Ellucian

Great Tracker

Vantagens:

With the new implementation of the Graduate College student tracking has become a higher priority. With this software our department is able to track students from start to finish. We house the most graduate students in our college and it’s been a hassle to maintain . But this program was able to help us identify what was holding students up (Thesis). After this we made changes to our requirements and also implemented a milestone tracker which has help every single student.

Desvantagens:

I have no cons so far. Everything has been great on my end.

University Accounting

Comentários: Overall we are very satisfied with Ellucian. It provides our business and finance team books that are used for easy reporting and a clean UI interface.

Vantagens:

I have been a user of Ellucian banner for over six years and have been through countless updates. The product keeps improving where I think things are already good, and is quick to address current issues. Our organization loves the fact that we can use a web based version as well. Additionally, the UI is very clean and I can understand what is affecting our balance sheet, income statement, ect., all at a quick glance. Finally, the reports that are generated from Ellucian are very helpful and make it so I can create accurate reconciliations.

Desvantagens:

The one problem we run into with Ellucian is that training to use the product is difficult. Many screens have specific acronyms to access them, which is hard for people to remember. However, they have introduced a search function that allows you to use words and it acts more like a google search, which is helpful to find what you need.

Literally the Worst

Comentários: On top of clunky, unreliable system is a virtually non-existent customer service/support team. You can post/reference questions to/by other users, but other than that you basically just get the 900 page technical manual and have to figure it out yourself. If you have a home-grown system and are considering making the switch to Ellucian--don't! Just wait a couple years for another company, like Workday, to develop a SIS that makes sense. Ellucian is a dinosaur.

Vantagens:

When Ellucian's products were first released--decades ago--they were cutting edge. Banner, their SIS (Student Information System) quickly became the industry standard for enterprise databases on college campuses which transformed the way higher education leaders use data to make informed decisions. Their products continue to be effective for large universities that have every module of Banner installed, i.e. have their entire campus from registrar to bursar to admissions running on an Ellucian solution. When used "out-of-the-box" it does its job, not easily or beautifully, but gets it done.

Desvantagens:

It's as if Ellucian (and their strongest competitor PeopleSoft) got comfortable once they dominated the market and just stopped trying to make the actual user experience better. They put on large, fancy conferences and have great branding, but using their systems is a NIGHTMARE. A different programmer designed every form/screen/section so they all function differently. Where two clicks should do, fourteen are required. The bugs far outweigh the features. Something breaks more often than it doesn't. It's awful, but they have us trapped because no one else can compete with them. Sometimes I think it would all be easier if we just used Excel to track student records! Since our school implemented Ellucian products 5 years ago, to the tune of millions of dollars, we've had to add 2 new positions in our office just to handle the tech components. And don't even get me started on what happens when you attempt to customize their products. Endless headaches.

Ellucian Banner SIS -- Solid Product In Use for Nearly 20 years

Comentários: Been using Banner since 2004 (and SIS since 2005). I serve as the manager of the IT team that supports the student offices that use the product.

Vantagens:

I commend Ellucian for recent updates they have made to the look and feel of the product. I find it now easier to use and easier to support (no more Java needed for the admin side!).

Desvantagens:

The number of Financial Aid releases is challenging. Plus, when we apply them we need to take our Banner Admin pages offline temporarily. It would be better if the Financial Aid releases were isolated so that we could apply them without taking all of Banner down.

Ellucian

Vantagens:

I like that you can see a lot of different types of information and don't necessarily need additional software to get the job done.

Desvantagens:

It can be difficult to navigate through the different windows until you are really well versed.

Not a good integrated solution

Comentários: Negative, frankly. While helpful and polite, the team seems too inexperienced to be of much help. In fact, Ellucian seems to cause most of the problems themselves through self-inflicted wounds. Each update or patch implements some new ‘improvement’ that breaks most workflows and processes built for the previous version. As such, the hope to get a slight improvement ends up costing weeks of manpower to fix everything else in the test environment over and over again.

