Item: Veracross
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Veracross is our new school information system. It's replacing Blackbaud's Education Edge. We're implementing Veracross over a 3-year period... year 1 (now) is the school data (gradebook, attendance, school directories, etc.). Year 2 is our Business Office implementation (replacing Sage50) and Year 3 will be the Advancement Office (replacing Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge). Blackbaud announced that they were sunsetting Education Edge and we found their replacement platform lacking so we went through an RFP process which resulted in the selection of Veracross.

Pros and Cons

mobile-friendly portal for staffulty, parents, and students
built-in or easy-to-configure integration with other systems (for example, RankOne and Naviance)
targeted messaging based on data within the system
"where is student now?" is one-click away

it's easy to get data OUT of Veracross but their data import features could use some improvement
they recently changed their knowledge management and help desk system and are still experiencing some growing pains with that platform (for example, I believe that any error message a system throws should be easily and readily searchable in the KB; that is not currently the case)
it's early but we've identified some inconsistencies in some displays and while many displays offer a field to specify the sort order, some important ones (teacher schedule, for example) do not and it's a lot of cognitive load to decipher some of those (seemingly unsorted) screens. Sorting by an internal ID field that is not controllable, not editable, and not over ridable (with a sort key) is a poor choice.

Most Important Features

single record for the life of the individual (applicant to student to donor to parent)
ease of integration with third-party platforms
well prepared and well executed training modules

Return on Investment

tasks that used to take 30 minutes can take as little as 30 seconds (I'm not exaggerating)
it's a complex platform so there is signficant investment in both training and data preparation (for conversion)
it's really expensive (but over time will pay for itself with systems we can sunset and attrition that we don't need to replace)

Alternatives Considered

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Veracross had superior support, training, and integration with other systems.

Key Insights

Do you think Veracross delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Veracross's feature set?

Yes

Did Veracross live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Veracross go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Veracross again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Excel, Blackboard Learn, Lobby Track

Likelihood to Recommend

Veracross' only customer base is private, independent, K-12 schools. In other words, they're not spending resources on configuring the next state-mandated report in Alaska. They're only dealing with private, independent, K-12 schools. Towards that end, their management of student/teacher/school data is excellent. I have read, though have no direct experience yet, that their Advancement module is less well-suited to sophisticated fund-raising activities. Similarly, their LMS is somewhat lacking. This doesn't affect us directly, and I hold out hope that their API will continue to evolve and mitigate some of these limitations.

Expensive, but worth it... take the long view of your data

Overall Satisfaction with Veracross