When Dr. Amber Lesicko joined Kennesaw State University as Associate Dean of Students, she faced a triple challenge: new institution, brand new role, and a brand new software platform to learn. After spending a decade and a half deeply embedded in a different system, she had every reason to be apprehensive. Four years later, she’s one of Symplicity Advocate’s most enthusiastic advocates.

The Switch That Wasn’t as Hard as She Expected

Dr. Lesicko had used her previous platform for over ten years. She knew it “in and out, forwards and backwards, like the back of my hand.” So when she arrived at KSU and found Advocate already deeply integrated into the institution, the learning curve felt daunting.

It didn’t stay daunting for long.

“What I actually found was it wasn’t that hard. I was making it way harder in my head than what it really needed to be,” she recalls. “Once I was able to get a better sense of the language Advocate uses and kind of where the buttons lived, it was significantly more user-friendly.”

Within one to two weeks of consistent use, she felt at home. And that was before the platform’s biggest upgrade.

FLEX Changes Everything

Since transitioning to Advocate’s FLEX Workflows, Dr. Lesicko says the onboarding experience has become even faster for new staff. The intuitive design means people can hit the ground running without extensive training.

“FLEX is so much more intuitive that you don’t really need to know where things live or what things are called — because of the way we’ve built our system with tasks, prompts, email notifications, and deadline dates, it’s pretty foolproof. You really can’t break it."

That flexibility has allowed KSU to expand Advocate far beyond traditional student conduct use cases. Today, the platform powers processes across Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Campus Services, Housing and Residence Life, and the Office of Institutional Equity. Use cases range from BRT case management and emergency assistance applications to meal plan exemptions, lactation room requests, faculty grievances, and university-wide concerns.

“Literally anything that has a process to it — it could be two steps — Advocate FLEX Workflows just makes that so much simpler,” Dr. Lesicko explains.

Data Storytelling That Wasn’t Possible Before

Perhaps the most powerful shift has been in data. Dr. Lesicko describes capabilities she simply couldn’t access with other platforms, including the one she’d spent years in.

“I am impressed with just how much information that system has and how much we can pull from it in ways that I was never able to pull that kind of data and storytelling from other systems,” she says. “We can tell a lot more of that story and the work that we do on campus because of the way that FLEX operates.”

That storytelling capability is proving invaluable with university leadership. KSU recently completed a major build-out of their University Concerns and Student Grievances processes — partly driven by accreditation requirements — and Advocate made the case easy. With everything consolidated in one system, teams can now connect the dots across cases.

“We’re able to piece these puzzle pieces together because we’re all integrated together in one system. That leverage of knowledge is really interesting,” Dr. Lesicko says.

Support That Feels Like a Colleague

Dr. Lesicko is quick to credit Symplicity’s client support team, especially client manager Brittney Brackett.

“Brittney is still one of those people that I talk to on a very regular basis. Sometimes I’d say, ‘It would be really cool if the system could do this,’ and most of the time she’d say, ‘It does.’” She laughs: “I think we’ve now gotten through all of those. But I still call her.”

That kind of partnership — responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely invested in client success — is something Dr. Lesicko says has been a hallmark of the entire Symplicity relationship.

The Bottom Line

For institutions weighing a system change, Dr. Lesicko’s advice is simple:

“You don’t know how powerful the system really, truly can be until you have the opportunity to get into it. It’s not hard. Once the system is built, it is incredibly easy to edit and change and evolve with your campus.”

At Kennesaw State, Advocate isn’t just a student conduct tool. It’s the connective tissue of an entire campus operation — and a platform that, four years in, Dr. Lesicko says she couldn’t be more impressed with.

Want to test out FLEX for yourself? Let's talk about Advocate today.