Ellucian reviews

Very stable software used by best higher ed. institutes

Opmerkingen: Ellucian Banner has provided our students and staff with a single application that manages aspects of course registration, work, bills, payments, grades, academic status.
Single sign on module was extremely helpful

Pluspunten:

It is a high-end software. Very stable. It integrates with the Microsoft LDAP. We have been using it for student and employee account management in term of course registration, tax forms, billing, salaries, student employment, grading, transcripts. It has very secure and solid database which is essential for the above mentioned matters.

Minpunten:

Managing it requires training. It is not easy to administer. The price is very high compared to competing software in the higher education sector.

Good product. . .maybe?

Opmerkingen: Neutral to negative. Massive additional costs during deployment, a tendency to confusion among the supposed "experts" around how basic pieces of the software worked, forced third party software changes that were unnecessary and expensive, and a quote that was clearly lowballed with the expectation that we'd end up paying on the back end for additional products that we didn't know were needed made this whole process less than good.

Pluspunten:

We liked the idea of a connected suite that worked with most of our existing software.

Minpunten:

The consultants were very much at odds with each other and added confusion to the process. It also turns out that it didn't work with our existing software even when the vendors were listed as compatible on the Ellucian partner site. It also turns out that some of our 3rd party software would have worked, but we were told that it wouldn't. In the end the confusion and lack of understanding/ability from Ellucian consultants cost us tens of thousands of additional dollars during our deployment.

Literally the Worst

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

University Accounting

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Ellucian for Community College

Opmerkingen: In the beginning I had to constantly keep my list of instructions handy if I wanted to enter a requisition for a purchase order, now its easy because I've done so many. Practice makes perfect!!!!

Pluspunten:

I liked how you can add features, customize it for the needs of the institution. I work for a small college and we don't need all the extra features that the larger colleges might implement.

Minpunten:

It can be a little difficult to navigate for the beginner. Unless the user knows what they want there is a chance of getting lost. Ive been using the software for about 4 years now and i sometimes get lost or have to search for specific information. There is no menu with a list of options. So I guess what I'm saying is that it would be nice if it was more user friendly, easier to navigate.

Not a good integrated solution

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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?

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

Provide more support for end users!

Opmerkingen: 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.

Pluspunten:

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

Minpunten:

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.

Ellucian User for 15+ years

Pluspunten:

Since our college gained access to the web-based version of Ellucian (we call it Colleague at our school, too), it has been a lot easier to use.

Minpunten:

I wish the help feature and other help documents were a little easier to follow. We used to have a gentleman who worked in Admissions & Records that would make PowerPoint presentations and quick guides to help out the Ellucian users.

It's hard to be vanilla

Opmerkingen: We were in desperate need of an SIS and for the most part, it does serve our needs.

Pluspunten:

I like that we have a consortium we can share ideas and code with and have a single voice to Ellucian.

Minpunten:

Banner INB is very clunky to use - even if you are good at using software in general. It is not a very intuitive product; however, the company is moving in the right direction.

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

Opmerkingen: -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.

Pluspunten:

Customer support Is friendly and responsive.

Minpunten:

-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.

Mixed Reviews

Opmerkingen: They are an established Higher Education software that is on the cutting edge with a lot of what they offer. The partnerships they offer with vendors seems to fall short in some cases. The support they offer for the products is generally good. But depending on the application may depend on how quickly they respond to support questions/issues.

Pluspunten:

Offers a variety of different software solutions that integrates with its ERP (Banner or Colleague). Along with a variety of ancillary applications that integrate with the ERP.

Minpunten:

Cost would be by far the biggest issue. The second would be that as of late the company has a tendency to tout its upcoming or just released products will work but in reality it is being built and developed as the sales people speak. To be fair their established software generally works well and no complaints.

Colleague as an ERP

Opmerkingen: Colleague is an overall great product. Ellucian has been working hard to improve Colleague's features and functionality, especially on the Self-Service platform. This work has kept them at the front edge of innovation with responsive design that allows your constituents serve themselves from any device. This takes pressure off of administrative staff so they can focus on quality support to your students. Ellucian does a good job at being connected to their customers and understanding the constantly changing needs in the academic world. They hold focus groups, beta testing groups to allow the engaged community of customers to provide input, and it shows in the quality of the newer products they have created.

Pluspunten:

Mobile friendly self service Integration through Ellucian XE Active user community on Ellucian's eCommunities social media platform

Minpunten:

Reporting. Expect to spend money on a reporting tool.

Banner is a fantastic data management tool.

Pluspunten:

It's a rock-solid application that you can count on. That in and of itself is a huge deal. It works, has minimal bugs, and is the backbone of how we manage our data. When other applications are having a problem or we have a data integrity question, we often say "What is it in Banner?" because we know it will be correct there.

