Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
Overview
What is Blackbaud Education Management Solutions?
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,…
Recent Reviews
I use EMS daily in Admission for intake of inquiries and applications to our school, running lists and data, and management of the current …
Blackbaud makes LMS Easy.
Blackbaud serves as our Learning Management Software. It allows us to have a place to record student grades, assignments, attendance, and …
Admissions Feedback
We use Blackbaud Education Management during the Admissions process from prospective family engagement, capturing recommendation forms, …
Clunky, non-user friendly system with poor customer service
1 out of 10
March 28, 2022
Our whole organization uses Blackbaud Education Management Solutions. We use it for class management, grades management, and scheduling. …
Wish I had more help
It is being used within the entire school system as the learning management platform. It is also used for course requests.
Blackbaud to Whipple Hill and back again.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is used campus-wide as our primary solution for managing student information, learning …
Blackbaud Education Management Will Grow With Our School Into the Future
Our whole school, PK-12, uses Blackbaud Education Management solutions. It provided a more robust alternative to the previous education …
Connected System Helps Technology Just Work So Learning Can Take Center Stage
Blackbaud Education Management is the core of our education technology systems. We use it for our Student Information System (SIS), …
Blackbaud Education Management Review
It is used school-wide as our SIS and SLS. We also use the Enrollment portal.
A Solid Product Overall
Our organization is using the Blackbaud K-12 LMS and CMS. We are not using the Fundraising/Advancement products or the Admission products.
A good system at a good value
It is being used across departments- admissions, registration, advising, student portal, financial aid, and billing. It houses all of …
Great, with a few minor concerns
We use Blackbaud Education Management Solutions across our school, for all students and teachers.
Enrollment Management - Improving product
We use Enrollment Management on a daily basis. This is one product of the larger [Blackbaud Education Management Solutions] being used …
All in one comprehensive and effective CRM solution
Many of our platforms like WordPress, Raiser's Edge, Team Raiser, Luminate Online, NXT are being used by us. It's very …
Work needs to be done
It is Being used across the whole organization. Switched SIS almost 1 year ago. I had used Education Edge for 3 years prior to changing …
Awards
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Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is Blackbaud Education Management Solutions?
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 with 24/7 cloud access to submissions, assignments, discussions, online communities and tools.
Blackbaud Student Information System™: A source of data and information, ranging from schedules and grades to course requests and attendance history.
Blackbaud School Website System™: It allows users to leverage all the information sources within a school community for website content purposes. It allows schools to update content, change design, add pages, and create new sites with ease.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Screenshots
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Videos
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Competitors
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Countries | United States, Canada |
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
Veracross, Senior Systems, from Community Brands, and FACTS Student Information System are common alternatives for Blackbaud Education Management Solutions.
Reviewers rate Blackbaud Learning Management System highest, with a score of 7.3.
The most common users of Blackbaud Education Management Solutions are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(228)Attribute Ratings
- 7.5Likelihood to Renew9 ratings
- 6.9Usability5 ratings
- 7Support Rating115 ratings
- 7Ease of integration21 ratings
- 6.9Blackbaud Enrollment Management System79 ratings
- 6.6Blackbaud Student Information System86 ratings
- 7.3Blackbaud Learning Management System79 ratings
- 6.5Blackbaud School Website System67 ratings
Reviews
(1-3 of 3)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 17, 2022
Blackbaud to Whipple Hill and back again.
Director of Information Services
Burr and Burton Academy (Education Management, 51-200 employees)
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is used campus-wide as our primary solution for managing student information, learning management, admission/enrollment, public website, and athletics/extra-curricular, advancement, conduct, and accounting. Teachers post and students access class materials, assignments, assessments, grades, and schedules; teachers record class attendance, communicate with students and parents, view student progress and permissions/clearances for extracurricular activities; parents view student info, progress/report cards, and submit online forms. Grades and attendance data fuel program to determine and support at-risk students and eligibility for extra-curricular activities. Data also drives review of gender-based performance differences and classroom space utilization. Off-campus tutors access course information to keep in sync with on-campus classes. Resources are posted such as information sheets, how-to videos, school and area resource links, calendars, etc. Athletic teams, games and practice schedules, and results are managed. A school store sells logo'd products. Event registration and online giving is utilized. Parents, students, and employees access the authenticated area of the site while all the public-at-large access the front-face website. Tight integration with G-Suite augments Blackbaud and enhances collaboration.
- Classroom management of rosters, assignments/assessment, and grading at a class grade book level and grades for report cards. The grading function is flexible in terms of how a teacher might manage their class grade book and support consistency for rolling up grades for report cards.
- "Pushpage" communications to constituents is a powerful tool for targeted messages and for tracking results of messages read, bounced, opt-out, and clicked through.
- In attendance management, there is a nice feature to alert parents and staff when a student reaches a threshold for number of times tardy. It is difficult to do the same for absences ... we have a policy that when a student reaches a threshold of number of classes absent, their grade starts getting reduced for each additional absence. This is hard to track at a class level ... 5 absences could be 1 day out missing 5 different classes or it could be across multiple days and be 5 misses of the same class.
