Modernizing Higher Education Operations
SmartSuite centralizes Higher Ed Operations, Assessment & Accreditation, Finance & Administration, Grants & Research, Curriculum workflows, and campus-wide service operations in one platform. Empower colleges and universities to streamline processes, reduce manual work, and improve campus coordination with flexible, no-code solutions.
One Platform for Connected Higher Education Operations
SmartSuite connects the academic and administrative workflows that power colleges and universities — unifying assessment, accreditation, operations, finance and administration, research, curriculum processes, and service delivery in one modern platform.
Academic Workflows
Coordinate assessment, curriculum, and accreditation processes across programs.
Administrative Operations
Manage hiring, finance, events, and IT service requests consistently.
Approval Governance
Route reviews and approvals with traceable, role-based workflows.
Institutional Insight
Monitor academic progress and operational performance with dashboards.
Higher Education Operations Products
Core Capabilities of the Higher Education Operations Suite
SmartSuite delivers a curated set of solutions that support academic quality, administrative operations, and student experience.
Coordinate education operations with clarity, governance, and cross-campus alignment.
Unify student affairs workflows, academic administration, communications approvals, events, and accreditation activities in one workspace. SmartSuite links educational operations to ownership, evidence, and outcomes—providing real-time visibility, audit-ready processes, and consistent execution across departments and programs.
Manage assessments and accreditations—standards, evidence, tasks, reviewers, findings, and reporting.
Streamline finance/admin requests—approvals, documentation, SLAs, and status tracking for internal customers.
Track grant lifecycles—proposals, awards, budgets, compliance, deliverables, and reporting.
Central hub for student and staff operations—requests, cases, tasks, policies, and communications in one place.
Manage curriculum planning, course development, approvals, schedules, and updates with traceability and collaboration.
Track HECVAT assessments and a compliance register—requirements, evidence, gaps, and remediation progress.
Manage student cases, services, interventions, and follow-ups with structured workflows and role-based access.
Plan, execute, and report on campus events, programs, and conferences with intake, run-of-show, and post-event tracking.
Streamline Assessment, Accreditation & Continuous Improvement
Modernize institutional effectiveness workflows with SmartDoc, rubric-based evaluation, version history, and automated review cycles.
Highlights:
- Outcomes → Methods → Results relational model
- Faculty collaboration
- Automated approvals
Modernize Campus Operations
Handle hiring, onboarding, event ops, resource checkout, communications, and finance workflows — all from one platform.
Highlights:
- Student worker hiring
- Communications intake
- Equipment/resource tracking
Accelerate Finance & Administration Workflows
Centralize purchase requests, reimbursements, routing, documentation, and audits.
Highlights:
- Multi-step approvals
- Audit history
- Budget dashboards
Simplify Grants & Research Lifecycle Management
Track proposals, compliance attachments, awards, and milestones with personalized PI/RA workspaces.
Highlights:
- Proposal pipelines
- Gantt timelines
- Evidence collection
Strengthen Campus-Wide Governance & Vendor Compliance
Use role-based permissions, evidence registers, and policy workflows to strengthen data and vendor governance across the institution.
Highlights:
- HECVAT workflows
- Evidence registers
- Policy attestations
Centralize People Management Across the Institution
Create a unified directory for students, staff, faculty, researchers, and affiliates, complete with connected workflows for hiring, onboarding, training, engagement tracking, and offboarding. Replace fragmented spreadsheets and departmental rosters with a single system of record that provides rich profiles, linked affiliations, and dashboards that show how each person is connected across programs and departments.
Highlights:
- Unified people directory
- Affiliation & lifecycle tracking
- Hiring, onboarding & offboarding workflows
Built For Modern Higher Education Teams
SmartSuite brings enterprise-grade higher education operations with consumer-grade usability. Choose the rollout path that fits your department today—and expand as cross-campus workflows and governance needs grow.
Adopt a Single Capability
Begin with Accreditation Tracking, Event Management, or Communications Approvals—prove value fast and expand from there.
