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Strong system working on getting even better
Updated August 04, 2020

Strong system working on getting even better

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

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

We use the platform across all divisions as our SIS and LMS.
  • LMS: flexible, integrates, fairly easy for faculty to use.
  • Support: Outstanding support. Their front end is truly exceptional
  • Responsive: As we moved to distance learning spring of 2020, they focused on development/enhancements on aspects of the product that supported distance learning based on suggestions in the community.
  • Cross-divisional course enrollment: A total nightmare having a middle school student enrolled in an upper school course. The enrollment is easy enough but good luck creating a report card, tracking conflicts in scheduling, etc.
  • Analytics: Getting better but attempting to get data out of the system to analyze is not intuitive. The new Insights feature is moving in the right direction but mostly focused on admissions and not academics at this point
  • Update releases: Blackbaud updates regularly which is great except their timing of releases can be lousy. For example, updating how the scheduling system works at the beginning of the new semester when students are attempting course changes, revamping the report card builder at the end of a marking period. Everything may be working fine Monday when you leave but then it is "changed" Tuesday morning. Also, when enhancements are released, they should explain how to use the new enhancements, not just announce they have been released.
  • SIS/LMS integration is excellent.
  • LMS strength has made distance learning during the pandemic much easier for teachers and students.
  • More time spent running analytics, much more time.
Thes best front end in the business. The Blackbaud support team is exceptional. Navigating the Knowledgebase is little cumbersome, but this has improved in recent years. Blackbaud University has some excellent instructors and provides a strong program to help educate users on to maximize the system. If you do not subscribe to the highest level of support, these courses can be pricey. Also, understand their tiered support system so you know whether or not you only have chat support or phone-in support.
LMS aspect is extremely strong. The user interface is intuitive and pretty easy to learn even for less tech-oriented teachers and families. Initial set up is extremely cumbersome and needs to be thoroughly planned prior to beginning—there are nuances that will sneak up on you and cause issues if not considered well in advance. An example is setting up your grade plans correctly so you can have report cards appear as you want. Be sure you speak in-depth with your product manager about importing data from your previous SIS and understand what will and will not be imported. It is very difficult to harvest data for analytics and Blackbaud's current analytics package is not as robust as I would like at this point.