PowerSchool eSchoolPLUS vs. Salesforce.org Education Cloud

It is well suited for Charter Schools. I say charter schools because most charts are built from the ground up, and using a specific set of tools from PowerSchool will help all departments to work seamlessly together. The hardest part of the education process is being able to track your own payroll, PD, overtime hours, emails and messages, grades and documentation for students. Schools in perpetual existence have a hard time converting all their documents and processes to a brand new portal. However, new schools, private schools, charter schools, even new online universities would have an easier and much more effective time purchasing and using every single tool that comes from PowerSchool. I believe that it is bigger than just using eSchoolPLUS for education, but using efinance, and atrieve are important also. In terms of eSchoolPLUS it is useful in all schools because it does make the teacher's jobs easier. Managing curriculum, lesson and grade data is quick and easy and engagement is relatively simple on the website and on my mobile iPhone.

Incentivized

It is most suited for those within the education industry. For students and staff in particular, the Education Cloud allows seamless connectivity between each person and helps students stay on task. It can be very overwhelming as a student to have so many responsibilities in different areas, so Salesforce does a great job of offering many features that ease this process.

Incentivized

• One-stop resource for student data, from test scores to medical alerts.
• Parent information, including contact and custody details, are readily accessible.
• Clean and easy-to-use format makes finding what you need very easy.

Incentivized

• Great use of integrating across all aspects of enrollment.
• Easy to create tasks for counselors to remember to call prospective students and keep up to date on goals.
• Reporting is fabulous inside of Salesforce.
• All of the Apps in the App Exchange.

Incentivized

• It can be difficult to find information when first beginning with it.
• It can take many steps to perform one task.
• Can run slowly on certain networks.

Incentivized

• It’s hard to run reports or create working “views” for Enrollment/Student Advisor teams that include both Leads and Contacts in the same report.
• Some fields do not map from Lead to Contact object. When a student transitions from application to acceptance, some dropdown and fill-in fields completely disappear from the student’s page in Salesforce. Every version of Salesforce I’ve used has this problem.
• Salesforce overall is clunky and confusing for the average user. We require thorough Salesforce training for new hires on all teams because it’s not user-friendly or obvious what to click on to achieve a specific task.

Incentivized

It was really so easy to sign up and get going with the whole process

Incentivized

This would be the same reasoning as in the previous question. It is all about having enough bandwidth to run it across your district and buildings.

Incentivized

Reports do run in a reasonable amount of time based upon the number of entries you are working with. You are also able to continue working on other areas while the report is being created so your device is not tied up during this process.

Incentivized

People will respond on time even though Salesforce is such a large organization. This also includes various methods of getting support beyond just calling - they have dedicated reps, chat, chatter, etc that all make the experience more pleasant.

Incentivized

PowerSchool eSchoolPLUS effectively allowed for access to all data, while enabling links to other critical PowerSchool platforms like Kickboard, Enrollment, and other software platforms.

Incentivized

I have not used similar products and I am new to this role. Salesforce has been very easy to learn and I appreciate the support and ability to access the platform when I need to. I was able to easily learn the program and become skilled in what I needed to do. It also made the transition to digital forms quite easy

Incentivized

There are days when PowerSchool can be very slow when loading. You definitely have to make sure you have the bandwidth in your district to run the platform appropriately.

Incentivized

• Our Return on Investment is high, as it makes our jobs easier, allowing us more time to troubleshoot and train staff instead of digging for student information.
• Overall our business objective is to store and access student information quickly, efficiently, and securely. eSchoolPLUS allows us to do that.
• eSchoolPLUS has no negative impact on our ROI. Sometimes, after an update, there is a learning curve and bug fixes that need to be worked around, but in general, it is a great product and there is little downtime for our organization.

Incentivized

• Positive: Our entire company is more aligned because while still complying with FERPA, the right people have access to student records while also having the correct permissions.
• Positive: we can integrate with our partners who also use Salesforce, while still complying with FERPA.
• Negative: we've needed to hire a Salesforce Development team with multiple people to accurately customize the tool to work for us.

Incentivized