Optimize Enrollment Management for K-12 Education

Understand the value that an effective enrollment management system can bring to schools and districts.

Analyst Perspective

Maximize your enrollment potential.

The K-12 education sector is becoming more competitive, with an increased variety of schools all competing for the same students. The sector is rapidly transforming as schools and districts invest in technology to enhance their enrollment processes. Modern enrollment management systems are becoming essential to meet the evolving needs and expectations of families. These systems also help schools operate more efficiently by streamlining administrative tasks, improving data accuracy, and providing valuable insights through analytics.

Enrollment management systems offer comprehensive tools to simplify various aspects of the enrollment process, including application management, automated workflows, centralized data management, personalized communication, and document review. Automated workflows manage tasks such as lotteries and wait lists, while centralized data management ensures secure and accessible student information. Cloud-based solutions provide scalability and accessibility, allowing administrators to manage processes from any location.

By choosing a comprehensive, cloud-based solution with advanced features, schools can succeed in an increasingly digital world.

Mark Maby Senior Research Director for Education, Industry Practice Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Schools and districts struggle to understand the value of an enrollment management system, risking missed opportunities for innovation.

Selecting the right enrollment-system vendor is challenging. Schools and districts need to identify the vendor that offers the best features, functionalities, and opportunities.

Schools and districts often lack insight into the opportunities, challenges, and considerations that a new enrollment management system may present.

Common Obstacles

Administrators face skills gaps and resource limitations due to rapid changes in the educational landscape.

The push for digital transformation requires schools and districts to keep abreast of innovations, stay competitive, and meet modern expectations.

Decision-makers frequently focus on immediate returns, overlooking the long-term holistic benefits of a comprehensive enrollment management system.

Info-Tech’s Approach

Analyze trends in enrollment management systems, and assess the importance of having a robust enrollment management system.

Assess key capabilities and needs, identifying cost and competitive advantages through detailed analysis.

Review the functional criteria of key enrollment management system vendors, helping schools and districts make informed decisions based on their specific requirements.

Info-Tech Insight

The best enrollment management system for any school or district should meet three criteria: 1) integration with the student information system; 2) increased efficiency for administrators; and 3) better engagement with families.

An enrollment management system has a distinct function, different from the function of a student information system

Focus on prospective students: Digitize the enrollment process and support marketing and recruitment.

• Online Applications: Allows parents and students to submit an application online, track the status of their application, and complete the necessary forms
• Automated Workflows: Automates processes such as sending reminders, tracking application progress, and updating admission status
• Document Management: Enables uploading and managing required documents digitally, reducing paperwork
• Reporting and Analytics: Offers insights into application trends, enrollment rates, and demographic data for informed decision-making

Focus on current students: Centralize student data, support daily operations, and enhance academic management for teachers and administrators.

• Student Records Management: Maintains records of student information, including demographics and health and academic history
• Attendance Tracking: Records and monitors student attendance and generates attendance reports
• Gradebook and Reporting: Allows teachers to enter grades, generate report cards, and track academic progress
• Scheduling: Manages class schedules, course enrollments, and teacher assignments

An enrollment management system and a student information system have distinct databases and processes, allowing prospective students to be processed separately from current students. Integration between the two systems can convert prospective students to current students.

An effective enrollment management system automates processes and delivers seamless experiences

An enrollment management system streamlines and simplifies the admissions and enrollment processes while enhancing overall efficiency and family satisfaction. Improving efficiencies, reducing costs, providing robust reporting and analytics, and automating enrollment workflows enable schools to maximize their return on investment (ROI) by attracting and retaining the best-fit students.

