Salesforce as a Student Information System
The student information system, live on Salesforce.
Institutions we work with have replaced Ellucian Banner, PowerCampus, CAMS and homegrown systems, and run the authoritative student record on Salesforce — one platform, from prospect through to academic history.
In production
Named, with what each replaced.
The first question we always get is whether anyone actually runs this. Here are institutions that do, and the system each one left behind.
| Institution | Legacy system replaced | Platform | Live since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westmont College | Ellucian Banner | EDA | 2023 |
| Unity Environmental University | CAMS | Education Cloud | 2024 |
| San Francisco Bay University | Custom-built SIS | Education Cloud | 2025 |
| Palmer College of Chiropractic | Ellucian PowerCampus | Education Cloud | 2026 |
Institutions like these run their student record — prospect through academic history — on Salesforce, in production, with real students registering in real terms.
Read the case studiesWhy a platform
The demands on your SIS haven’t been invented yet.
Legacy student systems encode one operating model of higher education — the traditional term, the traditional credit, the traditional student. Every institution is already being asked for things that model cannot support, and the asks are only increasing.
- Rolling starts and non-term calendars
- What the legacy model assumes: Two semesters, fixed start dates
- Terms of any length, overlapping sessions, self-paced programs — or no terms at all.
- Credit that comes from more than one place
- What the legacy model assumes: One kind of credit, earned one way
- Competency-based and combined-learning credit counted alongside regular academic credit, toward the same degree.
- One course, many offerings
- What the legacy model assumes: One course record, one audience
- The same class offered for credit, non-credit, non-degree and continuing education — without duplicating it four times.
- Payment that fits the student
- What the legacy model assumes: Charges assessed per term, per student
- Plans and schedules not hard-wired to a term, a model, or a single payer.
- Stackable credentials
- What the legacy model assumes: The degree is the only outcome
- Certificates and micro-credentials that accumulate toward degrees rather than living beside them.
Every demand above is handled natively on Salesforce, in our deployments, today — configured on the platform rather than built beside it.
It is also why AI genuinely works here: Salesforce has carried machine learning natively since the 2010s, and AI is only as useful as the record underneath it. One unified student record is what makes it usable at all.
Choose a system that does not need to predict the future to accommodate it.
An SIS is a decades-long decision — the systems being replaced today are often older than the staff running them. When the operating model changes, or a requirement arrives that nobody wrote down, it is a configuration change rather than a redeployment.
What runs natively
Student records, native.
The record of truth — registration, grades, transcripts, degree progress, the student account — runs natively on Salesforce in our deployments. One platform, one student record, from prospect to academic history.
- Grading
- Grade entry, grade rolls and grade-change workflow.
- GPA and academic standing
- Computed in the platform, not imported into it.
- Official transcripts
- Produced natively; delivered through the National Student Clearinghouse, Parchment and My eQuals networks.
- Registration
- With prerequisite enforcement, section capacity and waitlists.
- Course catalog and class scheduling
- Terms, sessions, sections, rooms and times.
- Degree audit
- Degree progress and what-if analysis.
- Transfer credit
- Articulation rules, not just stored evaluations.
- Student financials
- Fee assessment, accounts receivable, payments and refunds.
And because the operating model lives in configuration, a policy change — a new hold type, a calendar exception, a revised progression rule — is a configuration change, made in days. Not a development project, not a vendor ticket, not the next release cycle.
Regulators
Reporting and compliance, by jurisdiction.
Compliance is usually described in the abstract. Registrars and student records offices live in the specifics.
- Germany
- Studierendenstatistik and Prüfungsstatistik filed as unit records to the Land statistical office under the Hochschulstatistikgesetz, BAföG attestations, and the Diploma Supplement required at award.
- South Africa
- HEMIS unit-record submissions to the DHET, HEQCIS uploads to the Council on Higher Education, learner records reaching SAQA’s NLRD, and registration and results data to NSFAS.
- United Arab Emirates
- Licensure and program accreditation with the CAA, Higher Education Data Bank returns to the Ministry, and KHDA or ADEK authorization by emirate — accreditation-driven rather than an annual census.
- United Kingdom
- HESA, the Office for Students, the Student Loans Company, Graduate Outcomes, and ILR returns for apprenticeships.
- United States
- IPEDS, National Student Clearinghouse enrollment reporting and degree verification, Title IV, Clery, and state authorization. 1098-T runs through Cashnet or Regent.