Roll Out a Full Category
Enable higher education operations end-to-end—connecting student services, academic administration, approvals, events, and evidence in one coordinated system.
Deploy the Entire Higher Education Operations Suite
Standardize campus workflows with shared data, audit-ready processes, and live dashboards—delivering consistent execution, stronger governance, and cross-department alignment across your institution.
Explore Further
Read about assessment, accreditation, operations, grant management, policy governance, and higher education workflow automation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions about how SmartSuite improves visibility, collaboration, and efficiency across higher-education operations.
SmartSuite centralizes workflows across operations, institutional effectiveness, academic departments, finance, HR, and IT.
This unified platform eliminates fragmented tools and email threads — giving everyone the same source of truth.
SmartSuite replicates complex assessment models (Outcomes → Methods → Results) with SmartDocs redlining, rubric scoring, multi-stage reviews, and version tracking — streamlining accreditation workflows.
Yes — SmartSuite’s intuitive UI, templates, and guided workflows help faculty, student workers, and staff adopt the platform quickly — even without technical backgrounds.
Instead of using different tools for assessment, hiring, budget approvals, research proposals, events, and ticketing, SmartSuite consolidates everything into one no-code platform.
SmartSuite handles hiring, onboarding, communications requests, finance workflows, recreation/checkout systems, student experience tracking, and more.
See How SmartSuite Transforms Campus Operations
Experience how SmartSuite unifies academic and administrative processes — from assessment and accreditation to operations, finance workflows, research management, and IT services.
What the research shows
Independent research on what disconnected campus operations costs teams today, and what changes when the work lives in one system.
Source: Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research, 2023 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers: 79 percent of 401 provosts agree faculty view assessment as requiring a lot of work (https://www.insidehighered.com/reports/2023/03/06/provosts-views-tenure-gen-ed-budgets-and-more).
Of provosts say faculty see assessment as a lot of work
Outcomes, methods, and results reporting can run through one workspace with routing, SmartDoc review, and rubric scoring.
Source: Rockwell, "The FDP Faculty Burden Survey," Research Management Review, 2009: 6,081 federally funded faculty researchers reported 42% of project time went to administrative tasks rather than research (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2887040/).
Of principal investigators' project time spent on administrative tasks, not research
Shared workspaces replace spreadsheets, email-driven reviews, and duplicated data entry across academic teams.
Source: SmartSuite customer story, Private University – Latin America: 70+ university leaders supported through dashboards that track a strategic plan across 3 organizational layers (https://www.smartsuite.com/customer-stories/case-study-183).
University leaders supported through dashboards
Dashboards connect assessment status, accreditation readiness, hiring, finance requests, and research activity in one view.
Source: SmartSuite customer story, Medical Sciences Program – North America: 3 disconnected systems consolidated, with 50+ students onboarded in one unified workflow (https://www.smartsuite.com/customer-stories/case-study-283).
Disconnected systems consolidated into one platform
Integrated workflows connect academic, hiring, finance, and research processes across units in one workspace.
Key Benefits of the Higher Education Operations Suite
Institutions need connected, transparent, and efficient academic and administrative workflows. SmartSuite unifies assessment, accreditation, operations, finance/admin processes, curriculum review, and research management — creating one platform for streamlined campus operations.
Academic Quality, Assessment Integrity & Accreditation Readiness
Connect Outcomes, Methods, and Results with structured reviews and version control.
Give provosts, deans, and assessment leaders live visibility into progress and outcomes.
Centralize artifacts and improvement actions for accreditation agencies and reviews.
Track deadlines, stages, renewals, and improvement plans across multi-year cycles.
Enable role-based access for faculty, coordinators, and assessment committees.
Capture scores, comments, and revision requests directly within SmartDoc.
Campus Operations, Student Experience & Administrative Efficiency
Manage hiring, onboarding, finance requests, communications, events, and services in one system.
Replace email-based approvals and reimbursements with auditable workflows.
Standardize job postings, applications, verification, and onboarding across departments.
Coordinate planning, execution, and evaluation of student and staff programs.
Connect HR, Finance, IT, Facilities, and Academic units through shared dashboards.
