Ellucian Reviews

Great Tracker

Pros:

With the new implementation of the Graduate College student tracking has become a higher priority. With this software our department is able to track students from start to finish. We house the most graduate students in our college and it’s been a hassle to maintain . But this program was able to help us identify what was holding students up (Thesis). After this we made changes to our requirements and also implemented a milestone tracker which has help every single student.

Cons:

I have no cons so far. Everything has been great on my end.

University Accounting

Comments: Overall we are very satisfied with Ellucian. It provides our business and finance team books that are used for easy reporting and a clean UI interface.

Pros:

I have been a user of Ellucian banner for over six years and have been through countless updates. The product keeps improving where I think things are already good, and is quick to address current issues. Our organization loves the fact that we can use a web based version as well. Additionally, the UI is very clean and I can understand what is affecting our balance sheet, income statement, ect., all at a quick glance. Finally, the reports that are generated from Ellucian are very helpful and make it so I can create accurate reconciliations.

Cons:

The one problem we run into with Ellucian is that training to use the product is difficult. Many screens have specific acronyms to access them, which is hard for people to remember. However, they have introduced a search function that allows you to use words and it acts more like a google search, which is helpful to find what you need.

Poorly structured. Poorly maintained. Poor.

Pros:

None. Its a sloggy product, designed with no consideration to the user.

Cons:

No redeeming qualities. Repeated crashes during most critical time in student advisement and registration.Undermines the ability of our institution to function professionally.

Ellucian Banner SIS -- Solid Product In Use for Nearly 20 years

Comments: Been using Banner since 2004 (and SIS since 2005). I serve as the manager of the IT team that supports the student offices that use the product.

Pros:

I commend Ellucian for recent updates they have made to the look and feel of the product. I find it now easier to use and easier to support (no more Java needed for the admin side!).

Cons:

The number of Financial Aid releases is challenging. Plus, when we apply them we need to take our Banner Admin pages offline temporarily. It would be better if the Financial Aid releases were isolated so that we could apply them without taking all of Banner down.

Not a good integrated solution

Comments: Negative, frankly. While helpful and polite, the team seems too inexperienced to be of much help. In fact, Ellucian seems to cause most of the problems themselves through self-inflicted wounds. Each update or patch implements some new ‘improvement’ that breaks most workflows and processes built for the previous version. As such, the hope to get a slight improvement ends up costing weeks of manpower to fix everything else in the test environment over and over again.

Pros:

Ideally, when functional, the functionality between Ellucian products can be helpful. We use Banner and eRecruit CRM. We expected the CRM/ERP integration to be the best selling point when choosing the CRM application.

Cons:

Despite being the same company, the products are not as seemless as we felt it should be. It took well over a year of implementation of the eRecruit CRM to customize it to fit with the Banner ERP. Even then, we still find issues where things are not being converted from one to the other well. One example, on the CRM, GB is the country abrieviation for the UK (Great Britain), but in the ERP, this is shown as Gabon. I’ve wasted so much time programming and converting little things like this that I find it hard to believe they were released by the same company.

The Industry Standard but why?

Comments: This product is very commonly used and it feels like they rely on this fact to put in minimal efforts towards innovation. If you have a different option, I would recommend investigating that.

Pros:

This product is very commonly used in industry. The online support community around this product is very active and is very helpful when you encounter issues, bugs, odd behavior, etc. (which is often). It is based on a relational database so query writing is easy enough.

Cons:

Software patches and updates from Ellucian are notorious for breaking various modules, connections between modules, etc. The UI is a very outdated model and tends to be very unfriendly for those who are not tech savvy. Customer service from Ellucian leaves a lot to be desired.

Ellucian was our school's SIS for 15 years

Pros:

I wish that I could say what we liked about this software, but there really is not anything to put here.

