Meet Laura – an Intrinsiq ambassador who has been using Intrinsiq for 18 years!
Welcome to the latest edition of our 'IntrinsiqInsider' series! Today, we’re excited to introduce you to Laura Farminer, our newest brand ambassador! In this article, we’ll take you through Laura’s career journey, and explore how her role at Intrinsiq supports our mission of delivering top-quality solutions for international language schools across the world. In addition, she’ll tell you why she loves using Intrinsiq!
Laura has been in the world of EFL and ELT for 25 years, as she started working in Summer Schools while still at university. After graduating, she did a CELTA and moved to Italy to teach English, where she stayed for 5 years. During the summers she worked at Summer Schools in the UK, which is where she first started using Intrinsiq (which was a desktop app back then).
Keen for a new challenge, in 2008 Laura joined the Head Office of Stafford House Study Holidays, a major multi-centre Summer School provider, where she quickly progressed to Admissions Manager and then Operations Manager. She and the team used Intrinsiq for all of the company’s day-to-day operations, such as taking group bookings and invoicing agents for the groups, inputting flight details and booking airport transfers. She also worked closely with Intrinsiq on a number of development projects, including new functionality related to Programmes and Excursions, various types of time-saving documentation for Groups and for Individual Students, and even a Price Calculator for Optional Excursions!
During and since the pandemic Laura has worked at some other language schools and educational institutions where she experienced first-hand the difficulties that team members experience when they don’t have a system like Intrinsiq!
“Managing multiple spreadsheets for group and indiv bookings, programmes, excursions, airport transfers and finance tracking is very time-consuming and can also be inaccurate, as there’s always a risk that some spreadsheets are not as up-to-date as others. Using a database that can only manage some of these things (e.g. group and indiv bookings, but not activities and excursions) means that you spend a lot of time making manual inputs and calculations, cross-referencing and double-checking, and sending emails and updates to suppliers by hand.
For example, you need to copy the student numbers from the database into your accommodation, excursion and transfer spreadsheets, add them up and regularly update them, and then you have to send the updates to your transport companies and venues manually, instead of pulling the Accommodation/Excursion/Transfer Reports straight from the database and emailing them to suppliers automatically. You also have to keep track of all your income and expenditure manually if you want to know what kind of margin you made on a particular group, trip or centre.”
Having experienced these challenges, Laura recently contacted Intrinsiq and suggested working together to increase awareness of Intrinsiq and the major advantages that it brings:
“Not only does it save time and effort but it eliminates the risk of inaccuracies and the hassle of double data entry. Intrinsiq has a whole host of functionality which will decrease the workload of many different departments: sales, admissions, operations, academics, accommodation, accounts, recruitment and more! Please contact me for an open and honest chat about the advantages of using Intrinsiq: I’d love to share my experiences with you and talk about any challenges you are facing with your current systems. Hopefully you’ll find this a refreshing change to the usual sales pitches and faceless marketing campaigns: I have real experience and I’d love to help.”
Stay connected with Intrinsiq to keep up with all the latest news and updates about what’s happening here and our future developments. If you’d like more information, please contact Laura on LinkedIn or on laura@intrinsiq.com.au .