Dive Brief:

• Higher education software and services company Ellucian made two major announcements at its annual user conference Monday.
• Ellucian acquired Helix Education’s learning management system, preparing to offer new innovations in learner analytics for colleges and universities tracking nontraditional students.
• The company also plans to send Banner and Colleague, its two enterprise resource planning systems, to the cloud by the end of 2016.

Dive Insight:

Ellucian is already one of the largest providers of cloud-based software and this latest shift with Banner and Colleague will allow its higher education clients to do even more remotely. Enterprise resource planning systems help colleges and universities increase efficiency with technology. Ellucian touts its ERPs as solutions for automating admissions, creating a student portal for services as well as a faculty portal for grades and institutional information, simplifying records management, managing records, and tracking institutional metrics. The LMS acquisition is expected to take the data analytics piece even further, giving clients more information about students to aid in retention and other initiatives.