Protect student, staff, and faculty data with role-based permissions.
Governance, Compliance, Research Administration & Institutional Reliability
Track proposals, reviews, awards, milestones, budgets, and deliverables end-to-end.
Manage policies, attestations, and documentation for governance and accreditation.
Capture vendor assessments, evidence, and risk scores for IT and security oversight.
Map critical student and academic services to support operational resilience.
Maintain full histories of changes, approvals, and decisions for auditors and sponsors.
Start with one workflow and expand campus-wide without rebuilding systems.
Streamline Campus Workflows With Connected Data and Automation
SmartSuite eliminates siloed tools and manual processes.
Centralize assessment, accreditation, hiring, finance requests, research tracking, and operations — all in one place.
How the SmartSuite Platform Powers Higher Education
SmartSuite connects people, processes, programs, and academic workflows in one secure platform.
Design campus workflows — academic or administrative — without custom development.
An Institutional Effectiveness team configures an Outcomes → Methods → Results assessment workflow, while Student Affairs builds hiring and onboarding workflows—both on the same platform, without IT development.
Automate review cycles, notifications, approvals, rubric scoring, financial requests, and hiring workflows.
When a faculty assessment report is submitted, SmartSuite automatically routes it for rubric scoring, notifies reviewers, and tracks revisions until final approval.
Draft assessment summaries, research proposals, meeting notes, rubric feedback, and accreditation narratives instantly.
Before an accreditation review, the AI Assistant generates a summary of program outcomes, improvement actions, and supporting evidence across multiple departments.
Connect outcomes → methods → results → evidence, or students → staff → hiring → onboarding → tasks, or suppliers → documents → HECVAT.
A department assessment record links directly to faculty submissions, supporting evidence, improvement plans, and accreditation standards—or a HECVAT assessment links vendors, documents, and risk decisions.
Monitor assessment status, hiring pipelines, requests, budgets, research milestones, and portfolio KPIs.
Provosts and Deans view dashboards showing assessment completion rates, accreditation readiness, open hiring requests, and research funding progress.
Support SSO, SCIM, IP restrictions, and audit trails for campus compliance.
Faculty can only view their own program data, reviewers see assigned assessments, and leadership accesses rollups—every change is logged automatically for audits.
Connect Academic & Administrative Workflows
SmartSuite links core campus operations — assessment, hiring, research, finance, curriculum, events, and IT service — into one cohesive environment.
Streamline Reviews, Approvals & Campus Processes
Automate the workflows that universities rely on: assessment reviews, staff onboarding, budget approvals, research submissions, curriculum proposals, and more.
Gain Real-Time Insight Across the Institution
Dashboards provide actionable visibility into academic progress, administrative throughput, campus resources, requests, and compliance signals.
AI Assistant and Governance Strengthen Higher-Ed Excellence
The AI Assistant accelerates rubric scoring, summary creation, report drafting, and proposal writing — while governance tools ensure accuracy, privacy, and traceability.
The SmartSuite Platform:
Powered by Eight Interconnected Frameworks
The SmartSuite Platform consists of eight interconnected frameworks that provide a foundation for designing, automating, analyzing, and governing connected workflows.
Platform
Security and Governance, Built for Enterprise Scale
SmartSuite provides fine-grained, role-based permissions that protect data without slowing innovation. Define access down to the record, field, or workflow level, enforce compliance with SSO, 2FA, and IP restrictions, and maintain a complete audit trail of every action. With SmartSuite, governance and agility work together — innovation moves fast, and your security moves with it.
Work Anytime, Anywhere, on Any Device
Stay connected and productive wherever you are. SmartSuite works across web, tablet, and mobile, so your team can manage projects, collaborate, and automate workflows in real time — whether in the office, remote, or on the go.
The Platform That Connects Academic, Administrative, and Student Operations
SmartSuite unites data, workflows, permissions, and reviews across departments — improving visibility, trust, and cross-functional alignment.
Role-Based Capabilities for Higher Education Teams
SmartSuite is built for academic leaders, operations teams, finance offices, research administrators, and campus-wide staff.
