This month’s customer spotlight features Brian Hackett, Webmaster at the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT). Over the past couple of years, WIT has utilized Cognito Forms for everything from scholarship applications and work placement forms to competition entry forms and news story compilations.
1. Tell us a little bit about your organization!
Brian: Waterford Institute of Technology is the major provider of higher education based in Waterford in the South East region of Ireland and one of the largest institutes of technology in the country.
The Institute provides courses at all levels from Higher Certificate to PhD. The Institute’s current full-time student cohort in excess of 6,000, while part-time student enrollments exceed 1,500. The portfolio of courses includes Humanities, Health and Nursing, Science and ICT, Engineering and Architecture, Business and Education.
2. Why did you choose Cognito Forms?
Brian: Before we started using Cognito Forms, we used a forms plugin for our CMS. But it was a short on features, and had to be integrated directly into the templates of the site. This meant we could only create simple forms, and it took time and effort to add them to the site templates. As the demand for forms increased, we did an assessment of SaaS form providers and decided that Cognito Forms was the best fit for us.
3. How does your organization use Cognito Forms?
Brian: Once we started using Cognito Forms, it quickly mushroomed as we discovered how powerful it was and how we could move complex paper forms online using it. We democratized the use of forms as we trained more staff, and as they can add the embed code directly into their web pages, there is no longer a requirement to add them to the CMS templates.
We currently have 150 forms and growing, which perform a variety of different tasks across our organization. Moving paper forms online using Cognito Forms has been transformative for the organization and has saved days of administration time.
Cognito Forms allows us to quickly record information for each new prospect and then integrate it with our CRM. We have since started using forms to help us track multiple aspects of our business - even guest post submissions and other marketing efforts.
Some examples of the way we use Cognito Forms include:
- Simple contact forms
- Event registration forms with payments
- Complex student funding application forms
- Survey forms
- Scholarship application forms
- Information gathering forms
- Books and materials payment forms
- Part time courses application forms
- Reporting forms
- Work placement forms
- Competition entry forms
- PR and news story compilation
When we started using Cognito Forms, we were just looking for a way to make our forms more powerful and user friendly. But it has grown into a tool that has transformed the way some of our departments work and makes our interactions with our students and other groups more effective and user friendly.
Thank you so much to Brian for taking the time to answer our questions! Would you like to be featured in our next spotlight? Feel free to get in touch with us!
Nadia Afshar
Nadia, the Technical Writer for Cognito Forms, develops documentation, support content, and how-to videos. No matter your experience – with her help, you'll be able to take full advantage of the product. In her spare time, Nadia enjoys listening to French house, drinking coffee, and talking about herself in third person.