Vantagens:

Ideally, when functional, the functionality between Ellucian products can be helpful. We use Banner and eRecruit CRM. We expected the CRM/ERP integration to be the best selling point when choosing the CRM application.

Desvantagens:

Despite being the same company, the products are not as seemless as we felt it should be. It took well over a year of implementation of the eRecruit CRM to customize it to fit with the Banner ERP. Even then, we still find issues where things are not being converted from one to the other well. One example, on the CRM, GB is the country abrieviation for the UK (Great Britain), but in the ERP, this is shown as Gabon. I’ve wasted so much time programming and converting little things like this that I find it hard to believe they were released by the same company.

The Industry Standard but why?

Comentários: This product is very commonly used and it feels like they rely on this fact to put in minimal efforts towards innovation. If you have a different option, I would recommend investigating that.

Vantagens:

This product is very commonly used in industry. The online support community around this product is very active and is very helpful when you encounter issues, bugs, odd behavior, etc. (which is often). It is based on a relational database so query writing is easy enough.

Desvantagens:

Software patches and updates from Ellucian are notorious for breaking various modules, connections between modules, etc. The UI is a very outdated model and tends to be very unfriendly for those who are not tech savvy. Customer service from Ellucian leaves a lot to be desired.

Ellucian was our school's SIS for 15 years

Vantagens:

I wish that I could say what we liked about this software, but there really is not anything to put here.

Desvantagens:

The system was extremely outdated. The portal experience (Luminus) to get in was awful. Even as they try to update that portal experience, it is simply putting cards and widgets where links used to be. But those things break repeatedly. As well, the lack of interconnection inside the system and with external tools is just plain weak. There is a reason Workday is starting to see so many adoptions in the market and that so many schools are switching out student portals for updated, contemporary, mobile friendly, inter-departmental software options.

It gets the job done

Vantagens:

Fully operational ERP, many different tools and options

Desvantagens:

The company itself is the worst. Their customer service is abysmal.

Amazing ERP system for higher education operations!

Comentários: I love the system, It has been utilized within my office and also in various departments within our university and it has been extremely useful for various items including institutional research integrations.

Vantagens:

I love how easy The program allows you to transition within the system. I think they really kept in mind the end users experience when utilizing the ERP system.

Desvantagens:

There’s not much that I did not like about the system, I love the fact that it integrated so many integral parts of the system that allows you to operate within one system to manage multiple areas.

Provide more support for end users!

Comentários: The underlying system is robust and stable, but difficult to manage, especially in terms of data entry and updates. Making changes can have unanticipated ripple effects.

Vantagens:

The end user product has good visual flow and is designed to protect student data.

Desvantagens:

This is not an intuitive system, especially to users making a transition from the company's older product which was not visually or logically similar at all. Support materials are not adequate on the web site, unless you are a (paying) implementation team member.

Difficult to use | Difficult to maintain | Expensive | Releases are poorly tested by Ellucian QA

Comentários: -Business users in all departments find Banner difficult to use
-Database engineers find Banner difficult to maintain
-IT staff finds Banner difficult to support Banner is obsolete in the technological age we live; there are cloud finance, HCM, CRM, and student information applications which integrate well with each-other and outperform banner in nearly every category.

Vantagens:

Customer support Is friendly and responsive.

Desvantagens:

-There is a Massive maintenance overhead -There is a need for business users to constantly watch the community for systemic issue and bug alerts -Documentation is intentionally over-complicated to encourage the purchase of Ellucian consulting -Implementation is more complicated than competitor applications due to the age of the product -Data is stored un-uniformly in 'shotgun' style in the database making migration away from banner very difficult. -There is no dashboard -- the entire user interface is a very weak showing -Self service is impossible to leverage for reliable company-wide / student-wide document delivery. -Almost no reporting capabilities are built-in; admins must instead write database queries for end users.

Great software!!! Easy to use and always updating?

Vantagens:

Lots of stuff! Love the new self service!! The innovation of Ellucian is amazing!!! They are helpful !!

Desvantagens:

Sometimes the cost are high for new products and innovations, but I understand they allot of work is done on their behalf.

