Item: Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
Rating: 2
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Education Management Solutions (formerly Blackbaud K–12 ON Solutions)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using the entire suite of Blackbaud's Education Management Solutions. It is supposed to allow us to consolidate our student and alumni data in one program to allow access to the information as our clients move from an applicant showing an interest in attending our school through their four years in our school, and afterward as alumni. We also use their accounting program to manage our financials and control our student billing. Once the data for a student is entered, it is shared across the programs in the platform. Using Blackbaud Education Management Solutions prevents the entry of duplicated data that would be required with a non-integrated system.

Pros and Cons

Pros

The company seems committed to updating the software on a regular basis, addressing concerns that the user base raises in the on-line discussion board.
I find their support prompt, and it never seems to be a long wait to get an answer, even if the answer is a non-solution to a problem.

Cons

Stop updating the programs in the middle of the week when you change the functionality of the programs and the features we have become used to using get removed or moved.
Stop buying companies and trying to integrate that company's program and/or features into what used to be a solid program that worked how we wanted it to work. You are trying to become everything for everyone, and you are becoming nothing for most.

Return on Investment

It saves time for us since we are not having to re-enter applicant data as student data, then as alumni data.
It caused us lost time waiting for program fixes when it doesn't work as advertised. For example, when it did not correctly calculate GPA's it caused us a huge delay in sending out transcripts. It was very embarrassing to have to tell people why they had not been sent or published.

Support Rating

It has always been easy to get a live person. Unfortunately, the support person in the queue who picks up our call is not always the best suited or most qualified for our problem. We have had days go by with no response as to the status of our problem or question. When the program doesn't work, and we have followed all the steps, we should at least be told, "yes, it is a problem with the program and we will get back to you very soon." We have had issues that caused us to stop working on processes, like scheduling or GPA calculations, when we were dead in the water and could do nothing until Blackbaud provided a fix. Since all programming is in the cloud, there was no previous version which we could revert to using.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited as an integrated program suite for schools. It fails miserably in my opinion as even a satisfactory solution. Having used Blackbaud Education Management Solutions for a year and a half now as a teacher, it is not user friendly and is barely sufficient for my purpose as a teacher. I find the learning management module a poor excuse for what a learning management system should have. It is not at all flexible and does not meet my needs at all. The assignment and assessment module is next to unusable as it has no feature to use a lock down browser, which means there is no security when a student takes a test. It is useless when I want to ensure a student's work is his and that he has not gone around the web for his answers, or used some other program to look at his notes while taking the evaluation. The learning management system is cumbersome at best when trying to create lessons. Some requests for features in the suggestion board have been there over four years and just marked "under consideration." I haven't touched on the problems our administrators have with other components.

Comments

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Using Blackbaud Management Solutions: Hold on to your hat