San Juan Unified School District added two more offerings of cloud-based school software company PowerSchool Holdings Inc.
The Carmichael-based district for many years has used Naviance, a college and career counseling platform PowerSchool acquired last year, and the district has now added PowerSchool Enrollment and PowerSchool Unified Insights.
“New customers buy new products,” said Hardeep Gulati, CEO of Folsom-based PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC).
With more than 19 products for teachers, educators, administrators and students, PowerSchool is trying to offer all aspects of education on a unified technology platform. Once customers get one product, they often then add more, Gulati said.
The cross-selling of different products to existing customers has grown the fastest in the company’s history, he said, adding that the company’s pipeline of sales is also at record levels through the end of the year. Gulati said PowerSchool has seen a 60% increase in the past year of customers who use more than four products.
Early last year, PowerSchool bought Naviance and Intersect from Cincinnati-based Hobsons. Naviance is a college and career counseling platform for high school students and school districts to assess student interests and capabilities. Intersect is an admissions platform inside Naviance.
As an existing PowerSchool customer with Naviance, San Juan this year began looking for additional technology.
Before the pandemic, San Juan used pen and paper to handle enrollment, said Brian Ginter, director of admissions and family services for the San Juan district, the 11th-largest in the state.
With the pandemic, the district of necessity built a digital system in-house to register new students, handle transfers in and out of schools and the district and also for open enrollment. That system worked, but it wasn’t elegant and it wasn’t easy to use, Ginter said.
“We needed a little more flexibility and user friendliness,” he said.
San Juan has 40,000 students and employs more than 5,000 people.
“Administrators and teachers are looking for platform solutions rather than more fragmented technologies,” Gulati said. The company has several customers who use 14 or 15 products.
He added that PowerSchool products tend to have about a 95% retention rate with customers, who tend to sign up for multiyear contracts.
“We are a core, mission critical, must-have technology,” Gulati said.
PowerSchool software is used to support school administrators with programs that eliminate manual processes for everything from daily attendance to counseling to grades. The company also provides an online platform for virtual learning, and offers supports to teachers, parents and students with online lesson plans. PowerSchool offers analytics and assessment products, as well as career counseling and college search.
Started in 1997, PowerSchool has expanded with 14 acquisitions in the past five years that have added products to its platform. It has over 3,000 employees.
