Ellucian Banner vs. Veracross

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

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

• 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