Ellucian Colleague vs. Infinite Campus

Ellucian Colleague is well suited for student academic information recall, such as advisement details, courses, primary choice, GPAs, and demographic information critical to in-time decision-making for faculty and institutional leadership. Less appropriate scenarios would include our financial management needs, such as accounting, ledgers, and financial transactions. These functions are better suited to other CRMs.

Incentivized

As a classroom teacher, I love not having to rely on just a handwritten grade book anymore. When I input grades, I can print the updated grade book whenever I choose. This keeps my workload down since I don't have to write it in the grade book and then put it on the computer.

Incentivized

• Colleague offers a single reference point for all student data, which creates consistency and unity across campus and ensures students hear the same information from every source.
• Colleague recently updated its interface to be more accessible to all people. Previously, it was not accessible through any browser aside from Internet Explorer.
• Colleague provide helpful user restrictions that prevent departments from altering or erasing data they do not typically use. For example, I cannot change student billing and accidentally wreak havoc for the cashier's office.

Incentivized

• It is very clean (not cluttered with information and buttons)
• It keeps all personal information in one spot
• The message center is helpful, and it is easy to see when there is a new message
• The breakdown of attendance is done very well

Incentivized

• Develop API's that are vendor agnostic rather than selecting specific vendors (Clearinghouse, ImageNow).
• Colleague tends to be to reactionary to the changing needs in higher education rather than developing the future.
• Hound clients to pay extra for consulting (consultants are usually bad), rather than helping institutions to use the product. Seems to be the first thing help line personnel jump to rather than working with clients to figure out creative solutions.

Incentivized

• Infinite Campus does not integrate seamlessly with our learning management system. This is a big deal in that using Infinite Campus means our faculty and staff are asked to do more (fatigue) and there is more room for error to occur.
• Infinite Campus' platform is not visually appealing nor does the site design use enough colors and distinction to clearly convey progress to a user.

Incentivized

Ellucian Colleague rates highly for its usability and functionality. Ellucian Colleague serves as a comprehensive solution, making it easier for students, faculty, and staff to communicate, find the information, and accomplish multiple tasks. Colleague has provided enhanced visibility into data and improved decision-making to drive strategic institutional outcomes. A colleague has created efficiencies for staff.

I haven't reached out to Infinite Campus for technical support. We have in-school people who are trained to help us out in the event of a problem. We have had a couple of times where the system has gone down unexpectedly, but our school IT professionals were able to sort it out.

Incentivized

Ellucian Colleague offers exceptional value for the money compared to the pricier options in Blackbaud's suite of products. Ellucian Colleague stacks up well against Blackbaud and other CRMs in terms of its value for the money, ease of use, and customer service. Overall, Ellucian Colleague provides greater value for the money.

I find these other products to be much more simplified in their set up and user friendly where with Infinite Campus, it requires a good amount of time and patience to acclimate to the set up and arrangement of content. Also, the other products I have reviewed are more appealing to the eye with their color content/contrast, background themes/colors and engaging colors which make the experience enjoyable and calming.

Incentivized

• With Colleague Student, we have been able to be more efficient in our department which has given us the opportunity to take on other projects that are helpful to our students.
• Colleague Student has enabled my department to cut down on our paper consumption which has been a huge budget savings. Our old system was so untrustworthy that we were printing many things to keep in case we couldn't get the information out of the system again. With Colleague Student we do not have to do this. We have stopped printing many things we used to print.
• Colleague Student has also helped us have a better handle on which students are preparing for graduation each semester. This allows us to more accurately print commencement materials, etc.

Incentivized

• Positive impact: Allows us to keep our pacing guides up to date for weekly meetings and information dissemination.
• Positive impact: Allows us to provide our counselors, students, and parents with informative progress reports in a timely manner.
• Negative impact: Takes more time away from our other duties when it takes so long to find the data/information I'm looking for amongst all the classes I need to go through just to get to the one I need. They really should look at a better way to arrange/group the drop down menu for the classes.

Incentivized