FACTS Student Information System vs. Salesforce Education Cloud

We base our entire student data on the Student ID that is produced in FACTS. We create user accounts for technology and online textbooks as well as their lunch account, all based on the Student ID. We also can run many different reports using the SID as the data constant and all the other information variables are available as needed to report.

Incentivized

Well suited:

1. Groups that need to integrate their CRM with other partners: many education institutions use Salesforce!
2. Groups with huge student populations now, or expected in the future.
3. Groups that have resources for custom Salesforce development, like an in-house Salesforce Developer role.

Less appropriate:

1. If you expect your company/school will have a limited number of students.
2. If you set up Salesforce to use ONLY Leads or only Contacts, not both. What happens if you have a student re-enroll? How do you handle losing data when converting a Lead to a Contact? If you don't have good answers for these in advance, you'll want to use only Leads or only Contacts to track each student.

Incentivized

• Allows full student/family information to be placed in student file.
• Can report from any field of information including custom fields.
• Creates student schedules and Classroom rosters.
• Allows parents insight into grades and discipline as well as lesson plans and daily/weekly classroom topics.

Incentivized

• Great use of integrating across all aspects of enrollment.
• Easy to create tasks for counselors to remember to call prospective students and keep up to date on goals.
• Reporting is fabulous inside of Salesforce.
• All of the Apps in the App Exchange.

Incentivized

• The new inputting process is a bit complicated.
• Label creation is sometimes hard to get the info you want on the label.
• There is no notification when an email does not go through. You'd have to look it up to know.

Incentivized

• Reports - Comes with no out of the box reports.
• OOB functionality may be limited - important to have folks with experience customizing EDA to an organization's needs.
• Upfront cost - Implementation services (either a hired team or consultants) is imperative to make it work.

Incentivized

It's user-friendly, the customer service is great, and we have a significant amount of time invested in training our faculty and staff to use many aspects of FACTS within their areas of responsibility. I really like the variety of reports I can generate which gives important data to our administration and Board.

Incentivized

It was really so easy to sign up and get going with the whole process

Incentivized

People will respond on time even though Salesforce is such a large organization. This also includes various methods of getting support beyond just calling - they have dedicated reps, chat, chatter, etc that all make the experience more pleasant.

Incentivized

I greatly prefer FACTS to the other grade book systems we have used. I think it is far superior to Blackbaud, Renweb, and Edmodo. It is the simplest and most efficient system that we have used. We are so excited about the vast number of options we have at our fingertips with FACTS.

Incentivized

Salesforce.org Education Cloud has many different functionalities that do not revolve around just the assignment and grading aspect of a student's education. They provide ways for staff to communicate with students in real-time and provide additional support, such as mental health resources, which is incredibly important. Not only is the education aspect important, but providing resources to help a student in every aspect of life is possible on Salesforce and is very useful.

Incentivized

• It keeps parents happy and therefore creates fewer complaints.
• It creates a solid record of student performance so that any discrepancies or allegations can immediately be resolved (when used with regularity and consistency).
• It allows for qualitative as well as quantitative feedback so that students can receive specific, detailed assessments of their work.

Incentivized

• This is always awesome to find and have companies where you can educate yourself online.
• Even when you look at things such as FOREX, this is one of the biggest industries, so it is a tell tale sign that it is well on track to the future.

Incentivized