Background:

Everybody’s Talking at Los Monitos! That tagline embodies the mission of Los Monitos Language Center. Los Monitos wants all of its students to not only walk away actively conversing in the language they studied, but to enjoy an academic, practical and relational experience. Based in Louisville, Kentucky, the Center is built around an experiential and enjoyable curriculum that has helped it grow rapidly since its founding in 2002. Los Monitos began with teaching only Spanish and has expanded into teaching over 10 spoken languages, cultural programming, interpreting, translation and numerous unique experiences.

Keys to Success from Bill Heinz, President of Los Monitos Language Center

How long have you been using the language school registration software from Active Network?

We’ve been using Active’s system since fall of 2010.

Why were you looking for a software solution?

Prior to choosing Active, we had a fairly static webpage where we posted schedules or PDFs for classes; students would pay via PayPal. To make changes or updates, I had to copy blocks of HTML and adjust the coding. This was very time consuming and if I hadn’t been familiar with HTML, I would have had to pay a webmaster to do it. Once someone registered and paid, PayPal would email a confirmation to our staff who would then input the data into a spreadsheet. This was also a very time consuming and manual process. I knew that to expand the Center like we planned, I needed a scalable option that would grow exponentially with us.

Why did you choose Active?

I chose Active because of the credibility of the sales team and the experience of the company. They reached out to us at the right time and I saw a demo of the school registration software. I checked out other vendors but I was most impressed by what Active offered. Plus, I know other languages schools are using the same system, so I trusted it would meet our needs. All things considered, it’s been the best option for us—it works great and there is lots of room for growth.

What are your favorite features?

We really like that our website is integrated with Active’s software. It makes the whole user flow so much smoother and everything is run out of one system. We use the enrollment/registration feature on a daily basis, of course. Students sign up and pay online, and it is processed automatically without any data entry needed from our staff. We recently began using the attendance monitoring feature to help track trends and validate instructors. Our accounting is much cleaner—the distribution report is matched to the amount of revenue received, broken down by separate GL accounts. I can see where the money is coming from, which I couldn’t do with PayPal. We sell t‑shirts and dictionaries online and we anticipate utilizing the shopping cart function a lot more to sell additional merchandise.

What has your experience been like with customer support?

The virtual training we did during implementation was good, but our experience with ongoing customer support has been extremely positive. The Center has many moving pieces and unique situations, but whenever we call we’ve always been pleased with the response. The support team is smart and they listen. It’s a great advantage to working with Active and an extremely effective part of overall offering.

What improvements has Los Monitos experienced overall?

As a person who has had to implement a lot of different types of systems, I can tell you that Active has saved us a ton of time. I don’t have to do the HTML coding to get our schedules online, the data entry to register students has been eliminated, and we can copy each season into the next to avoid rebuilding each program from scratch. It’s so much easier. On a larger scale, the school registration software allows for lifetime customer tracking. I can pull up a customer and I know everything they’ve done with the Center. It’s really improved our customer service and will continue to improve our predictions.

What’s next for Los Monitos Language Center?

Active’s competitive advantage is that it allows for scalability and we are using the software to produce programs across the country. We have an up‑and‑coming Italian language program that involves both the language and the culture. We partner with local Italian restaurants to host students in a fine dining environment, teaching them culinary and fine dining verbiage while providing food tastings. This is something we will be rolling out to multiple cities and with Active, we can register anyone, anywhere, easily.