Cons:

The system was extremely outdated. The portal experience (Luminus) to get in was awful. Even as they try to update that portal experience, it is simply putting cards and widgets where links used to be. But those things break repeatedly. As well, the lack of interconnection inside the system and with external tools is just plain weak. There is a reason Workday is starting to see so many adoptions in the market and that so many schools are switching out student portals for updated, contemporary, mobile friendly, inter-departmental software options.

Powerful SIS That Need Usability Enhancements

Comments: Ellucian SIS is our source of truth for virtually every system. It comprises current and historical data for our entire user community. We've built many integrations over the years and use it daily for reporting and accreditation needs. It's the backbone of our organization and people have learned to use it effectively.

Pros:

The solution is flexible enough that each of our functional departments can use it effectively to accomplish their objectives. Our two largest user groups are Financial Aid and Accounting, each of which uses it daily. What isn't available OOTB can typically be added via customizations, although customizations often present problems when upgrades happen.

Cons:

In my opinion, the solution has a very poor design. It consists of many, many UI screens that are accessed by typing in acronyms. This may work well for power users that memorize all the acronyms but there's been several instances where users have had issues, only to discover a 'new' screen that can offer the information they need. Simply put, if you don't know the acronym, your life will be difficult.

Not so friendly Student Info System

Comments: I have had both good and bad experiences. However, I don't fuss about it like my colleagues because it is the only SIS I have ever used.

Pros:

The product integrates with other software, i.e. Leepfrog (catalog and course inventory management system), Degreeworks (degree auditing/graduation software)

Cons:

Speaks a foreign language that you have to learn. Quite the learning curve. The implementation process can be lengthy. Did not always feel supported by the implementation team.

Not always the most user friendly

Pros:

The recent upgrades have made it much more user friendly and easier to navigate.

Cons:

Integration with other products can be very glitchy at times. It takes someone with serious knowledge to be able to navigate that process. If you have that, then you're fine. If not, prepare to spend some money on it.

Provide more support for end users!

Comments: The underlying system is robust and stable, but difficult to manage, especially in terms of data entry and updates. Making changes can have unanticipated ripple effects.

Pros:

The end user product has good visual flow and is designed to protect student data.

Cons:

This is not an intuitive system, especially to users making a transition from the company's older product which was not visually or logically similar at all. Support materials are not adequate on the web site, unless you are a (paying) implementation team member.

Difficult to use | Difficult to maintain | Expensive | Releases are poorly tested by Ellucian QA

Comments: -Business users in all departments find Banner difficult to use
-Database engineers find Banner difficult to maintain
-IT staff finds Banner difficult to support Banner is obsolete in the technological age we live; there are cloud finance, HCM, CRM, and student information applications which integrate well with each-other and outperform banner in nearly every category.

Pros:

Customer support Is friendly and responsive.

Cons:

-There is a Massive maintenance overhead -There is a need for business users to constantly watch the community for systemic issue and bug alerts -Documentation is intentionally over-complicated to encourage the purchase of Ellucian consulting -Implementation is more complicated than competitor applications due to the age of the product -Data is stored un-uniformly in 'shotgun' style in the database making migration away from banner very difficult. -There is no dashboard -- the entire user interface is a very weak showing -Self service is impossible to leverage for reliable company-wide / student-wide document delivery. -Almost no reporting capabilities are built-in; admins must instead write database queries for end users.

Great software!!! Easy to use and always updating?

Pros:

Lots of stuff! Love the new self service!! The innovation of Ellucian is amazing!!! They are helpful !!

Cons:

Sometimes the cost are high for new products and innovations, but I understand they allot of work is done on their behalf.

Colleague as an ERP

Comments: Colleague is an overall great product. Ellucian has been working hard to improve Colleague's features and functionality, especially on the Self-Service platform. This work has kept them at the front edge of innovation with responsive design that allows your constituents serve themselves from any device. This takes pressure off of administrative staff so they can focus on quality support to your students. Ellucian does a good job at being connected to their customers and understanding the constantly changing needs in the academic world. They hold focus groups, beta testing groups to allow the engaged community of customers to provide input, and it shows in the quality of the newer products they have created.

