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Blackbaud to the rescue!
November 07, 2020

Blackbaud to the rescue!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

We use Blackbaud Education Management Solutions across the whole organization for education management, Raiser's Edge, admissions, academics, etc. It is our database management, donor database management, platform for all academics (including database, online posting and submission of work, report cards), and all admissions and enrollment work including admissions profiles, enrollment, and reenrollment contracts.
  • 150-299
  • The help chat is amazingly efficient, professional, and helpful.
  • The structure and management of data for candidates for admission is superb and saves our admissions team a huge amount of time, enabling us to focus more on interactions with prospective families.
  • Core links all of our databases so that admissions, academics, and development share information efficiently.
  • In the Enrollment management portion, once a candidate has a profile and then registers for an event, there are too many required questions in event registration forms. In addition, each time a candidate registers for an event, I am asked to assign a checklist, which makes no sense since the checklist has already been assigned. This leads to many errors on the part of the admissions associate, who unknowingly reassigns the wrong checklist. This creates extra work because it generates duplicate candidates.
  • I still struggle with efficient and effective reporting. There is the analysis area, but then there are lists and advanced lists, and after more than three years I still have not come up with a smooth means of creating reports that have consistent information.
  • I wish there were an option in Enrollment Management for creating an event registration form intended for parents of candidates. When we host events aimed at parents, they have to register using the candidate's information, but they often do not understand that and register as themselves. If we don't catch that and go in and manually edit their registration forms, we end up with parents in the system as candidates. It can be a mess when many parents do this.
  • Huge amount of time saved
  • Much more professional look to our admissions process
  • Huge help during the school closure last spring--the academics piece allowed our school to deliver a seamless transition to distance learning because we already had a system in place for posting work, submitting work, and administering assessments all through Blackbaud Education Management Solutions.
  • Operational efficiency
  • Advanced automation
  • Improved internal and external communications
  • A connected school solution
We have achieved all of the above. If anything, we should be working harder to discover what else Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is capable of. We learned a tremendous amount about the capacity of the Academics piece last spring. As the enrollment manager, I hope to learn more about the capabilities of the enrollment management piece this year.
We use Raiser's Edge and are starting to implement Financial Edge. Both are extremely helpful.
I use the help chat and the knowledge database a lot--I literally could not do my job without these functions--and I have never been disappointed. The content of the help given is excellent, and the cordiality and professionalism of the agents offering support are superb.
The enrollment management system is great. I would like to have more flexibility in creating inquiry forms (require less info) and event registration forms. It would help me a lot of there were an option for an event registration for non-candidates. For example, if I am hosting an event specifically for parents, I'd like to have a form which does not require parents to fill it out as if the candidate would be attending.
This is not the system I use the most, but I know that it was a game changer for our school last spring when we had to close.
We use this, but it is not my domain so I cannot comment.
We changed to Blackbaud Education Management Solutions' website system tao years ago and we are thrilled with the result! This system gives us the autonomy we need to make changes, updates, and to restructure pages. The training process was excellent, and support is strong. We have never had such a successful website.
Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is well suited for any school, particularly if the school has more than 100 students. For a school smaller than that, I am not sure Blackbaud Education Management Solutions would be worth the investment. The switch over to Blackbaud Education Management Solutions was difficult, as is any change from one database management system to another, but the training along the way was excellent and the chat support has been superb. I find myself on the help chat at least once a week, and am routinely satisfied with the quick and effective response.