PeopleAdmin Higher Ed Platform, from Powerschool vs. PowerSchool Student Information System

Organizations who have very few applications and/or very few positions posted are probably less likely to benefit as high from PeopleAdmin. Large organizations who have several positions and/or several applications/applicants can definitely benefit from this product. This product is not as well suited for performance management as I had hoped because there is not a lot of freedom to creating and designing different evaluations for different position types in the system when you have an organization that has thousands of different employees and types.

Incentivized

PowerSchool Student Information System is a cool software that can be highly recommended to anyone who is living in the educational management space. It is proven that this software can reduce your manual workload massively if you use it right. Plus it is really worth the price you pay. Especially if you are in the administrative field, this software will help you to minimize manual efforts put into student registrations, staffing recruitment, and main resource management processes.

Incentivized

• Applicant tracking was a good use of this tool for our department. I think it could use a few more customization features but overall it was a good tool to weed out applicants who were not qualified for the position.
• The system has some canned reporting tools that also worked well for our department and management needs.
• It was a great place to house our position descriptions and provided a readily accessible source for hiring managers to make requested updates and changes and for employees to see and have access to their position descriptions.

• PowerSchool houses student or staff information that can be easily accessed by those teachers and administrators who need the information. This allows everyone to go to one place to access information.
• Parents can view their child's grades at any time with their protected login on a parent portal. This allows teachers to keep parents informed and involved in their child's progress at school. When everyone works together it increases our students' chance for success.
• PowerSchool offers videos to train new users. When we have new employees, the videos can be accessed at any time the employee needs as opposed to them waiting for someone to help them.

Incentivized

• PeopleAdmin's internal report writer needs work. Currently, in version 7, reporting can only be done requisition number by requisition number. The report writer needs to be modified so it can create reports enterprise-wide.
• PeopleAdmin's Data Mart product needs substantial modification. In version 5.8, on a monthly basis, PeopleAdmin provided us with an Microsoft Access database containing our historical data up to that period end. In version 7, the "Data Mart" contains our historical data. The Data Mart consists of over 300 files. These files are not database table downloads nor is it parts of a database data dump. Rather, the files appear to be scrapes from html pages. They contain html codes and other character data that needs to be cleaned before they can be uploaded. The files are not in a table-by-table format. Any one file can contain data from two or more tables. The format of the Data Mart makes it difficult to load the data into a database and format it in a table structure that is comparable to the Access database provided with version 5.8.

• Does not consistently communicate with related software such as Illuminate for Special Education Students.
• Drop down menus frequently refresh as data is entered which slows down the user's ability to enter information.
• Icons are sometimes unclear and not easily understandable. Word labels for some items might be more effective.

Incentivized

We are evaluating our options as it relates to PeopleAdmin. We are likely to renew as we can not find another product that gives us the functionality we have with PeopleAdmin 5.8 in the area of Position Description. Outside of that, we would likely be close to finding another product solution.

We would be starting over at square one if we did not continue our PowerSchool subscription. We do not have a program in a place that would take its place.

Incentivized

Great features, but it can feel very cumbersome at times

Incentivized

Overall, I have not had to use support for PowerSchool Student Information System because our school district gives us training in each area in which we will be utilizing PowerSchool Student Information System. In terms of in-user support, I feel that there is mild to moderate user support that is built into PowerSchool SIS.

Incentivized

I've used both Target Recruit and HR Smart. When working with Target Recruit it quickly became apparent it was not the right solution for us. Another solution we examined prior to selection PeopleAdmin was iCIMS. iCIMS is a very social system but was not as familiar with the Higher Education recruitment processes as was PeopleAdmin.

Incentivized

I have heard good things for Infinite Campus and Skyward. I would [evaluate] each of them and see what fits your needs. Each has their strengths and weaknesses and so picking the right one for your needs is important. PowerSchool [Student Information System] does have some great features, but lacks some fundamental reports and functions to make it top notch.

Incentivized

• We are now able to track our recruitment sources to determine our ROI on university paid subscriptions.
• We have reduced our recruiting approval review times by 50%
• We have identified areas for improvement substancially by having robust reporting available at our fingertips.

• It has created shortcuts for all staff members, saving us time.
• In creating shortcuts and combining many different systems into one, it is saving our school money.
• It has created a safety net for teachers because grades and student information is stored electronically, which means teachers not having to worry about losing or misplacing their grade books.

Incentivized