A statutory return is configuration, so an implementation runs whichever regime an institution answers to — and when the statute changes, the return changes with it. One client currently runs US and UK reporting from a single org. That is unusual, and most institutions will never need it: they answer to one regulator and want that done properly. The same flexibility serves one as readily as two.
Financial aid
Financial aid the student can actually see.
Applicants and students see their aid — status, awards, what is still needed — inside the same experience as registration and billing, not in a separate portal with a separate login. Aid data ties natively into student financials, through live integrations with the leading aid platforms.
- PowerFAIDSLive integration
- In production at client institutions today.
- RegentLive integration
- Also the route for 1098-T generation, alongside Cashnet.
- Campus IvyLive integration
- In production at client institutions today.
Your aid office keeps the system it trusts, and the results flow into the student record and student financials — one view for the student, one record for the institution.
By role
Your office, specifically.
Role
Student Records / Registrar
What changes for records, registration and academic policy when the system of record is configurable rather than coded.
Read more
Role
CIO & IT
Architecture, integrations, release-cycle safety, and who maintains the platform after go-live.
Read more
Role
Financial aid
Exactly where the boundary between Salesforce and your aid system sits, and how the integration works in practice.
Read more
Ten months, typically — for institutions under 10,000 students.
That is what Unity, San Francisco Bay University and Palmer each took, from kickoff to a live registration term. Larger or more structurally complex institutions take longer, and we will tell you where you fall in the first conversation. For context, the industry norm for an SIS replacement is measured in years.
Common questions
The questions we actually get.
Can Salesforce genuinely replace a student information system?
Yes — our clients have done it, among them institutions that left Ellucian Banner, PowerCampus, CAMS and custom-built systems behind. The student record, registration, grading, transcripts and compliance reporting run natively; financial aid processing runs in an integrated dedicated aid system, which is the correct architecture for Title IV work.
How does this compare with a purpose-built SIS?
A packaged system is built for the vendor’s average of every institution it sells to, fixed at design time. Configuration on a platform is how a system ends up built for your institution’s purpose — your calendar, your credit models, your policies. Both arrive as an implementation project with data migration and change management; ours typically reaches go-live in about ten months, where the industry norm for an SIS replacement is measured in years.
What is actually native, and what needs a third party?
Native in our deployments: registration with prerequisite and capacity enforcement, grading, GPA and academic standing, official transcript production, degree audit, transfer credit articulation, student financials, and compliance reporting including IPEDS and National Student Clearinghouse. Third party: the financial aid chain — PowerFAIDS, Regent or Campus Ivy — and 1098-T generation.
How long does a replacement take?
Typically about ten months for institutions under 10,000 students — Unity, San Francisco Bay University and Palmer each landed there. Larger institutions take longer. For comparison, the industry norm for an SIS replacement is two to three years.
What happens when Salesforce releases three updates a year?
Nothing, by design. Our implementations are configuration-first and built with the platform’s standard levers, so releases leave little to break and keeping the platform current is Salesforce’s job. Institutions take releases as they arrive, which is the opposite of the upgrade project a legacy SIS requires.
Is this Education Cloud or the Education Data Architecture?
Both run in production among our clients. Our earlier work — Westmont, live since 2023 — runs on EDA, and Education Cloud has carried the work since. Every capability described on this page holds on either architecture, and new implementations are built on Education Cloud.
Who maintains it after go-live?
Either your team or ours. Several clients staff their own Salesforce administration; others use our managed services. What you are not doing is paying a legacy vendor’s mandatory maintenance contract for the privilege of waiting on their release cycle.
Insights & events
Read before the conversation.
Explainer · Oct 18, 2024
What In the Education: Cloud Data Model
What Salesforce means by "the core", why the Education Cloud data model runs to 55 objects, and when that complexity is worth carrying.
Case study · Sep 25, 2025
How SFBU Meets its Mission Through Adoption of Salesforce as an SIS
How San Francisco Bay University moved from paper-based silos to Salesforce as a full SIS, cutting manual work by 80% and growing domestic enrollment.
Article · Sep 3, 2026
Salesforce SOAP Login Retirement: What Higher Education Needs to Do Before June 2027
Salesforce retires SOAP API login() in Summer '27. The exposure is not the SIS — it is the middleware and scheduled jobs that log in with a password.
Start here
Start with your institution.
The useful conversation is about your legacy contract, your academic calendar and your integrations. Bring whoever owns the student record — we will bring people who have already moved institutions onto Salesforce.