Enrollment / Admissions Director
Manages admissions pipelines, enrollment planning, and yield strategies.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite provides structured workflows and visibility into enrollment operations.
- Benefit Source:
Pipelines, dashboards, approvals.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Pipeline tracking
Monitors applications and decisions.
Coordination
Aligns admissions with academic and finance teams.
Reporting
Reviews enrollment trends and forecasts.
Facilities Director / Maintenance Manager
Oversees campus facilities, maintenance, and capital projects.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite centralizes requests, work orders, and compliance tracking.
- Benefit Source:
Workflows, dashboards, mobile logs.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Work order management
Tracks maintenance requests from intake to completion, with priorities, assignments and costs in one place.
Capital project oversight
Coordinates construction handoffs.
Compliance tracking
Manages inspections and safety tasks.
Financial Aid Director
Oversees financial aid processing and compliance.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite centralizes approvals, documentation, and audit readiness.
- Benefit Source:
Workflows, dashboards, evidence tracking.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Aid processing
Tracks approvals and disbursements.
Compliance
Maintains audit-ready records.
Reporting
Monitors aid metrics and timelines.
Higher Education Administrator
Manages assessment, accreditation, and continuous improvement processes.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite supports end-to-end assessment workflows with rubric scoring and version control.
- Benefit Source:
Assessment models, SmartDocs, dashboards.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Assessment coordination
Manages submissions and review cycles.
Evidence management
Tracks artifacts and improvement actions.
Accreditation reporting
Produces audit-ready documentation.
Higher Education Administrator
Oversees academic records, curriculum integrity, and student data governance.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite centralizes curriculum workflows and approval processes.
- Benefit Source:
Linked records, approvals, dashboards.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Curriculum governance
Reviews and approves program changes.
Records oversight
Ensures data consistency and compliance.
Reporting
Tracks academic changes institution-wide.
Housing Director
Manages student housing operations and facilities.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite improves coordination and visibility across housing workflows.
- Benefit Source:
Requests, dashboards, approvals.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Housing operations
Tracks requests and assignments.
Maintenance coordination
Routes residence-hall facility issues to the right team and follows them through to resolution.
Student communication
Manages housing-related updates.
Provost / VP for Academic Affairs
Oversees academic quality, assessment cycles, and accreditation.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite provides real-time insight into outcomes, program reviews, and accreditation readiness.
- Benefit Source:
s: Dashboards, assessment summaries, evidence tracking..
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Academic oversight
Reviews outcomes, assessments, and improvement plans.
Accreditation readiness
Monitors evidence and reporting status.
Executive reporting
Delivers institution-wide academic performance insights.
Sponsored Programs Director
Manages grants, compliance, submissions, and reporting.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite supports full grant lifecycle visibility and coordination.
- Benefit Source:
Proposal workflows, dashboards, document management.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Proposal routing
Manages reviews and submissions.
Compliance tracking
Maintains documentation and deadlines.
Award oversight
Tracks milestones and deliverables.
Vice President for Student Affairs (VPSA)
Leads student experience, operations, staffing, and campus programs.
- Benefit Statement:
SmartSuite unifies student-facing workflows and operational visibility.
- Benefit Source:
Dashboards, approvals, Student Affairs workflows.
How they use the Higher Education Operations suite
Operational oversight
Reviews staffing, hiring, and program activity.
Resource allocation
Approves requests and budgets.
Student experience monitoring
Tracks service delivery and outcomes.
Built for Every Role in Higher Education
Whether you’re an AVP, Institutional Effectiveness leader, Student Affairs director, department admin, or IT stakeholder — SmartSuite provides connected workflows for the work that keeps campuses running.
Flexible Pricing Designed for Every Organization
Whether you’re a growing team or a global enterprise, SmartSuite’s pricing adapts to how your business works.
Choose platform-wide access with user-based pricing or tailor licenses to your organization’s scale and structure with the Signature plan (per-solution pricing).
