Ellucian Banner vs. iGradePlus

As a SIS, Banner Pages is the full meal deal. There are multiple modules that integrate out of the box. Because Banner is all I've ever used as a SIS, I can't contrast it with another program. I can say, it gets the job done for us. I will also say that a tremendous amount of time goes into strategizing how to get new functions to work for us and there always seems to be some catch that requires even more work. In general, the university has been hesitant to build too many modifications into Banner because they take a lot of time to maintain. Inevitably, a new update (of which there are MANY for Banner) will break stuff that isn't "vanilla." This is unfortunate because we've had some great ideas for how to make Banner better for us, but also understandable. If you're looking for a highly modular system, this isn't it. Banner has lots of components, but the components work the way they work and that's that. Also, don't expect very quick responses to bugs or glitches. If the bug is major, yes, it will be addressed. But, little function issues seem to be regularly overlooked.

Incentivized

iGradePlus works well for schools who are on a tight budget. The pricing is quite fair. We are still a newer school--this is our fourth academic year of operation. iGradePlus has served as our sole school management system from the very beginning. We are very thankful to be growing alongside iGradePlus

• I think it's great to use if you are tracking grades for certain classes, especially if you'd like to see how students do, comparing midterm to final grades. If you have the permissions, you can see both.
• It's also good to track students individually. You can look up a certain semester, and see how they did in that particular time frame, but you can also see their cumulative gpa, or even look up their entire course history.

Incentivized

• It's record keeping function is robust in its free version.
• Client support is very responsive.
• It's set up guide is thorough.
• The homepage with the news feed is clean and easy on the eyes.

• One thing I miss from the previous version of Ellucian Banner, is the control + page down. I struggle with alt + page down.
• I love the Ellucian Banner favorites; however, it is a little difficult to navigate.
• I can honestly only think of 2 things that could be improved. I use Ellucian Banner daily.

Incentivized

• The transcript templates need to be improved.
• I would love to see them add services for canteen management (point of sale).
• I would love to see them add services for library management (circulation).

We have no reason not to renew with Ellucian - we are in deep with the ecosystem, and have Ellucian providing us with information technology support. If anything, should the opportunity arise, we'd probably consider adding a different ellucian tools into the suite of applications we already have on board.

Incentivized

You definitely have to learn it before it becomes easy to use. It's better than it was, but it's still not entirely intuitive. You can't just look at it and play around to figure out how it works

Incentivized

They have good instructions. There are some pages that appear confusing at first, but there are enough directions around for me to figure out what I need to do to accomplish what I need to. I don't always remember what I need to do when it is a task that happens only once or only a few times a year. The grade report section looks difficult, but I have always been able to find out what I need to do there without too much time or effort. Also, when I need to import students from a previous year into a new grade book, the program has provided the information I need to do that

It's pretty much up all the time.

Incentivized

Has gotten much better due to new hardware.

Incentivized

Our department generally does not contact the support center for Banner but the IT department does. That being said, in the seven years that I have been here, I have not once needed to contact the support center; we have had no glitches on Banner's side that needed to be addressed.

Incentivized

very satisfied, along with the IT staff and ellucian support the upgrades do very well and have minimum down time.

Incentivized

PeopleSoft was more user-friendly. It also provided the ability to save and bookmark queries. PeopleSoft will allow users to use common names to search for queries. Overall, it seemed much more current than Banner. PeopleSoft provided enrollment data for specific sections which allowed one to spot trends of enrollment in a given class.

Incentivized

I used a different online program several years ago, but it went out of business. This program may have been recommended by the program that went out of business, I don't quite remember. I haven't tried other programs much, and it would be several years ago when I was looking for a new program, so I don't remember what I tried. iGradePlus worked for me, so I have stayed with it.

being able to scale with hardware was easy and not cumbersome. We were allowed to user virtual machines which made things very scalable.

Incentivized

• There is positive ROI on the product overall. It had reduced or allowed us to focus our staff members on something which is very use and it does the job in the background.
• The application has supported in a lot of ways in saving resources and utilizing them in very productive & efficient manner

Incentivized

• More than half of our clients monitor their child's attendance and lesson logs as seen through the parent portal access count.
• Our record keeping is now centralized.
• iGradePlus became a proof of our legitimacy for some of our parents.