BrightHR vs. Skyward Student Management Suite

I feel Bright HR is well suited to most small/medium sized businesses where they have a 'straight' forward resource set up. For larger businesses or for complex businesses similar to ourselves, where we operate 24 hours per day, rotational shift patterns, ambulatory staff, locums etc...we have to 'fudge' the way we use the information sometimes to make it work for us.

Incentivized

There is nothing specific that I would say sets it apart from any other LMS, but once you are used to the user interface and various features, it does everything that is needed and integrates well enough with other software to function. Probably isn't necessary in a smaller setting, but for multiple building districts, it is certainly robust enough to handle data collection and storage.

Incentivized

• BLIP is working very well. Staff find it easy to use and the geo-fencing that can be set up is very useful.
• Reporting, in particular reporting of Absence. We run this monthly and the information we can download is flexible and useful.
• Sick analysis - helps in controlling absence.
• Holiday planning and authorization is very helpful and details including date booked helps manage requests.

Incentivized

• Flexibility. This multitude of fields available makes it easy to capture data the way we want or need to.
• Quick response to trouble tickets. The company strives to reach out to the customer within an hour and start the process of resolution.
• User focused. Improvements to the system always look at how the end user experience can be enhanced.

Incentivized

• Notifications for requests should be optional based on individual employees. For example an admin won’t necessarily want every staff members leave requests by email and push notification. The settings only currently allow for notifications for everyone or no one. Being assigned as a manager may not allow data viewing required of wider staff.
• Toil should automatically be accrued into a balance if the employees clocked in time amounts to more than the target hours. It shouldn’t have to be calculated and requested.
• When reviewing hours worked for the week, the history calculation should take into account approved leave and sickness etc. I have a staff members target of 37 hours, but if their hours show 29 hours worked then I have to work out why they worked less. It should account for this if the absence is approved.

• Confusion when it comes to student grades- sometimes there are two different letter grades for a student for what is posted as "TR1" and "PR1." How does a teacher know which of these grades will be posted to a student's report card? How does a teacher know what the student's actual grade is for a particular course?
• Switching between the Educator Access Plus and Student Management tabs can be complicated, especially for those new to the system. Why can't everything be in one place?
• I recognize that Skyward logs out after a certain period of inactivity to preserve privacy of users, but is there a way to change those settings so that Skyward does not log out as frequently? It is difficult to keep having to log back in completely again.

Incentivized

It's not entirely my decision - we are members of a 'community' of veterinary practices who have signed up to the contract with pensinusla and have bright hr as part of that contract however, I am usually involved in the tender process as I am one of the biggest users of both bright hr and the services from peninsula

Incentivized

It is the system I am most comfortable with, so having to learn a new system outweighs any problems I have with Skyward.

Incentivized

Great modern interface and mostly intuitive but feels like it needs a bit more functionality or improvement to be truly intuitive. For example, you get a notification that you have an overtime request, you click it and it doesn't take you to the page where you can authorize the request and when you do navigate to the right place and action the request, you still have to go back to notifications and mark the request as complete and remove it.

It takes some time to get used to navigating the features and layers, but once you know your way around it, it's pretty good.

Incentivized

The team are proactive, having an advocacy team is just amazing and a great way to really understand their product roadmap and have input into useful features or feedback

Incentivized

Overall great job, issues were taken care of. People in support do care.

Incentivized

it was fairly easy to do but timely as i had to enter everything from scratch - i didn't at the time realise how important it was to set up the variable or fixed working pattern correctly given future changes as this is very tricky once it has been set up and i wished i had been aware that sometimes you can't make future changes without deleting the whole profile and starting again

Incentivized

Yes, I was part of the implementation team.

Incentivized

I chose BrightHR as it offered a one-stop platform for HR management for which we have dedicated UK and ROI HR specialists who not only give HR advice but also write policies and handbooks, etc. They are a one-stop-shop, which was very important as when I signed the contract I did not have an HR person in my team and they were essentially my back office. Also, by signing up, I got access to Bright Safe too; which is great as again it's a one-stop-shop for Health and Safety in the workplace. So I can roll out toolbox talks, training, and accident management.

Incentivized

I, personally, have not used other Student Management Systems, but having used Skyward, I do not necessarily feel any overwhelming desire to seek out the competitive software programs. Skyward does what it says it will and provides my school district with an easy and organized way to share and access all of the relevant student and family information we need. It serves it's purpose well and meets our needs.

Incentivized

• Able to reduce one member of staff in personnel from 5 days to 3 days.
• Able to reduce time spent by payroll on holiday records significantly and improve accuracy significantly.
• Able to improve control of sick absence and improve record keeping.
• BLIP meant we did not need to buy expensive attendance software.
• Looking at possible use of payroll and other aspects of Bright HR not used at present.

Incentivized

• Overall, Skyward has had a positive impact. One way is the student information that is shared and available to see. If I need to know something about a student’s academic history, Skyward has it.
• Another way it has impacted our district is the way it has streamlined all of our payroll information. I can see check histories, different parts of my salary, and the year-end totals all in one place.
• Skyward has also made a big impact on our district by making it easier to communicate with parents. All the parents’ contact information is available and email is even included in the program.

Incentivized