Does your Student Information System (SIS) play well with others?
How much time does your staff spend in redundant data entry between disconnected web tools and sites supporting your education model? Can your administrators go to one place and check current student data to get the complete picture of a student’s progress to goals? Is the data synchronized in Real-Time? Or is it time delayed?
A recent inquiry from a major 4-year institution looking to replace their aged enterprise SIS listed over 25 third party integrations requiring connection to their core SIS to synchronize data in their stack of technology solutions.
Does your SIS platform support connection via API’s (Application Program Interface) or with batch updates? Is the connection real-time and two-way? Real-time is best. Two-way keeps critical data in sync wherever data may change.
A good example to ponder is the Learning Management System (LMS). When a student enrolls in a class or program, does your SIS push that enrollment into the LMS or does your staff have to do a manual secondary enrollment?
Is it two-way, so that student LMS login activity can register as a last date of attendance in the student master record? Do grades automatically post in the SIS from the LMS? Is data posted in real-time, so at any time of day a student inquiry can be answered by an administrator, confident the SIS data fully reflects performance to goals? Can you conduct a SAP (Satisfactory Academic Progress) review at any time with the most current data reflected in your main administrative software, the SIS?
If your administrative staff is responsible for redundant data entry and verification you are wasting precious resources to run your institution. Administrative workflows to synchronize data between systems are inherently error prone. Mistakes that go unchecked could result in erroneous student advising and compliance reporting. Audits for mistakes could produce potential findings resulting in greater oversight if not administrative fines. All of this can be very costly for your institution.
The Campus Cloud SIS has an API library with over 350 potential third-party connections. It really does play well with others. Our system was written in code designed to natively support web connections, specifically, MariaDB and SkySQL. We never charge an implementation or customization fee to connect to any third-party application that supports API connectivity.
If your SIS doesn’t “Play well with others,” maybe it is time to check into a better platform that connects easily with any modern technology partner.
Paul Rutledge, Director Sales and Marketing with Campus Cloud Services
(717) 314-8338
linkedin.com/in/paulrutledge