Minpunten:

It can be a little scary at first to new users, which I can speak to from experience. But the new interface is definitely helping with that. I would also love to see Ellucian develop a proper higher-education CRM tool. We had to go with another vendor because we needed something more comprehensive than what Banner could offer (Application Reviewing, Events Management, etc). I think Ellucian is missing out on a huge financial opportunity and could take a massive chunk out of the Higher Ed CRM market if they were to develop one.

Access your university from your pc

Opmerkingen: I have used this system when I was a professor assistant and student

Pluspunten:

This product provides a learning management system which makes the jobs easier for students and the professors. Students can easly check their duties and see their activities on this system and professors can easily manage their classes easily.

Minpunten:

If there are a lot of students dont buy this software, during the peak times it makes lots of bottleneck and managing the problem is not that easy always some problem appears if some administrative user did something wrong. The money you pay and the service you have dont compensate each other

Banner Human Resources Module

Opmerkingen: This product is for higher education institutions. Ellucian is behind many competitors in this space however, it has realized this and is making positive changes in the right places.

Pluspunten:

Customer service is very good. The vendor is always willing to listen and help where they can. In addition, there is a customer portal which allows the customer to communicate with one another on issues or ideas.

Minpunten:

My dislike is the current roadmap is very slow to achieve goals. Often release dates will be pushed out and this causes much frustration within the business that has planned to upgrade certain services.

I work with one module for the software and they have a great network for help.

Opmerkingen: The Ellucian software is very helpful in keeping our school on track and making it easier for the student to navigate Admissions to registration to financial aid to graduation.

Pluspunten:

Very functional and customizable to your school. We get the opportunity to let the company know what we want in the software and they usually update to meet the various schools needs. Very aware of all federal guidelines and requirements.

Minpunten:

Training for use of the module or processes would be nice when something new is implemented. Several screens and options are usually available with short descriptions.

Use this for University student records, receiving payments, accounts Payables, P/R and financials.

Opmerkingen: With angst and time we get what we need from it.

Pluspunten:

Contains a lot of integrated and complex data. From Human Resources, Student Records and Services, Payroll, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable all in one softward

Minpunten:

so NOT intuitive or user friendly. We have to have a whole IT department just overseeing the functionality of this software. Users are frustrated in each area - Payroll, Accounts Payables, Student Services... no one seems to feel the software was created for their unique purposes. We keep trying to find the department that loves it...

Banner by Ellucian

Opmerkingen: Overall working with Ellucian has been pleasant. My employer had the system long before I came around so I can't speak to the implementation. Anytime I have needed to reach out to Ellucian with an issue or create a ticket they have been very helpful

Pluspunten:

Once you learn the terminology to search by, using the software becomes a lot easier. I frequently use reports for tracking open invoices and running payments. I like that the system is dynamic in that it updates quickly when another user is making a change.

Minpunten:

It was a difficult system for me to learn and I couldn't find much training material for it. The reports you can run are basic and need a lot of manipulation to do any analytics.

Great Software

Opmerkingen: Overall experience has been great, just a few things that can get confusing or hard to do, but other than that, it is very useful for what we use it for. We keep a lot of information and this software allows us to do that.

Pluspunten:

This software allows us a great way to keep track of giving history, event information, solicitations and personal information. Also allows us to pull simple and in depth reports.

Minpunten:

Can be a little cumbersome sometimes when you want to dive deeper. Pulling in depth reports can be confusing with continued training.

Ellucian works well as a student information system.

Pluspunten:

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.

Minpunten:

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.

A mess of a company and a patchwork of modules

Opmerkingen: Covers general SIS/ERP for a college but causes more frustrations than solutions

Pluspunten:

Ellucian Banner is comprehensive in that it can cover most of the core functions of a college/university. But that's about it.

Minpunten:

Ellucian hasn't advanced the products in years. Every attempt for updates have been met with upgrade issues, compatibility problems, and user frustration. New products are rare and generally poor, whether they use COTS or homegrown applications.

Easy to use

Opmerkingen: We use this as our database for all alumni and friends.

Pluspunten:

It's easy to use and my favorite thing about this software is that I can enter very little info to do a search to find who I'm looking for. The possibilities are endless!

Minpunten:

When it shows a listing of all the proposals a person has received, I have to pull each one up because there isn't anything about the listing that identifies specific ones. It's a minor irritation

Not a registrar’s best friend

Opmerkingen: Ten years ago I moved from a non-Banner school to a Banner school. The transition to Ellucian’s Banner was a disappointment after using my previous institution’s software.

Pluspunten:

Ellucian’s Banner Student has the basic student records functions included. It will force higher ed administrators to change their business processes to fit the software.

Minpunten:

I did not like the tool set (queries, printing, data loads) that come with the product.

Needs to improve signficantly.

Pluspunten:

It has a lot of great functions and features (when they work). Makes it easy to upload contacts into the CRM and it has a lot of customizable options.

Minpunten:

It can very unreliable and dealing with support has been time consuming. The layout of the CRM is also unescarailly complex and is very difficult to learn for new users, it can costly to setup training of the CRM tool with our support team as well.