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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ellucian Colleague

    Score7 out of 10
    N/AEllucian offers Colleague educational ERP, including a student information system supporting higher education institutions with student admissions and registration, academics, curriculum management, and other aspects of student management.N/A

    Microsoft Dynamics GP

    Score5.4 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Dynamics GP is an ERP software with accounting capabilities. It includes various packs for customizability and features tailored to specific industries’ needs. GP is offered as a perpetual license or subscription.N/A
    Pricing
    Ellucian ColleagueMicrosoft Dynamics GP
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Ellucian ColleagueMicrosoft Dynamics GP
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Ellucian ColleagueMicrosoft Dynamics GP
    Considered Both Products
    Ellucian
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    33%
    Would buy again
    2 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    83%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    83%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Ellucian ColleagueMicrosoft Dynamics GP
    Student and Faculty Administration
    Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    7.8
    4 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    -
    Ratings
    Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology7.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Registration Management7.33 Ratings00 Ratings
    District Communications, such as messaging and alerting7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Roster Management8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform Customization8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher Self-Service8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Student Data Security8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community Support7.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Class Scheduling8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    State and National-level Reporting8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance Support8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher and Parent Mobile Application8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Payroll Management
    Comparison of Payroll Management features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    6.4
    20 Ratings
    17% below category average
    Pay calculation00 Ratings6.219 Ratings
    Benefit plan administration00 Ratings5.815 Ratings
    Direct deposit files00 Ratings7.518 Ratings
    Salary revision and increment management00 Ratings6.517 Ratings
    Reimbursement management00 Ratings6.016 Ratings
    Customization
    Comparison of Customization features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    4.3
    27 Ratings
    55% below category average
    API for custom integration00 Ratings2.526 Ratings
    Plug-ins00 Ratings6.021 Ratings
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    6.8
    40 Ratings
    18% below category average
    Single sign-on capability00 Ratings5.532 Ratings
    Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.140 Ratings
    Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    5.3
    41 Ratings
    38% below category average
    Dashboards00 Ratings3.429 Ratings
    Standard reports00 Ratings6.139 Ratings
    Custom reports00 Ratings6.439 Ratings
    General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
    Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    4.9
    48 Ratings
    44% below category average
    Accounts payable00 Ratings6.245 Ratings
    Accounts receivable00 Ratings5.736 Ratings
    Cash management00 Ratings6.236 Ratings
    Bank reconciliation00 Ratings5.541 Ratings
    Expense management00 Ratings4.431 Ratings
    Time tracking00 Ratings8.014 Ratings
    Fixed asset management00 Ratings4.328 Ratings
    Multi-currency support00 Ratings2.619 Ratings
    Multi-division support00 Ratings3.026 Ratings
    Regulations compliance00 Ratings3.214 Ratings
    Electronic tax filing00 Ratings9.012 Ratings
    Self-service portal00 Ratings7.012 Ratings
    Global Financial Support00 Ratings6.07 Ratings
    Primary and Secondary Ledgers00 Ratings4.721 Ratings
    Intercompany Accounting00 Ratings3.618 Ratings
    Localizations00 Ratings4.513 Ratings
    Journals and Reconciliations00 Ratings4.526 Ratings
    Enterprise Accounting00 Ratings2.616 Ratings
    Configurable Accounting00 Ratings3.517 Ratings
    Centralized Rules Framework00 Ratings3.214 Ratings
    Standardized Processes00 Ratings6.119 Ratings
    Inventory Management
    Comparison of Inventory Management features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    4.2
    26 Ratings
    54% below category average
    Inventory tracking00 Ratings5.524 Ratings
    Automatic reordering00 Ratings1.013 Ratings
    Location management00 Ratings4.018 Ratings
    Manufacturing module00 Ratings3.415 Ratings
    Order Management
    Comparison of Order Management features of Ellucian Colleague and Microsoft Dynamics GP
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Dynamics GP
    3.5
    25 Ratings
    71% below category average
    Pricing00 Ratings3.718 Ratings
    Order entry00 Ratings3.721 Ratings
    Credit card processing00 Ratings1.012 Ratings
    Cost of goods sold00 Ratings4.925 Ratings
    Order Orchestration00 Ratings4.99 Ratings
    End-to-end order visibility00 Ratings3.312 Ratings
    Order exception Resolution00 Ratings3.37 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Ellucian ColleagueMicrosoft Dynamics GP
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
    Score4.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    MYOB
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Ellucian ColleagueMicrosoft Dynamics GP
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.2
    (13 ratings)
    4.0
    (54 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.9
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    5.4
    (10 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    CPA Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ellucian ColleagueMicrosoft Dynamics GP
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Ellucian
    Ellucian Colleague is wonderful at streamlining processes and unifying data related to students, finance, human resources, and financial aid. It continues to support and manage administrative needs, enhance student experiences, and improve operational efficiency across the University. Ellucian Colleague is less suited for quick data retrieval and comprehensive financial reporting. These functions could use some improvement to optimize the user experience.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Dynamics GP is well-suited for our environment, as we pay a diverse group of employees, including on-the-road drivers, shop employees (some in other locations), and office employees. It easily tracks time off, taxes, pay, etc. The reporting allows us to verify with our drivers how they are paid each week, whether it be through mileage or stop-offs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Ellucian
