K+-+Conference+House+Azalea+-+Veracross 

VERACROSS User Discussion


 * PLEASE POST YOUR NAME AND SCHOOL IF YOU ATTENDED THIS SESSION**
 * ADD YOUR CURRENT SIS (AND LENGTH OF TIME WITH IT)**


 * Conveners:**

Jim Anderson (scribe) / Packer / Currently using Senior Systems (15? years) Liam Webster / St Hilda’s & St Hugh’s/Veracross Kyle Vitale / ISB/Veracross JP Connolly/ Veracross from Senior Jonathan King/ Riverdale/Veracross from Blackbaud Brian Burkhart / The Pingry School/Veracross Chris Koble / Brooklyn Heights Montessori School/Veracross Adam Kenner / Horace Mann / Senior 20+ years, considering options Bill Romanowski / Kew-Forest School / Blackbaud On Product 10 years / weighing options Jed Dioguardi/ Hackley School/ Blackbaud both EE/FE/RE and On Products - looking at Veracross Jen Davenport/Speyer/inResonance-Ravenna-Finalsite/Looking at Veracross Andy Sandler/SAR Jeremy Sambuca / Hewitt / Blackbaud EE,FE,RE Hosted, Ravenna, and Magnus Health - looking at Veracross
 * Attending:**

Big on implementation hours, and you tend to run out of hours…

There was a failed VC implementation attempt with the Mandell School (?)

St Anns
 * 10 yrs of Senior Systems data
 * Continues to be disappointed that the sales process
 * Riverdale projected to be over by 20% hours (1200 total)
 * St Anns purchased 87% of Veracross ecosystem and the largest data set at the time ever moved
 * He had several hard talks with the CEO about making sure they had their implementation coverage in place, but they didn’t
 * They spend hours “fixing” their product after delivering a defective product, which eats away at implementation hours.
 * MUST BUILD IN CAP ON HOURS
 * They’ve been through three account managers and they have to argue that bug fixes should (and writing emails) should not be billed to the school.
 * It takes time to go through and clean up their time sheet.
 * They offer hourly and full support.
 * They don’t have a template for moving from other Databases (Senior / Blackbaud)
 * o Atlanta international school
 * Every data skeleton you have comes out of the closet
 * o Expect to spend much time cleaning the old data so it imports cleanly
 * Once people got through the implementation process, people have
 * The “accessibility bar” came down way low…
 * o The questions are getting much more interesting
 * Watch out for quoted scope of implementation and contract to your own milestones
 * Support structure works well when you have a dynamite account manager but you have to come up with ground rules for what gets booked and what doesn’t. It’s an open book that you need to write.

BHMS
 * Blackbaud @ his previous gig only allocated 8.5hrs a month for support
 * Their finance implementation went over by 30% and had that forgiven
 * Pushed their audit back for 2 months

ISB
 * They also went over hours which were forgiven

Riverdale
 * From Blackbaud (beginning transition on Monday)
 * The number of things
 * Database transitions are always a bitch
 * Development will like the product in about a year…
 * Male/Female binary gender options
 * Reenrollment will be much easier
 * Course selections for students will be much easier
 * Used the transition as an opportunity to up everyone’s game
 * Huge improvement in some workflows

Pingry (Blackbaud Education Edge, Proof Admission)
 * Imported 3 databases: EE, RE, and Proof. Since we are still using RE for Development, only imported contact info from RE.

