Ellucian Colleague vs. Veracross

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

Veracross is good for classroom training sessions management and conducting seminars. It keeps the record of trainers, trainees, sessions of training, etc, and helps organize trainings in a systematic manner. It helps improve the operational efficiency of the overall training and learnings of the new colleagues where they can be assigned projects/assignments and keep a track of the same.

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

• Student and family data is easy to keep up to date. And there is so much data that you can keep track of. It is so helpful to have all data in one place so we don’t have a human error in transfers g to another system.
• Recording donations is very easy and you can attach backup documents very easy which is great during our yearly audit. All records are in the system and can be pulled at anytime.
• Easy for parents to sign in to view and edit their own information as well as view student reports.

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

• Normally it has everything I need for my work, today I was able to make a video call and chat from my cell phone and this adds more positive points to Veracross.

We will continue to use Veracross for the simple fact that we have one database across all of the departments in our school. Veracross continues to listen to customer feedback and improve and enhance the system.

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.

LOVE the Technical Response Team - the first line of help at Veracross. I can quickly submit a ticket and receive a response knowing that they have looked in our system and know what we are trying to do! Our account manager is also amazing! So nice to have a person within the company who knows our school and our needs!

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.

Veracross had so many unique features that stood against other similar software and learning management systems which compelled us to buy it over the rest. Features like the ability to create our own customized reports according to tutor/parent specifications help us to offer exactly what is needed while constant Email reminders make sure that we never miss a single email. Also, the ability to take attendance from any device makes everyone's schedules more flexible. Considering all these features it was our aim to buy this software and test it out for our company.

• 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

• 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)

Incentivized