Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a unified student management system for K–12 private schools. Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™: Gives schools and families the ability to track admissions progress from first impressions all the way through the application process to acceptance, enrollment, and tuition payment. Blackbaud Learning Management System™: Track students' academic performance and progression…
N/A
SchoolAdmin
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
SchoolAdmin helps private K-12 schools recruit, enroll, and retain more students through its software and award-winning customer support team. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, SchoolAdmin boasts their software is used by 500+ of the world’s most successful schools, big and small. SchoolAdmin’s mission is to help private schools—and the people who run them—thrive. SchoolAdmin is now part of Finalsite, since the March, 2021 acquisition.
SchoolAdmin is focused on the school and admissions users. Blackbaud products were born for finance and fund raising. As a result, their admissions and school products are step children and not capable of the on-the-fly customization and adaptations that admissions people …
We compared a number of options in considering a new admissions software platform. In the end, customer service, search and reporting capabilities, ease of use, and automated processes made SchoolAdmin the right choice for us. Cost wise, SchoolAdmin was comparable to other …
Blackbaud's enrollment management product, OnBoard, was extremely clunky and did not support an online review process. The CRM was also not great. The only benefit of it was that it was a seamless experience, as Blackbaud is our academic software. The import/export from …
A good, and constantly improving solution for private schools. I don't know that a lot of its functionality would be well suited to public schools, but maybe? The integration with other Blackbaud software is a huge plus for us, as we have several of their other products including their flagship Raiser's Edge. Smaller schools may not need the sophistication of Blackbaud solutions, and it is not an inexpensive option.
SchoolAdmin has been great to work with and the advantages of the product definitely outweigh the disadvantages. With the frequent turnover in admissions offices, it is nice to have a product that is simple to use, easy to train on, and easy to learn quickly. Also, customer support has been great, and we really put them through their paces and they never complain. They also use their support team to help train you - not just give you a fish, but teach you to fish so you can problem solve on your own.
The online application and checklist - because it is highly customizable, fairly intuitive, and quite effective for managing all the moving parts of our application process.
The online enrollment checklist, forms, and contract - because of the level of customization, the level of professional appearance, the ease of tracking and managing students in the enrollment process, the integration it provides to our FACTS billing and payment system.
The communications system - because of the possibilities for both internal and external communications are so vast, the ability to produce highly customized, personalized, and segmented emails, text messages, and/or physical letters, and the relative ease of use.
Not being able to customize displays, for example, Grading tab - we just finished 1st semester and teachers could only see the current quarter but not the 1st one which is still part of the first semester. Lack of customization in assessments.
Scheduling- even though re-running generating schedules, we're still getting a high number of unscheduled students. Lack of being able to limit the number of scheduled classes in a row for teachers.
It is a solid product. We have some issues with the capabilities of the website building components and the out dated technology behind its communications software but overall Blackbaud Education Management Software services to combine numerous functions into one product.
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.
Decent support however the chat feature can take a great amount of time out of the workday. If for instance you are waiting for someone to respond in the chat and there is a fire drill, if you are not responding within a few minutes, you are disconnected and have to start all over again. It would be great if you could submit your problem and then whoever has the most experience, can respond. The training in the Blackbaud University is good but also time-consuming - a 3 hr training in the middle of a workday is a lot to ask. I like the 90-minute sessions. It would also be great to offer a shorter webinar to update on any changes implemented. Other than the email I subscribed to, there is no information on how these updates actually work.
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.
Blackbaud's enrollment management product, OnBoard, was extremely clunky and did not support an online review process. The CRM was also not great. The only benefit of it was that it was a seamless experience, as Blackbaud is our academic software. The import/export from SchoolAdmin into/from Blackbaud has been no problem.
Negative - The rollout is brutal. Blackbaud said it could happen in 6 months, but that is definitely not a reality. It will take well over a year, and one complete school cycle to actually integrate everything correctly.
Positive - The amount of time saved in data processing has allowed our office to become more involved in other areas of the school.
Positive - The ease of having everything in [one] place, from inquiry to application to contracts and course registration, has been a HUGE benefit to our applicants and their families.