Pros:

Mobile friendly self service Integration through Ellucian XE Active user community on Ellucian's eCommunities social media platform

Cons:

Reporting. Expect to spend money on a reporting tool.

Ellucian

Pros:

My workplace uses Ellucian's Banner 9 for a Learning Management System. It's great to use codes to view different records.

Cons:

Elluican's Banner 9 feels like it wasn't created with input from working professionals who actually use Banner 9. The navigation is clunky and slow. The interface isn't intuitive. I would never recommend this service to my worst enemy. Don't walk away from Ellucian, RUN!

Needs to improve signficantly.

Pros:

It has a lot of great functions and features (when they work). Makes it easy to upload contacts into the CRM and it has a lot of customizable options.

Cons:

It can very unreliable and dealing with support has been time consuming. The layout of the CRM is also unescarailly complex and is very difficult to learn for new users, it can costly to setup training of the CRM tool with our support team as well.

Ellucian in higher ed

Comments: I love the product & love using it but wish there was more consistency in if it will work or not.

Pros:

It is awesome to use for allowing students to track degree progress. It is simple for them to log on & see what is still needed.

Cons:

There are a lot of bugs with this program. There is a high chance it is not working when you log on to use it.

Higher Ed and Ellucian

Comments: As for an ERP it works they continually develop products that do well but then should have been tested or better yet more thought should have been thought through before deploying to customers.

Pros:

offers multiple products gives great support

Cons:

Cost: is more costly than some of its competitors Deployment of newer products to end users could be smoother

Reasonably priced SIS solution

Comments: Functional SIS solution, but requires full time developers to support.

Pros:

Powerful, a lot of functionality out of the box allows smaller institutions to hit the ground running.

Cons:

Pricing for individual modules is complicated and expensive, user facing interface is very dated and in need of an overhaul.

Improves education experience

Pros:

I like how it allows users to view academic information easily. For higher education this software is greatly beneficial.

Cons:

I do not like how there are times where the software is glitchy or will sign out if inactive for too long.

Quality Updates with Ellucian

Pros:

I like the user interface of Ellucian! It's easily navigable and very functional in every way. I work in Education and Ellucian is really helpful when inputting various forms of information into the system. It's quick and easy to use with every click you make.

Cons:

I wish the keyboard shortcuts for Ellucian were easy to find.

Can't begin to describe how horrible

Comments: The navigation makes absolutely no sense, it's is extremely hard to just register for classes and find your way to the proper information. Absolutely unintuitive and simply extremely ugly. It looks like it's built in the 90ies.

Pros:

Absolutely nothing, besides it just being horribly ugly the UX and Usability is utterly terrible.

Cons:

As professional in tech I decided to enroll in some part time college classes for enrichment and I was appalled at the software system both schools had for students. Both systems for some reason look and navigate completely different but I found out are still made by the same company. Both is so complicated to use (again both totally different though students need to perform the same tasks) and I'm not sure why people (both school but especially the software company) think this acceptable is beyond me.

It provides the system I need to organize my work.

Pros:

It is comprehensive. It provides the ability to digitally organize any information we could possibly need.

Cons:

It is not intuitive. It is requires several weeks of use to fully understand it's capability, and if you need to figure out how to do a particular function, it can be almost impossible to figure it out unless there is someone to tell you.

Recruit

Pros:

Implementation of Recruit allowed us to upload applications from a csv file. Our previous software did not have this capability.

Cons:

It doesn't work as well as ellucian told us it would. The functionality and communication to our CMS does not work well. The implementation also took much longer than expected.

Went through a trial phase with Ellucian

Pros:

Ellucian had more robust features and handled our campus environment better than the other solutions explored.

Cons:

It was cumbersome to go through the implementation process