- Online forms have good basic functions, however, additional formatting control and ability to include/merge more data from student records would greatly add value.
- easier integration with other SIS / LMS ... like CANVAS and google classroom
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.
- All teachers use the grade book and report card grading functions. This is a big positive for teacher time as well as for administration.
- Online course materials, assignments, and assessments have help reduced paper usage.
I am generally quite pleased with support so I give it a 8 - really hard to get a a top score from me. I find the support online chat to be most useful ... generally short queue times and always good support reps. This rating is for the support operation. Expanding beyond the support operations and reps, I am somewhat less satisfied with the responses ... "... not supported ...". The support department organization often completely resolves my issue and/or answers my question. But, despite quick and professional support, I may still have an unmet destire/need.
- RUVNA
- Pick A Time
- GSuite
- CANVAS
Blackbaud offers various approaches to integration including a full API. Some integrations were simple, like RUVNA and Pick A Time. Some a bit more complex, like GSuite. While others, like CANVAS, was a full coding / development effort.
- File import/export
- Single Signon
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
Go searching in forums. There is a rich community of users sharing questions, ideas, challenges, and solutions.
2100
Students = 760 Teachers = 78 Staff = 50 (primarily: business office = 3, advancement = 6, enrollment = 4, counseling = 7, admin = 10) Parents = 1200
2
Beyond the obvious strong general computer skills ... A strong data skillset is valuable for integration support and for extracting / reporting beyond canned reports and lists. People skills ... have to work with the users. Big picture skills ... support often comes at an individual level, but, a view of the big picture and interdependencies of process and information is valuable.
- Support for CARS (Care for At Risk Students) helping to highlight students with low academic performance to target additional student services.
- Extra curricular eligibility ... gradebook data feeds a dashboard highlighting students at risk of becoming ineligible due to poor grades.
- Space (buildings/rooms) utilization data is being used to inform planning for a new facility design.
- Learning management, report cards, transcripts
- Sharing of specialized student support plans (IEP, 504) with teachers.
- Website public/frontend
- Expand to include alumni
- Take advantage of admission event scheduling (prospects self help to available visit schedule slots)
- Expand to use proficiency based model
Meeting our needs. No gaping holes motivating need for change.
Canvas, Google Classroom, FileMaker Pro
Yes
Rediker - not sure direct reasons for replacement as it was before my time here
- Product Features
- Prior Experience with the Product
prior experience demonstrated the value
a better organized cross-discipline "team"
not sure of our specific support agreement
Yes
I have seen some bugs that I reported get fixed very quickly, other longer time and others still on a queue
Would have to look back at details, but, a particular case was causing difficulty for teachers to view assignment information. I felt my case was the first one to report the issue and there was a fix posted the same day. But, may times, I a strong and quick answers that help me over hurdles in my path.
- lists (student, users, courses, etc)
- some nice integrations, for example, with Pick-a-time and RUVNA
- view student progress (as student, parent, advisor, etc)
- Forms (applications and school forms): I always want more control over forms such as conditional logic, better validation controls, cleaner handling of households (with both physical and mailing address) and separate households.
- programmatic access to form submission info (via API or Advance Lists).
- producing mailing labels (in general and specifically for various addresses for a given student/family)
Yes
many users access via the mobile interface, works fine when I do, no negative feedback from users on the mobile interface.
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.
April 27, 2021
Blackbaud is a good solution
Verified User
Administrator in Corporate
Education Management Company, 11-50 employees
The platform is being used to manage all aspects of the school. Our goal is to have all staff use it - from teachers to all administrative staff. It is keeping all the pertinent data in one place for the school and is being used to help digitize past records for alumni whose info we would be using fundraising.
- It helps the staff easily keep track of records.
- Enrollment is up to date.
- Communication with constituents is more frequent.
- I am unable to find easy tutorials to provide to parents and teachers.
- Finding workarounds to implement.
- Sometimes the customer support does not know the answer to a question.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is great for younger parents since they are usually on their phones and check their emails throughout the workday. The older crowd has a hard time integrating and still require information to be printed out and delivered or to receive phone calls. Some school staff have a harder time catching up with the program.
- Prospective parents are impressed by the technology.
- Teachers have direct access to parents and vice versa.
- Getting the most out of your money tends to be hard.
In our experience, Blackbaud has always been helpful in some way or another when we call. The only frustrating thing is that you have to keep calling in order to get a second opinion. It would be nice to have the same information every time you call. There is always a need to find work around to the solutions the school is looking for
- Finalsite
- Smart Tuition
- Outlook
Integrating Finalsite and Smart Tuition was fairly easy as both companies have agreements with Blackbaud. Integrating Outlook was different because Blackbaud has an agreement with Google products and not Microsoft.
- Microsoft Outlook
- Finalsite Payment Service
At the moment I have not read about any plans to integrate but it would be more inclusive to have other providers such as Microsoft to integrate.
