Blackbaud Alternatives?

Amanda Bowman

Has anyone explored Student Information Systems, Billing Management, etc. alternatives to Blackbaud? The transition from Student Billing/SIS 7 to Education Management has been a disaster. Education Management has a deficit of functionality compared to Student Billing 7: no connection to Financial Edge, no real reconciliation, student statement timing issues, lack of financial aid details, “Lists” replacing Queries…the list goes on. Our information migration was also botched - they didn't transfer complete SSNs. My (small) team and I have been trying to education ourselves with the constant changes (which sometimes happen mid-day) to the system and create work-arounds to still meet our needs. We are considering looking into new companies but are not sure where to start.

Dale Cecil

@Amanda Bowman
No idea for alternatives but definitely interested if you find any. We are doing so much more manual work now, student's have less information, and we haven't even found manual work arounds for many of the issues yet. Billing Management is a very incomplete product and such a step backwards from Student Billing 7.

Crystal Bruce

@Amanda Bowman Hi! Thank you for your feedback. Your happiness with our solutions is of the utmost importance, so I have reached out to your account Customer Success Manager and they should be in contact with you.

Amanda Shows

@Amanda Bowman
We are not sure of any alternatives, but we are interested if you have found any as our conversion has been a total disaster as well. We cannot get out the data that we put in, simple things cannot be done, permissions cannot be locked down-it is basically an all or nothing approach, and the system is not easy to use. The list goes on and is very extensive in terms of functionality needed for our day to day operations and to be compliant with our state and federal reporting requirements. Our users and our IT department are performing way too many tasks manually that were automated in our former Blackbaud SIS system. I think this system was pieced together and not fully thought out before they rolled it out.

Sara Jampen

Good day! Thank you for the information.