Why we built our own student information system.

What we kept seeing.

For years we have worked with higher education and professional training providers on their Moodle estates, CRM, integrations and student services. Across those colleges, we kept seeing the same pattern.

The student operation was spread across tools that did not talk to each other. A legacy student system had been bent to fit Irish processes it was never designed for. Staff re-keyed the same student into admissions, finance and the VLE, and a simple management question took days of exports and spreadsheets to answer.

Integrations broke whenever a third-party system changed, and getting a supplier to change anything was slow or impossible. Often we were the team building the missing pieces: the connector, the report, the workaround that kept term running.

That work keeps colleges going, and it is still a core part of what we do. But for some colleges, we could see that the answer was a student record designed from the start around how they work.

The decision to build our own.

About five years ago we decided to invest in building our own student information system, alongside the integration and support work we already do on the systems colleges run today.

We were in a better position than most to do it. We already build and run Moodle estates, a Salesforce managed app and connectors for colleges, so integration has been part of Innealla from the start, not an add-on after launch. We also knew, from years of support work, exactly where student systems let colleges down.

It was not a small decision. Building a student information system means owning the record that registry, finance and academic staff depend on every day, and standing behind it for years.

We set five principles at the start, and they have shaped every decision since.

Built alongside colleges.

We did not design Innealla in isolation. It was shaped with colleges we already work with, through requirements workshops, demos, Q&A sessions with registry, finance and IT staff, and a feedback loop on every module.

Real processes set the priorities: how a college structures its programmes, modules and intakes, how fees, instalments and sponsors actually work, how assessment boards sign off results, and how a timetable changes in week three. Each module was built around the way colleges in Ireland and the UK already run, rather than asking them to change to suit the software. When a screen did not match how a registry office works in the middle of enrolment, it went back on the board until it did.

What Innealla is today.

Innealla is a cloud student information system that holds one student record from first application to alumni. Change a module start date and the timetable, the enrolments and the student’s portal all follow, without anyone re-keying it. The full detail is on the Innealla page. Here is the short tour.

Moving our own clients across first.

We are moving some of our existing clients onto Innealla first. We know their systems and their data, and we can stand behind the result, which makes them the right place to start.

Every move follows the same shape:

Most colleges are live in under two months.

Because we already run these colleges’ Moodle and CRM, the connections are known before discovery starts, and the people doing the move are the same people the college already calls for support. As those colleges go live and agree to be named, we will share how the moves went.

The full process is set out in Moving off Banner, SITS or Quercus: what a SIS migration actually involves.

Who it is for.

• Private and professional colleges in Ireland and the UK, from a few hundred students to several thousand.
• Institutions replacing a departing supplier, a legacy SIS, or spreadsheets and local databases.
• Groups with several schools or brands that want one platform with a separate instance for each.
• Colleges already running Moodle or Salesforce with Inneall that want the student record connected.

What to do next.

The simplest next step is a demo built around how your college works. If it fits, a fixed-price discovery tells you the price and the go-live date before you commit to anything.