Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

I love all of the things BB has available though I don't think we use some things to the best that we can. We're all still learning and I appreciate the numerous training opportunities to help with that!

It's been great to have grades in a singular location. It's also made finding student information extremely easy. The conduct section could use some work to incorporate more of a positive behavior reward system model.

I love how all information is accessible on the cloud. It is very convenient for us to track the applicants recommendation forms, report cards and school visits (tour and shadow day/s). Committee Review is one of the best features that Blackbaud introduced, allowing all of our applicants to be viewed by our Admissions Committees while still keeping all financial information blocked by the committee.

In my opinion, their customer service is almost useless. I usually wait at least 24 hours for a response after opening a "ticket", and often the answers are incomplete. I recently inquired about allowing our 8th grade teachers to recommend students for grade 9 classes, and I feel the responder clearly did not test any of her suggested solutions before emailing them back to me, because I immediately realized the "solutions" didn't solve the problem. This is a common customer service experience. Then, after a full week of going back and forth, she told me she agreed the solution was impractical and complicated but that I should suggest it on the website.

I recently spent time trying to get information about using Blackbaud as our scheduling tool. It took multiple people to try to get an answer and then the answer did not even address what it was that I was looking for. I received an email with an answer that didn't even answer my question. Most of us dread having to go through customer service as it is not efficient nor responsive. Black baud could be a good product but lacks simple features that Schoology and some other LMS have. It would be to their advantage to have more accessible customer service and look at some of the other really good LMS systems out there.

Tough question ... direct experience at two schools demonstrate this is well suited to private prep schools. It is not clear to me in which schools it would be less appropriate. Perhaps, a school without a 1-1 tech program would find less value as this is all about the online experience.

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.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is well-suited for schools who are interested in having it as the central piece to their student suite. I've heard that it does integrate with some other Learning Management systems but we've found that having it all in one place has made communication, dependability, and transparency greater. We appreciate that the views are the same for parents, students and teachers so when teachers make up a bulletin board, they know that what the parent is seeing is the same as them.

The flow from Admission to Academics is pretty painless and set up nicely. What I do not like is that the parents who are existing parents and incoming parents can overwrite data in their accounts via admission.

A great feature is the built-in Intranet options. It's easy to use and customize. All of our constituents find it helpful.

For simple, small institutions, the solution will serve basic needs and be a workable SIS for a reasonably low cost. It is not yet ready to support larger institutions and in many ways still looks like a K-12 system instead of a higher education system. The upcoming integration with Financial Edge and the ability to connect with Raiser's Edge will be attractive for some users using those products.

Private schools where having a fully integrated solution is desirable.

Great for families when using Enrollment Management, but some parts are still a little makeshift on the back end.

Blackbaud Education Management Solution is the best tool or platform for those who are consistently work related to Manage student data, donor data, etc. It is a very good and effective CRM solution for managing data and records. It well suited if you want to make the system remind donors that when donors may have to lapse and need to revisit.

Well suited: Grading in real-time, locating students in real-time, communication with staff/advisees

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions would be best for medium to large schools, mostly located in one centralized location. If you were going from a largely paper-based records/admissions management system, you would see great gains in efficiency with a product like this. Small schools would not see as much benefit to the services offered compared to the price point of the software.

If you want to provide a more tailored user experience for your families, then I would recommend the Blackbaud solution. It is flexible enough to allow you to use the system in a way that best suits your school, and the seamless integration between the various modules provides a cohesive user experience. If you are a smaller school that does not have anyone with advanced technical expertise on your campus, it could be a challenge to get the system set up to meet your needs, but this can also be overcome with user training that Blackbaud can provide.

I really feel that if I took my business somewhere else I would have other issues that I would need to address. Ever since Whipplehill was acquired by Blackbaud, it has been less than a pleasing experience. Long wait times for support - not enough support. My account rep takes days to return my emails. It's really not a great way to run a business. They are trying to be cutting edge but they are behind with product development. I feel that is something Finalsite has done a lot better than Blackbaud.

Good for independent schools in the US, probably not so good in Canada due to lacking reporting support.

It has been a great product for our parents/guardians. I have had very few of them contact me to say that they cannot figure out how to navigate and use the program. It would be nice to be able to build some "open to all users" front end web pages without having to purchase onMessage.

It is perfect for schools with students and parents who are always connected to a device. I am not sure if it exists, but it would not be great for a school with students and parents who do not have easy access to the internet.

Well-suited to an environment that has the resources/manpower to dedicate significant time to training people to use the system, and there are people available to function as system administrators but who do not have much else in the way of responsibilities.

Very well suited for all aspects for TK - 12 Schools.

Needs improvement in reporting and the ability to query. The reporting leaves a lot to be desired. If it could be half as good as Education Edge that would be a huge improvement. I need the ability to print a report that has the master schedule and fits on one page. We need this by room number and by teacher - similar to what was offered in Education Edge. The current version crosses pages and does not keep the header rows of the matrix - making it impossible to read.

You can't beat the full portfolio of EMS, FE/FENXT, RE/RENXT. Blackbaud has become the standard for independent schools. The complaint I most frequently receive from constituents is the lack of customization. However, they don't fully realize it is a canned database and not a custom database built from scratch.