Jenzabar ONE vs. Jenzabar SONIS

Jenzabar ONE is strongly suited for an all-in one solution for higher ed. The modern web-based platform make it efficient for end users. An institution that wants a full communication platform to connect with students, Jenzabar is the right product for your school. As with any product, development with Jenzabar One continues which is a good thing but also may cause some schools to want more features more quickly.

Incentivized

We often had students who came and took a class or completed a program, left, and then came back for something else at a later time. It was nice to be able to have someone in Jenzabar SONIS with multiple statuses. They could be in as a Student for the current class while still being in as an Alumni for the program they had graduated from. Most of our programs are set up so the students within that program are all taking the same courses at the same time. The bulk registration feature made it easy to enroll one student and then use that student's enrollment to quickly enroll all of the others in the program. That was a huge time saver. We had letters and emails that we wanted to send out at specific times in the application process. The Activity tool in Jenzabar SONIS made it easy for us to have some things that were automatically added to a person's record and others that we could add as needed. We could then run timed letters or emails and get our communication sent out. We had some challenges with Jenzabar SONIS because we have a number of certificate programs that are only one semester in length. We often had students who would complete one certificate (program) in the fall and then complete another one in the spring. Many of the reports pulled data only for the active enrollment so we had to go back and manually pull the data for the enrollment from the other semester if we needed something for the full school year.

Incentivized

• Jenzabar ONE makes working within the system possible and secure using remote and WFH options.
• Jenzabar ONE is adept at managing the central functions of the Registrar's Office.
• Jenzabar ONE is capable and adequate for student accounts and billing.

Incentivized

• Great value
• Built in reports are great, but it also has add on reporting that is fantastic.
• Hosting they offer is phenomenal nearly no downtime, ever!

Incentivized

• the Help system does not always correlate to the current version, so updating that with each update would be very helpful
• a method to test users' permission would be very helpful
• it is sometimes tricky trying to figure out which functions to assign to users, so making that process more clear would be great

• SONIS sorts my advisees by class and then by name. This is NOT useful. There should be an option for sorting by name only. I advise almost fifty students. It wastes my time looking for them in the sophomore listing, then the junior listing......
• When registration of a student for semester courses is complete, there should be an option to print out only the courses scheduled, NOT the entire page which shows available courses at the bottom.
• SONIS sometimes kicks me out for no reason.

Incentivized

Jenzabar ONE is good at what it does. Given our discounting structure within the association of colleges and universities of which we are a member, the ROI on Jenzabar ONE beats the pants off anyone else's offerings. Switching horses mid-stream would be costly and difficult. Fortunately, Jenzabar ONE has the general capabilities we seek.

Incentivized

Jenzabar ONE has 90% of the capabilities of of its competitors, and a price point significantly below those products. Both Banner and PeopleSoft provide capabilities that exceed what we need. Paying for those additional features is not cost effective. In short, Jenzabar ONE does nearly everything we need, and both Banner and PeopleSoft only offer extra capabilities we will not use.

Incentivized

We changed databases in 2011 because the company we were with was going to quit supporting our software. We evaluated a number of different SISs available at the time and felt Jenzabar SONIS provided the best tools for our school. Most of the others were either geared more for adult education, individual course offerings or for schools that primarily had degree-seeking students. We needed something that could address both needs.We felt Jenzabar SONIS did that best of the ones we reviewed.

Incentivized

• Implementing the new admissions portal has led to a 12% increase in enrollment as we were able to spend time directly working with students with how it automated previously manual tasks.
• The ACH and credit card payment portal with self-selection of student payment plans has allowed the business office to collect 70% of what we used to send to collections.

• Facilitates grade input by faculty.
• Facilitates course enrollment by students.
• Facilitates viewing student records and determining progress to program completion.

Incentivized