Enrollment management technology is a key initiative going forward

Disrupting Factors

1. The enrollment cliff disrupts K-12 demographics. People are having fewer children, and the number of children is expected to decline. As enrollment becomes more competitive, schools and districts will need to make the most out of every prospective student.
   • 41 states are projected to have lower public-school enrollment in 2030 than in 2020 (Hanover Research, 2024).
2. Community engagement is a priority. Family involvement is crucial to the three metrics of student success: academic achievement, attendance, and graduation rates. Strengthening community engagement positively impacts school climate and fosters inclusive decision-making. However, many schools and districts currently struggle with this aspect of engagement.
   • Only 45% of students, staff, and families agree that their district responds to community members’ questions or concerns (Hanover Research, 2024).
3. Enrollment data is critical for decision-making. Enrollment data is critical for marketing, retention, and community engagement. These metrics are needed to inform strategies, policies, and priorities. However, data governance is often lacking, even when the importance of enrollment metrics is recognized.
   • 67% of schools and districts in the US prioritize the use of data to support decision-making, but only 27% have a governing strategy to support that decision-making (Project Unicorn).
4. Staffing challenges necessitate automation. With constrained budgets, schools and districts are challenged at finding staff. Many administrators wear multiple hats in addition to enrollment. Automating the enrollment process can meet the challenge of fewer resources.
   • 67% of K-12 administrators noted an increased difficulty in staffing for their districts, compared with the past year (Frontline Education, 2024).

Transform the enrollment management lifecycle for greater efficiency and engagement

An enrollment management system will digitize the processes of the school or district while creating strategic and relationship advantages.

Determine how an enrollment system impacts a school or district

Illustrative Example

K-12 Education Capability Map

In enterprise architecture, the primary view of an organization is known as its capability map. A capability map is comprised of business capabilities and value chains.

A business capability defines what an organization does to enable value creation, rather than how.

A value chain is a high-level analysis of how an industry creates value for its stakeholders (students and families) as an overall end-to-end process.

A capability map provides details that help an enterprise architecture practitioner direct attention to a specific area for further assessment.

The highlighted capabilities deliver a cost and strategic advantage through an effective enrollment management system.

Activity 1.1 Define your organization’s key capabilities

1-2 hours

Input: Industry reference architecture

Output: Highlighted capabilities of cost and strategic advantage creators for your organization

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts

Participants: Project manager, CIO, Relevant stakeholders (accountable for decisions related to the enrollment management system)

1. Determine the cost advantage creators. Focus on capabilities that drive a cost advantage for your organization. If your organization has a cost advantage over its competitors, the capabilities that enable this cost advantage should be identified and prioritized. Highlight these capabilities and prioritize the programs that support them.
   1. What is the source of your cost advantage? IT should support the capabilities that drive the cost advantage.
   2. Is the market you operate in sensitive to price adjustments?
   3. Do not focus on capabilities that create an unsustainable cost advantage. Take a long-term perspective and allocate your resources wisely.
2. Determine the strategic advantage creators. Prioritize capabilities that are central to the strategic priorities of your organization. Once you have identified the strategic advantages, understand which capabilities enable those advantages. These capabilities are critical to the success of your organization and should be highly supported.
   1. Are there services provided by your school or district that constituents consider to be superior to the services provided by other schools or districts?
   2. Which capabilities enable those strategic advantages?
   3. Focus on the capabilities that are difficult to replicate by other schools or districts to create more differentiation.
   4. Incorporate various perspectives from throughout your organization to get a true understanding of how your organization achieves its strategic objectives.

Activity 1.1 Define your organization’s key capabilities

Templated Worksheet

K-12 Education Capability Map

Download the industry reference architecture: K-12 Education Industry Reference Architecture

Analyze your enrollment management system with value chains

Illustrative Example

Activity 1.2 Complete a value chain analysis

1-2 hours

Input: Context of the K-12 industry and context of your specific school or district

Output: Value chain analysis for an enrollment management system

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts

Participants: Project manager, CIO, Relevant stakeholders (accountable for enrollment management decisions)

