention to ensure the necessary 24/7 uptime.”
He was certainly attracted to the ease of cloud software that Timely provides.
“The trial period gave us a high level of comfort before implementation.”
The needs of the New Zealand College of Massage are quite unique from many other businesses that use Timely. As they are a training institution, they have many people that need to have access to the system, and strict policies that must be adhered to. There are a number of management staff who need to view bookings but not necessarily make any changes, to make sure that best tra
ining practices are being followed. They also needed bookings set up for their training rooms, rather than staff members. Timely was able to provide the College with a system that worked well for the situation at hand.
The design is a selling point
Andreas says that when he first showed the Deputy CEO the calendar, “the look on her face was priceless… she was blown away by what it looked like, and all of the information that was available.” Being a website developer himself, Andreas knew from his research that Timely had been built on the best platforms possible, and this really impressed him.
SaaS is the right solution
While the College has their own IT staff, they don’t need the strain of keeping a booking system working behind the scenes. Andreas was really attracted to the software as a service (SaaS) model where the software is provided on a subscription based system. The College effectively outsources the responsibility of the software to Timely, and to date, the decision has been the right one. The College also uses other SaaS cloud software solutions such as Xero, so this was a decision that made sense.
The support has been fantastic
“You guys were really open and happy to answer all questions from all NZCM staff.”
Considering the College required a solution that was out of the box, it could not follow the same process as other small business. There was a lot of going back and forth between Andreas and the team at Timely, to discuss whether it was going to work. “The relationship started off on the right foot, which certainly helps. I’ve had no worries at all with support, I’ve been welcomed to email and call them at any time, as have the rest of our users.”
Now that everything is in place, the College has the system that works for them.
“Even with a complex configuration, we have been able to do 99% of the set-up ourselves, which shows that it is very easy to use.”
