SchoolStatus Drives Effective Communication in Education, Powered By Salesforce, CPQ, and NetSuite

In our connected culture, we expect our data to be accessible, timely, and relevant; we also expect our communication to be instant, important, and meaningful. But in many K-12 schools there is often no centralized location for student data or school-home communication, which makes it hard for educators, administrators, and families to communicate effectively. SchoolStatus aims to solve this disconnect and help students be successful through its platform.

Since its founding in 2012 SchoolStatus has grown by building a fan base of educators and administrators across the US as well as acquiring six companies. With each acquisition, the complexity of business systems started to multiply and it became harder to understand the total health of the company. The desire to integrate the companies quickly became a need and then a strategic essential.

But integrating acquisitions is often a high-risk endeavor for companies, which is why Phil Charland, Chief Revenue Officer of SchoolStatus, made the decision to invest in a core technology stack, powered by Salesforce and NetSuite, that any acquisition could quickly plug into and then migrate onto.

“There were a lot of moving pieces and we knew consolidating one company using different systems into our Salesforce and NetSuite would be a challenge, let alone six. We really needed a partner like Plative who understood the complexity of it all.”

– Phil Charland, CRO, SchoolStatus

The Right Partner For SchoolStatus’ Growth Journey

To help ensure a smooth transition, SchoolStatus treated the implementation of Salesforce and NetSuite as one strategic effort rather than separate solutions. From day one, risks, requirements and functionality, transition plans, and the rollout were looked at holistically rather than treating this as a Sales, Finance, or IT-specific project. This led to less disruption and faster results.

“If we had siloed off and worked with Plative on the CRM piece and a different company on the NetSuite piece, we would not have come to the same great outcome. From out of the gate, to where we are now, the decision to partner with Plative has created so much internal operational cohesion and value.”

– Phil Charland, CRO, SchoolStatus

The Impact of Salesforce and NetSuite on SchoolStatus Operations

Easy Board-Level Reporting

Before Salesforce and NetSuite, SchoolStatus team members regularly had to work through essential information living in disparate systems, manual data extraction, inconsistent reports, and complex processes. Phil highlighted one drastic improvement in efficiency: the time required to prepare sales data for board meetings dropped from eight hours to approximately one hour.

“In the past, we faced challenges with quickly gathering and ensuring the accuracy of our numbers—likely due to human error and a lengthy process of consolidating data from multiple different systems. Now, with our new environment, we not only work more efficiently but also have better tooling in place, enabling us to generate accurate data swiftly so we can spend more time working with our customers.”

– Phil Charland, CRO, SchoolStatus