Berkeley Art Studio has been a student-owned, university-run studio on the UC Berkeley campus for 40 years. The studio specializes in classes for drawing, ceramics, painting, graphic design, and digital and darkroom photography.
When the studio was ready to replace their annual registration day's 100% manual process with an online solution, they chose ACTIVE’s Thriva and were happy with its reports and online registration capability.
Modernizing operations
After three years with Thriva, the studio’s new director wanted a more modern solution that would meet the growing demands of the studio and lighten the administrative work load. She upgraded the studio to ACTIVEWorks® | Camp & Class Manager, which brought about “a night and day” transformation for studio operations, including:
- Individual registration processing time dropped from 5 minutes to 2.
- 95% of their participants now register online
- Improved user experience
- Ease of training student assistants
- Ease of pulling reports and viewing financial information.
- Speed of the entire systemMaking the transition
- Staff Buy-in – The transition was seamless and completed in 2-3 weeks. Camp & Class Manager was so easy to learn that getting staff buy-in on the new software wasn’t an issue.
- Account Managers – Katelyn loved having one point of contact at ACTIVE, and her Account Manager was very responsive whenever she had questions.
Software Inspires Studio Makeover
Although their use of Thriva started transitioning the studio to a more professional organization, the proficiency of Camp & Class Manager activated a desire to improve their entire organization.
Since implementing Camp & Class Manager, membership has soared to an all-time high, increasing by 30% and resulting in staff growth of 50%.
They’ve renovated their space to include staff offices in addition to classrooms and implemented a full rebrand, including a professionally designed logo.
Better Technology
Contributes to GrowthBefore transitioning from Thriva to Camp & Class Manager, the studio tested a free registration and management solution, coincidentally, during studio renovations in the summer, when only half their classes were being held.The experience was a disaster and a huge mistake. The registration process was so cumbersome that they actually lost members. Customer service took 3-4 weeks to deliver refunds, compared to 3 days with ACTIVE. There were no reports and no phone registration capability.
They concluded that you do, indeed, get what you pay for, and were more sold than ever on the role Camp & Class Manager played in the studio’s growth!