Reliable and secure

Vantagens:

I like that it is reliable and secure yet it allows me to save my password to log on. Some sites are so secure they do not allow it and it makes it frustrating to sign in and out multiple times.

Desvantagens:

There are times when the system is down due to maintenance. That is only because my university will perform updates at times.

Recruit Pros and Cons

Vantagens:

Recruit has some great reports, integrates with both Eventbrite and Salesforce and can really streamline enrollment processes fo4 a school.

Desvantagens:

Implementation is painful, at best. Customer support is difficult because no one seems to understand the product. Customizing for a community college is difficult, as well.

Unfortunately...It' what we've got...

Vantagens:

I guess the only good thing I can say about this software is that it works (kind of) most of the time.

Desvantagens:

This software is the least user friendly software I have ever used. I understand that databases are boring, but this software (until the last update) looked like it was from 1996. Nothing about this is intuitive for the general user. For ease of use I would have given it zero stars, but I was unable.

Great for students

Comentários: Ellucian powers institutions with technology and services to help students like me to achieve these goals.

Vantagens:

This software is one of the most useful software that I have gone though. It helps me a lot in finding scholarship oppartunities.

Desvantagens:

I did not find many cons on this software but if I want to say one this is quite expensive not user-friendly.

This software can be confusing to use if you are a first time user.

Vantagens:

Once you get familiar with this software, it can be user friendly. There are allot of things to learn but once you have mastered them you can achieve some great results on the web.

Desvantagens:

It is difficult to use as there is so much to learn and know. My institution is constantly holding training's to help people

Ellucian works well as a student information system.

Vantagens:

The software houses all of our student information and IT finds securing the database reasonable for higher education. Though Ellucian, we are able to recruit, register, and maintain financial aid records for students. Our HR office also uses it to house employee and faculty information.

Desvantagens:

Many of the screens take excessive commands to get through. There are three or four extra steps every time you want to pull a transcript, run an evaluation, or register a student for classes.

Overall good customer service.

Vantagens:

The community that is always ready to help each other. You can reach out to hundreds of users and get answers.

Desvantagens:

Upgrades can be very time consuming and complex, the reporting is not up to standard and some user functionality is not easy.

Quality Updates with Ellucian

Vantagens:

I like the user interface of Ellucian! It's easily navigable and very functional in every way. I work in Education and Ellucian is really helpful when inputting various forms of information into the system. It's quick and easy to use with every click you make.

Desvantagens:

I wish the keyboard shortcuts for Ellucian were easy to find.

Can't begin to describe how horrible

Comentários: The navigation makes absolutely no sense, it's is extremely hard to just register for classes and find your way to the proper information. Absolutely unintuitive and simply extremely ugly. It looks like it's built in the 90ies.

Vantagens:

Absolutely nothing, besides it just being horribly ugly the UX and Usability is utterly terrible.

Desvantagens:

As professional in tech I decided to enroll in some part time college classes for enrichment and I was appalled at the software system both schools had for students. Both systems for some reason look and navigate completely different but I found out are still made by the same company. Both is so complicated to use (again both totally different though students need to perform the same tasks) and I'm not sure why people (both school but especially the software company) think this acceptable is beyond me.

It provides the system I need to organize my work.

Vantagens:

It is comprehensive. It provides the ability to digitally organize any information we could possibly need.

Desvantagens:

It is not intuitive. It is requires several weeks of use to fully understand it's capability, and if you need to figure out how to do a particular function, it can be almost impossible to figure it out unless there is someone to tell you.

Recruit

Vantagens:

Implementation of Recruit allowed us to upload applications from a csv file. Our previous software did not have this capability.

Desvantagens:

It doesn't work as well as ellucian told us it would. The functionality and communication to our CMS does not work well. The implementation also took much longer than expected.

Went through a trial phase with Ellucian

Vantagens:

Ellucian had more robust features and handled our campus environment better than the other solutions explored.

Desvantagens:

It was cumbersome to go through the implementation process