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
The Blackbaud team does help customers to integrate products. They make the process seamless and are there should you have any questions. It would be nice if the process was easier but it is my understanding that if something is plugged in the wrong way you would need Blackbaud support to help anyways. Might as well go through the process together
I would like to have more options in integrated products. It is not as inclusive as it should be. This is probably due to the fact that companies have to have an agreement in place perhaps that is what is holding the process back. It would be easier if there was more support staff available to help customers for longer than 15 minutes
36
Many people use the software. they are teachers and staff with different functions. Admissions use it to track the student from inquiry to enrollment. The financial office uses the program for tuition management and teachers use it to keep in contact with parents via the topics pages. Parents use the program to access information
4
Managers of Finance, Admissions, and communications use the program on a daily basis. The people who use the program on a daily basis need to have a basic understanding of relational data in order to keep track of the changes. They are people who need to be open to change and ready to learn new things.
- data management
- paperless processing
- accessibility
- Emergency tracking of student record
- up-to-date information on student
- parents updating their own profile
- management of alumni
- automation of processes
- archiving classes to be used in the future
We are invested in Blackbaud, it was a process to get all parents to commit to the portal. At this point, we are committed to keeping Blackbaud for the next couple of years as teachers and the community are already on board. Blackbaud is helping the organization become better time managers.
No
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
While I was not part of the decision-making, the buying team was looking for an all-in-one product that would be affordable and sustainable for years to come. There were looking for something that would be user-friendly and have a short learning curve. Usability was an important factor because there isn't much time to train new users.
I would need to know more about the other program before purchasing. There are many features that are useful however we were not aware of them before purchasing the program. This would have been good to know, also if we had known how to program it for a school our size before purchasing it.
No. We are a small organization and would not be able to sustain having to pay extra for a premium use of Blackbaud to have an answer. The community seems to be sufficient for answers to be answered. There seem to be a lot of extras for the system to work well
We were once in need of raw data for emergency cards, we were able to get someone on the phone after hours. This has helped us tremendously in downloading all the information we need and manipulate it in a way that will be useful for years to come. We were grateful to have this solution
- application
- pushpages
- student profiles
- reports
- raw reports
- forms
- profile updates
Yes
The mobile interface is not competent with a mobile-first world. Our school applications are hard to complete on mobile. It is a constant struggle to have clients use a desktop to complete a school application. It would be great if it was more usable via mobile especially for internal staff to update items.
The program takes a while to get used to. Once you use it well, it is very useful but it takes time. There should be a training manual with the training videos to help new employees who are not used to the program to continue their job. It is overall usable but it takes some time to get used to.
April 27, 2021
Blackbaud Education Products Review
Technology Support Specialist
Jacksonville Country Day School (Education Management, 51-200 employees)
Currently, we use Blackbaud on a daily basis for attendance, class pages, development, and website management. We are very excited to start using the schedule feature for students. This will allow us to track students and classes at any given time during the school day. This is a great feature, but not very easy to get set up.
- Development database management through RE.
- User end experience.
- Online access to student documents.
- The admin side of the education products section can be cumbersome to navigate.
- Everything is built in a very visible block-like structure.
- Hard to get customize information in and out of BB, most of the time it requires paying for consulting hours.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a very specific type of solution and if your school is very dynamic or has custom needs, the software can be somewhat restrictive. When we went to BB On Products we ran into several situations of a "round hole and square peg" so to speak.
- We have saved a sum of money by now posting report cards online since we are no longer paying for paper or postage.
- Tracking of attendance has become much quicker and simpler since we upgraded to this software.
80% of the time I get a great support representative, but there are a few that could really use additional training in order to answer more advanced questions and issues.
- PickATime
- VisitU
The integrations were pretty seamless. However with blackbaud, Most if not all of their integrations are one Direction. Meaning Blackbaud Sends information out but you’re not able to send information back in real time.
- Magnus Health
Yes
- File import/export
- Single Signon
Nope
The integration itself is pretty straightforward. I just watch the information with the flow in both directions. Up and down.
Just know that your information will come from Blackbaud but information will not be received back from integration
45
Teachers
Admin
Support Staff
Admin
Support Staff
2
Advanced excel knowledge
data management
knowledge of web design is a plus
data management
knowledge of web design is a plus
- Digital Report Cards
- Extracurricular Activities Attendance
- Grade Management
- Assignment distribution
- Student database
- Completely remote teaching
While their software is great for an end-user. It can be quite cumbersome in the backend. There are some things that are frustrating especially if you do not perfectly fit their dynamic of a school.
Not Sure
- Product Features
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
The user end experience is the sole reason we chose this product.
We would look more closely at the back end and how information is entered and managed.
Not Available
Yes
The issue was submitted to a developer and we never got an answer. I later had to work on my own hours to create a solution.
When the chat function was introduced the wait time for more simplified issues became very fast and effective.
- Attendance features
- Posting school information
- Slip households
- Not having a high school style schedule
Yes
It scales well, but it does add steps/layers to access things
Outward facing it is very nice. For you in the backend there will be frustration