Alpha Computers vs. Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is well-suited for schools who are interested in having it as the central piece to their student suite. I've heard that it does integrate with some other Learning Management systems but we've found that having it all in one place has made communication, dependability, and transparency greater. We appreciate that the views are the same for parents, students and teachers so when teachers make up a bulletin board, they know that what the parent is seeing is the same as them.

Incentivized

• Incredibly easy to use interface for the User (parents, applicants, etc.).
• Ease of gathering data - Helpful lists, formulas, and reports.
• Time saver - Especially in the Admission office. Since everything is done digitally from the user through the employee, there is no need to hand-enter data; you just click the button, and everything imports or exports as needed!

Incentivized

• Lists -unable to just create a simple list of say 100 students of varying grade levels. Need to export, then whittle the list down. Super time-consuming. Not possible to run a list and then click the students needed from there.
• Reports - [I feel there is] not enough of a selection of "canned reports" and no ability to create your own reports
• Advanced lists - [in my experience] THE WORST - again creating more work - I spent over 3 hours trying to make an advanced list of all NHS eligible students, that included email addresses for the students AND the parents. Way too difficult and needs to be simplified
• Learning Profile: [I feel] Fields for the person creating a learning profile for a student are too small. It would seem like the developers creating this have literally no idea how complex some accommodations are. Many accommodations come directly from a physician.
• Checklists: Should be in Academics not just Enrollment Management
• Ideas: [I feel it's a] good concept, poor execution. Many of the people who are actively using BB do not have the time needed to submit an idea, know it even exists or have time to search and vote.
• Some aspects of Enrollment management should follow a student into Education Management. For example, [I feel]The Candidate Summary should be viewable once the student is enrolled. Converting a process from all paper to electronic-only works if the information is accessible to all pertinent staff
• [I feel] There are many more - do better!!!

Incentivized

We are just starting and highly invested in our journey and partnership with Blackbaud. We have committed to this system and are finding new ways to incorporate it into our everyday tasks. For example, we now track ACT and SAT scores in the test section for each student. This allows the counselors to easily look up any students test scores in an instant

Incentivized

Blackbaud EMS is very usable from my perspective. I am a power user and get lots of valuable functionality. It is, however, a complex system. Sometimes necessarily complex to accommodate flexibility for diverse customer needs. Some complexity seems unnecessary and/or hold-over functionality from earlier versions; nice to see this type being evolved away from over time. It is valuable to receive regular updates to the system along with good release notes of what changed and notices of significant changes in advance.

Incentivized

Always very helpful and informative. They always have an answer or are willing to research it. Also if the system has been down in after hours the emergency support has been helpful. I do use Chat primarily and I find if you ask a very detailed question they get straight to the point and support is very quick.

Incentivized

Blackbaud K-12 is very similar. I feel like I would be trading one set of issues for another so it's kind of a wash. We are very much hooked into the Blackbaud website with our Google SSO, SmartTuition, and Schooldoc integrations. It would be difficult for us to transition. That is the main reason I haven't really entertained other web firms.

Incentivized

• Integration between SLS and SIS is definitely a time saver for teachers.
• Integration with the 3rd party for conferences is working great for us. A lot of mistakes are avoided with parents not being able to schedule the wrong teachers.
• Attendance and conduct visibility is a great feature.

Incentivized