I love EMS and think you should too
Updated August 23, 2019

I love EMS and think you should too

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

Overall Satisfaction with EMS Software

Our college has primarily used this to schedule all events and catering in campus. It primarily ran non athletic events, and we are now implementing the EMS course scheduling for the optimizations. A few specific departments really use it, primarily performing arts, and catering. Everyone else on campus uses it but not to its fullest extent and not if they can manage to not use it (no services or publicity required). The Grant and community outreach folks have finally discovered its usefulness for their reporting by principal investigators and for auditing purposes.
  • Room optimization
  • Parity for all users
  • Reporting
  • HVAC integration
  • Support (recent not past)
  • Customization of reports ( crystal or similar)
  • I sometimes feel like it would be interesting to get sandboxed versions of other users' really well implemented environments for others to look at. And probe into.
  • HVAC interation
  • Glance
It will control anything you want, you just need to take the time to program it
I feel like the key is to have the top admin. Higher education support without it a full implementation with all of the features is almost dead on arrival. User acceptance is the biggest hurdle in my mind, it lends itself to being used in many different ways if you are willing to think outside the box and let it manage your resources.

Evaluating EMS Software and Competitors

  • Product Features
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
Our initial purchase of EMS Software was driven by the need to capture revenue. Our previous system of managing spaces and resources was a 4 part carbon copy routed through campus mail. We wanted to be able to easily share in real-time with all departments on campus what spaces were available and or encumbered. We chose EMS for its ability to manage the space, people, and report on all of those things and handle the billing paperwork for our accounting folks.
We believed in the software and its potential so much that we chose to abandon our initial system setup, and invested the time and resources to implement the CPI and revamp our 8 year strong existing business practice and setup of EMS. This process was not easy but the EMS framework and our knowledge of its potential allowed us to reimagine how we used the system and to modernize our classroom assignments through PeopleSoft via the CPI and Optimizer. We ended up with a better system that more effectively meets the needs of our events, rental, academic, and records office users.

Using EMS Software

EMS provides an open ended software solution to manage resources that is robust and has some flexibility. The end users must be willing to try things out and have buy in from their constituents to really make the most of the system. Yes it can be used to track anything you can think of, but will everyone know and remember to use the system if it is not accepted or enforced?
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Convenient
Feel confident using
Slow to learn
  • Copying previous years reservations to new dates
  • Changing Dates or Times using the Wizard Features
  • Creating complex reservations through the Client application
  • Importing Large reservations using Tab Delimited files
  • Customizing reports from stock reports to fit user process needs
  • Integrating Campus solutions with People Soft for Academic Planning.