Reed College had been using EMS for over two decades, but over the past several years, event scheduling needs grew while supported features waned. As workarounds for a declining system became the norm, scheduling became tedious. “We had a static event request form that folks had to fill out that was adequate, but it didn't give people any real information,” explains Robert Brigham, Event Manager at Reed. “Then they had to wait until they heard confirmation from our office to find out what space of [those] they listed were available before they could move forward.”

By 2021, EMS simply couldn’t keep up with modern event planning expectations. Pushing events to a calendar took multiple, nonsensical steps, moving between systems that had a difficult time talking to each other; departments were stuck with a single request process that had to work for all of them with no customization options; and often, Reed’s own technical teams would need to get involved to keep it all afloat. “EMS interface lacked a lot of customization, and on top of that, we weren't able to get the customer support we needed anymore to make [those customizations],” he explains.  

Implementation was rolled out slowly to ensure the team had the bandwidth to onboard everyone smoothly. As more and more departments were introduced, the benefits of this new system took effect. “Folks just jumped right into it. They even found features that I didn't really know about and were able to use those themselves.” Robert elaborated: “Because the security groups were so well designed and created, they're not going to break the database at all. I think that relieved a lot of pressure off of new users — especially if they're not tech savvy — who might have been thinking, ‘oh, if I hit the wrong keystroke or do something, I'm going to ruin it for everybody’. And that's just not the case with 25Live.”