PowerSchool Acquires PeopleAdmin
Q: What was announced?
Today we announced that PowerSchool completed its acquisition of PeopleAdmin. The purchase agreement was signed, and we will begin operating as a combined entity immediately. Additionally, PowerSchool announced receiving a joint investment from Vista Equity Partners and Onex to complete this acquisition and further innovate in the education technology space to deliver solutions to schools and districts that automates critical processes and provides insightful analytics.
Q: Who is PowerSchool?
PowerSchool helps schools and districts efficiently manage instruction, learning, grading, attendance, assessment, analytics, state reporting, special education, student registration, finance and HR. Our mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their potential, in their way. From the back office to the classroom to the home, today, we’re proud to be the leading provider of K-12 education application technology supporting over 45 million students in over 70 countries.
Q: Why did PowerSchool select PeopleAdmin?
PowerSchool acquired PeopleAdmin as part of our ongoing strategy to develop the most comprehensive and innovative education technology to serve all of the critical aspects that improve education. PeopleAdmin’s solutions for talent management, professional development, and analytics complement PowerSchool’s portfolio of classroom and administrative products to create a holistic offering that has never before existed in education technology.
With this acquisition, we’re able to power the entire education ecosystem with comprehensive unified solutions to help unlock potential, from the back office to the classroom to the home.
Q: What does this mean for PowerSchool’s and PeopleAdmin’s products and customers?
The scale we are creating with the combination of PowerSchool and PeopleAdmin and the additional investment from Vista and Onex will enable us to create more integrated solutions, will allow us to invest more in our products, while continuing to provide superior customer service.
Q: What does it mean that PowerSchool received a joint investment from Vista and Onex?
Vista and Onex are investment partners and co-owners of PowerSchool. They have both committed to investing in PowerSchool to help further innovate, integrate, and expand PowerSchool’s unified software solutions across education.
This announcement is a demonstration of Vista’s and Onex’ confidence in PowerSchool’s vision and strategy, and with the two firms’ backing, PowerSchool will accelerate its path of innovation, growth and development of software solutions that empower educators, students, and parents and drive student outcomes.
Q: Who will be the CEO of the combined company?
The combined company will be led by Hardeep Gulati, CEO of PowerSchool.
Q: What is PowerSchool’s commitment to the Higher Education product line?
PowerSchool invested in PeopleAdmin to continue its commitment to developing innovative education technology and to expand deeper into both the K-12 and Higher Education space. PowerSchool has brought on an executive to run the Higher Education business unit with a dedicated team and focus toward continued growth. Moving forward, PeopleAdmin as a brand will be associated with Higher Education products, solutions, and services only.
Q: What is the combined PowerSchool and PeopleAdmin Higher Education product roadmap?
PowerSchool is working closely with the PeopleAdmin product management team to ensure we deliver the most valuable tools and features to our customers. These tools and features are evaluated and prioritized based on feedback from our customer advisory council, regular weekly calls with various customers, feedback from the Ideas forum, overall market and trends and regulatory changes, and suggestions provided to Support and Services teams.
Based on the information gathered, we have identified a specific area of expansion that we will pursue: Faculty Activity Tracking and Advanced Reporting. We are also expanding our capabilities around integration with HRIS and ERP systems as well as other software vendors.
Q: What will happen to SS7 and PA7 suite of products from PeopleAdmin? Is PowerSchool committed to its expansion?
PowerSchool believes that the PeopleAdmin v7 platform is a strong foundation to build upon for the needs of the Higher Education market. We will continue to focus on innovating the user experience, providing unique solutions, delivering more analytical insights, and resolving needs of integration of PA7 suite to your larger software ecosystem. This means improving upon current functionality, expanding into new product areas, as well as exploring other ways to add value to our customers.
Q: Will PowerSchool’s solutions be available to Higher Education institutions?
As we continue to integrate our two businesses, we will explore and identify potential opportunities as it relates to sharing products across Higher Education and K-12. We will continue to leverage the unified approach and PowerSchool’s expanded platform to help bridge and innovate solutions across K-12 and Higher Education.
Q: How does PowerSchool plan to support PeopleAdmin customers?
PowerSchool is committed to ongoing product development, support, and service of all PeopleAdmin Higher Education solutions. Customers will have complete continuity working with our combined organization and can continue to work with their existing points of contact. Our combined team will work diligently to provide improved levels of innovation, support, and services going forward.
Additionally, PowerSchool’s products have always remained open for seamless integration with other educational technologies and we are committed to maintaining this open ecosystem, supporting standards-based integration with other third-party products now and in the future.
Q: Will the same people who support PeopleAdmin products today continue to deliver support?
There are no immediate changes to your existing points of contact. All your touchpoints for sales, support, and service remain the same. Our combined team will work diligently to provide improved levels of innovation, support, and services going forward.
Q: Should customers continue with their implementation projects?
Yes. PowerSchool is dedicated to complete continuity throughout each phase of the integration. Customers should continue working with their current implementation team member(s) to complete development and deployment of their product(s).
Q: Will PowerSchool continue to support customers running PeopleAdmin solutions on alternate hosting databases?
PowerSchool will honor ongoing arrangements with outside hosting infrastructures currently used by customers.
Q: How will this combination benefit partners?
PowerSchool and PeopleAdmin partners will benefit from an expanded offering of products and solutions and will have a single vendor to address customer needs for infrastructure and support around data integration.
Q: What does this combination mean for Independent Software Vendors?
For existing PowerSchool ISVs that have not worked with PeopleAdmin previously, there is an opportunity to add a robust suite of products to their offerings. New comprehensive solutions are available for PeopleAdmin ISVs who have not worked with PowerSchool. This offers all our ISV partners an extensive range of end-to-end solutions and the potential for new sales opportunities.