Riverdale:
 * Customizations**
 * Blackbaud (even as customer 11) would not write any customizations.
 * Veracross will write them, but it must be in line with their product vision
 * o School funded ones are great because you can define all features
 * o Transport module needed lots and they did them
 * o That, for the most part, has been really helpful for us
 * Needs a new security module

St. Anns
 * Had them build Rapid Attendance (?)
 * o Rebranded as check in/check out system and published as a module
 * Once or twice a year JP has an opportunity to speak to VC senior team as part of a customer feedback group
 * o They do take suggestions, but need to be lobbied
 * o Insanely good engineering talent
 * o Excited but not very disciplined about how they deploy their resources
 * o Write some “GD” documentation
 * o Need to focus on the core product
 * VC Connect conference every two years

Aaron McGill / Browning

Google Group is the starting place for surfacing
 * VC Development (smaller)
 * VC Users

Costs:
 * Riverdale = $100K on average per year for modules
 * Spyer/Legacy said VC wouldn’t adjust
 * ISB paid $60K for implementation and about $2500 per month
 * Joseph D indicated they seem willing to negotiate

There is a presumption that there will be in-house expertise. Documentation is a big problem. The big, static pieces are pretty well documented. Other pieces are not so much. Lot of documentation in the last 10 months has been better. Older stuff is getting revised. See modules.veracross.com for documentation. Videos are also public.

Training Riverdale scheduled 5 days of on site training (Rep was out two weeks prior to go live)
 * It took them nine months to implement
 * Training should be on live, ported data
 * Jason Trott – Good Account Manager, but has emotional friction with development
 * o Can call the AM at any time and say I need an hour of training with the AM, so
 * They use Amanda Buchanan and she does most development support
 * o They have a prepaid training hours (and can pull from next year…)
 * Data wasn’t ready (for example when they went to train the nurses), which made the initial training useless.

ISB
 * Recurring donations will not happen in VC.
 * DiamondMine will do that…

St. Anns
 * Staff comes back very late in the summer
 * The product is pretty intuitive so, VC 101 sessions can be skipped
 * o Two week data transition “blackout” period for training
 * o Write down what you do for two weeks
 * § Make a check list
 * § Go into the sandbox and crash around with your check list
 * § Learn the nomenclature and data landscape and structure
 * § Let’s talk about where you get stuck
 * <span style="font-family: &#39;Courier New&#39;;">o That way, when the data comes online people are ready to interact and ask the right questions
 * In Senior a class was very flat / In VC it is a record with relationships

Development
 * Veracross Accounting has its own support team
 * Development is not as well supported

4 weeks from data dead to live in VC Bought an implementation of VC (test site) and ported the data and check the data migration Used the same container to move the live data in the final migration "Oh, you already had a record zero” “We just assumed that you did not have that”
 * Data validation**

SUPPORT
 * Just changed how they handle incoming support requests.
 * Previously depended on AM for ALL support requests
 * Now have a model (as of Monday) where there is a team for tech support. Already been successful for Riverdale and St Anns.

PLEASE POST YOUR NAME AND SCHOOL IF YOU ATTENDED THIS SESSION!!!

St Anns brought all data over (except immunizations because of compliance reporting) They brought 10 years of data over Riverdale had each dept pick and choose the length of lookback.

REPORTING
 * Reports are pretty great. Rare that we can’t get out the data we need.
 * You do not have the flexibility of Crystal Reports
 * Have access, but it’s not formatted (export, yes. Formatted report, no.)
 * The API does not have all the data, which limits push button reports
 * <span style="font-family: &#39;Courier New&#39;;">o No security over the API (one key for everything)
 * St Anns looked at use for reports (daily, monthly, annually)
 * <span style="font-family: &#39;Courier New&#39;;">o They paid for daily reports, which is great.
 * <span style="font-family: &#39;Courier New&#39;;">o Pay monthly for each custom report
 * <span style="font-family: &#39;Courier New&#39;;">o Tweaks are (sometimes) free but major changes are paid
 * Some schools with tons of formatted reports are anxious about the cost of customized reports
 * Data Export module will schedule any export and then pull that into Crystal or FMPro.
 * If you need a school logo, it’s a custom report…
 * St. Anns has a great custom test results report for the counseling office
 * Riverdale has a report for a student’s travel schedule report (for parents) that is custom

VC does not handle anything other than M/F gender assignments.