    • Colleague Student allows us to integrate services across the university for students with staff in various departments able to see the information about a student that they need to serve the student well.
    • Colleague Student makes it easy to see our students current academic record as well as transfer courses (and information) and their past records here at the university. Our old system required a lot of homegrown connection points to be able to see all of this information. It was neither quick nor easy.
    • Colleague Student makes the registration process for our students much easier. Our old system was clunky and would often prevent students from registering for a class but not provide information for them about why. Colleague Student makes it easy for students to see if they are missing a pre-requisite, have a hold, etc., so they can know how to get their registration back on track.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Great Plains started as back office/accounting, and that is still it's strong suit.
    • SQL and the GP programming language, Dexterity, provide a robust, scalable, and stable platform with well documented maintenance and repair procedures. Relatively easy to manage, tune, and support.
    • Microsoft support for GP verges on "particularly well". Doesn't quite get there but good enough once you know what you're doing
    • Strong partner network, including the GP User Group (GPUG)
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Ellucian
    • Develop API's that are vendor agnostic rather than selecting specific vendors (Clearinghouse, ImageNow).
    • Colleague tends to be to reactionary to the changing needs in higher education rather than developing the future.
    • Hound clients to pay extra for consulting (consultants are usually bad), rather than helping institutions to use the product. Seems to be the first thing help line personnel jump to rather than working with clients to figure out creative solutions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • With respect to the allocations, once the expense is entered into the allocation account, you lose the ability to run any detail on just the total of the expense. It would be nice if you could run a trial balance on the allocation accounts the same way you can with regular accounts.
    • I've always thought security set up could be a bit simpler. It actually has gotten better through the years. Specifically, with eight separate entities, it would be nice to have a "master" setup where you could call up one group entity, assign the users rights, and then be finished. Currently, whenever I have a new user, I have to call up each individual entity and select all of the features I want the user to have. That means I have to do eight steps for each user.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Ellucian
    For decades, Ellucian Colleague has served the University as our primary student record-retention CRM. Its functionality has weathered many recent trends in CRM development and continues to produce the needed results for our constituency and the size of our university. We look forward to continuing to utilize Ellucian Colleague in the future.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Though it is a basic accounting package, I believe some users do not find the old style menus and navigation options intuitive. There is also a great lack of training resources in the market, so users have to learn the product without guidance a lot, resulting in inefficient workflows and misuse or misunderstanding of many features.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    The rating is directed to the thrid party serive provider that we use. I do not now how good the Microsoft direct support is.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Ellucian
    I did not use Jenzabar as extensively as Colleague, but they perform similar functions for student information tracking. I think Colleague is more appropriate for use across campus, as its student billing and scheduling options exceed Jenzabar. Jenzabar, however, offers better tools for use exclusively in student affairs. If an organization wants to track all student data, they should consider Colleague.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I come from a strong background of using SAP. SAP doesn't have the flexibility of GP, an example would be SAP doesn't allow core mods, if they catch you, you lose support. Microsoft doesn't really care about mods, but they will be quick to have the vendor you used support your issue if it is caused by those mods. With SAP your company adapts to the software, where with GP you adapt the software to you.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    The functionality that GP and related ISV solutions offer and the ease of integration of GP to other systems makes it an extremely scalable solution
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Ellucian
    • By keeping student's academic work, financial aid, and accounts receivable information in one location we are able to report without the need for data aggregation.
    • Colleague's web applications allow the students themselves to perform tasks such as enrollment without assistance from staff members.
    • Using customized rules that we can set up in Colleague we can trigger events to happen as data is entered. This eliminates the need not only for someone to remember to perform an additional task, but it also saves the time of performing the actual task.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics GP allows my clients to move from a paper or spreadsheet based company to an integrated, electronic, streamlined business. I love being able to help clients gain efficiencies through the use of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
    • Microsoft Dynamics GP allows for better customer service because everything is at our fingertips. If someone calls questioning an invoice, we can easily look it up. If someone calls stating they paid an invoice with a certain check number, we can quickly run a query to find that particular check number to see where it was applied.
    • Having everything on a single platform provides ease of use for upgrades, backups and end user training. There is only one software to learn!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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