1. Define how value is delivered through the enrollment management system under consideration. Use your organization’s industry context to start a discussion about how value is created for stakeholders (either external stakeholders, such as families, or internal stakeholders, such as staff). Working back from the moment that value is realized by a stakeholder, consider the sequential steps required to deliver value in your organization and the K-12 industry.
2. Identify value streams, value chains, and stakeholders associated with the opportunity being analyzed. Typically, stakeholders are those who benefit from a value chain.
3. Once the key value chain has been identified within a value stream element, assess the individual capabilities within the value chain and identify areas for transformation.
4. Evaluate the capabilities based on:
   • The level of pain or risk experienced by the stakeholders to accomplish that process or capability.
   • The financial impact of the process or capability on your organization.
   Capabilities that pose both a high level of pain or risk and financial impact should be prioritized for transformation.
5. Further analyze the prioritized capabilities for transformation by determining the greatest risks, complexity, key benefits, dependencies, and financial revenue impact of the enrollment system. This should address how the system would improve the value chain and opportunities.

Activity 1.2 Complete a value chain analysis

Illustrative Example

Enrollment System Capabilities and Processes

Illustrative Example

Expanded K-12 capability map with enrollment system processes

Enrollment System Capabilities and Processes

Illustrative Example

Expanded K-12 capability map with enrollment system processes

Activity 1.3 Identify opportunities through an application assessment

1-2 hours

Input: Outcomes from Activities 1.1 and 1.2

Output: Expanded reference architecture for your organization, Assessed enrollment system processes, Identified opportunities for an enrollment management solution

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts

Participants: Project manager, CIO, Relevant stakeholders (accountable for enrollment management decisions)

Business agility is essential to stay competitive and to develop resilience to changing market conditions. The application portfolio, especially the enrollment management system, must sufficiently support business needs and advantages through functional flexibility and efficiency.

Assess the current state of your enrollment system with the following criteria:

• Green: Process is well-supported by the enrollment system.
• Yellow: Process is moderately supported by the enrollment system.
• Red: Process is somewhat supported by the enrollment system.
• Black: Process is unsupported by the enrollment system.

Adopting a value-chain-based approach to assess your current enrollment system will enable IT and your administrative teams to identify opportunities to:

• Rationalize the enrollment management system processes and features.
• Automate tasks through the strategic selection and implementation of enrollment management system processes.
• Integrate applications that have cross-capability implications with the enrollment system.
• Eliminate redundant or legacy applications and features that do not deliver enough value.
• Identify areas of customer and employee friction and potential areas of ROI drivers.

The color-coded areas in this activity will address the capabilities that your organization should focus on for a new enrollment system solution and vendor.

Improve enrollment management with the right data and metrics

* CY = calendar year; PY = prior year

Enrollment Management System Vendor Landscape

Key Players

Info-Tech has identified ten key players in the K-12 enrollment-management space that have baseline functional viability for different sizes and types of school districts.

• Blackbaud

  Blackbaud serves nonprofit and education sectors. Its software is built to support fundraising and nonprofit organizations.

• EduCare Enroll

  EduCare Enroll provides tools to streamline enrollment. It leverages AI to constantly improve and customize the automation.

• Finalsite

  This large school management vendor provides a variety of services as part of its overall enrollment management product.

• Infinite Campus

  The online registration module is a component of the larger SIS, which is Infinite Campus’s main product.

• PowerSchool

  PowerSchool is a dominant educational technology company that provides software solutions to manage school operations.

• Ravenna

  Ravenna focuses on private schools and automates processes for administrators and prospective families.

• Rediker

  Rediker Software has differentiated its products for charter, public, and independent schools.

• School Pathways

  School Pathways offers K-12 school management for independent study and virtual schools.

• SchoolMint

  SchoolMint offers K-12 solutions for marketing, enrollment, and retention.

Vendor Quadrant

This quadrant is an objective overview of the vendor landscape. The results are based on the expert opinions of Info-Tech analysts as well as secondary research specific to the K-12 education industry.

Legend

System Functionality: Does the vendor have a strong breadth and depth of capabilities in the K-12 enrollment management space?

Vendor Footprint: How big is the vendor? What is its viability? Does it have a valid roadmap?