Ellucian Colleague vs. PeopleSoft Campus Solutions

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

Campus Solutions is a solid product. It is used successfully by large and small institutions across the world. A fair amount of customization should be expected, as the delivered functions just aren't flexible enough for specific needs sometimes. If an institution has the developer bandwidth to support some customization, then this is a great product. It offers a seemingly never ending supply of efficient functions, such as Activity Guides, which allow the institution to assign desired tasks to end users, such as updating their emergency contact information. Students could be assigned a registration hold until they have completed their tasks.

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

• Degree progress for students and tracking
• Tracking of course enrollment and progress for individual students
• Housing all things pertaining to each student as a whole
• Tracking students success as they reach graduation

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

• The user interface can be way better
• Usability of the application should be improved.
• Data analytics and reporting functions should be improved upon

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.

When you open a service request you will get contacted in short order. They will usually develop a patch or hot fix in a reasonable amount of time. You do usually need to keep the software updated and will want to be on the latest versions.

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 used Banner previously and I think PeopleSoft Campus Solutions was so much more user friendly. I also found the reporting to be easier to access with CS. CS works well when paired with FMS and HCM. You can pretty much go full oracle and also implements database systems for data warehousing and even more detailed analysis. Due to the size of Oracle and PeopleSoft the amount of third party support also seems higher. I had also used Hobsons products before but find CS to be more robust than their offerings as well.

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

• Retrieving information has been faster for us since we implemented Peoplesoft, this has enabled us to better serve our students and provide them with support and answer their questions in a timely fashion.
• Because of PS Campus Solutions, we have a central location to house student information making it easy to access info rather than having the information stored in multiple places all over the campus by different groups. This has tremendously improved our processes and made it very easy for us.
• Since Peoplesoft securely stores our data, we do not have issues with data security or questions from parents or students about fears of student information being leaked or falling into the wrong hands. This has helped us remain compliant and comply with FERPA regulations.

Incentivized