User-Based Pricing: Simplify Access Across Every Team
Our Team, Professional, and Enterprise plans make it easy to scale access across your organization. Each licensed user
can access all SmartSuite solutions — with predictable pricing that grows as you do.
- One per-user license for all SmartSuite solutions.
- Ideal for organizations connecting workflows across departments.
- Scalable across teams and business functions.
- Available in Team, Professional, and Enterprise plan tiers.
unified access.
- SmartSuite AI
- Min 3 Billable Users
- Unlimited Solutions
- 5,000 Records per Solution
- 50GB of File Storage
- 30 Days Recycle Bin
- SmartSuite AI
- Min 5 Billable Users
- Unlimited Solutions
- 100,000 Records per Solution
- 100GB of File Storage
- 45 Days Recycle Bin
- Folders
- Gmail and Outlook Integrations
- Advanced Permissions
- SmartSuite AI
- Min 10 Billable Users
- Unlimited Solutions
- 400,000 Records per Solution
- 500GB of File Storage
- 60 Days Recycle Bin
- SSO
- SCIM User Provisioning
- SCIM-Synced User Groups
- Audit Logs
- IP Address Restrictions
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
- European Data Residency
- Premium Support
Signature Plan: Per-Solution Pricing for Enterprise Scale
For global organizations and regulated industries requiring complex governance or large-scale rollouts, SmartSuite offers the Signature plan (per-solution pricing). This plan allows enterprises to license specific SmartSuite Solutions — such as GRC, ITSM, or Procurement — for tens of thousands of users, tailored to their exact needs.
- Tailored Licensing — Structure licenses by department, region, or regulatory requirement.
- Purpose-Built for Scale — Designed for enterprises managing thousands of users.
- Customizable Agreements — Includes the ability to tailor terms and access levels to meet unique business needs.
- Enterprise Confidence — Built for large financial institutions, insurers, and global enterprises who require high-performance
and governance.
- Audit Management
- Issues Management
- Operational Resilience
- Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
- Incident Management
- Crisis Management
- Enterprise Risk Management
- Third-Party Risk
- Vendor Portal
- Cyber Threat Management
- RCSA (Risk & Control Self-Assessment)
- Issues Management
- Business Structure
- Contract Management
- Policy Management
- Regulatory Change Management
- SOC 2 Compliance
- CRI Profile Compliance
- Control Framework & Regulatory Libraries
- Compliance Assessments & Testing
- ESG & Sustainability Management
Compare Our Pricing Models
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions about SmartSuite’s pricing models, plan options, and onboarding programs.
SmartSuite has three per-seat plans and one per-solution plan. Team ($15 per seat per month billed annually, minimum 3 users) and Professional ($32 per seat per month billed annually, minimum 5) are self-serve. Enterprise is custom priced and adds SSO, SCIM, audit logs, data residency and a Customer Success Manager. Signature licenses specific solutions, such as GRC or ITSM, for large user populations and is priced per solution.
Signature is priced per solution rather than per user, so an organization can roll a solution out to hundreds or thousands of people without per-seat cost. It pairs the Enterprise platform with governance and support arrangements agreed for your deployment. Terms, minimums and support levels are set in your contract.
Yes, by plan. Team includes 5,000 records per Solution, 50 GB of attachment storage per Solution and 25,000 automation runs and API calls per month. Professional includes 100,000 records, 100 GB and 100,000 runs and calls. Enterprise includes 400,000 records, 500 GB and 500,000 runs and calls. Solutions are unlimited on every plan, and reaching a limit never stops your Solutions from working.
Every plan includes the Help Center, real-time chat, onboarding guides, daily office hours, live monthly training and certifications, bi-weekly getting-started workshops, SmartSuite Academy and the user community. Enterprise adds a named Customer Success Manager and Professional Services, and Premium Support is available as an Enterprise add-on.
Yes. Enterprise is custom priced, with payment by invoice available for plans that meet a minimum fee, and Signature prices a whole solution rather than each user. Both are shaped around your user population, security review and support requirements.
Contact sales or schedule a demo. A member of the team will walk through your requirements and put together an Enterprise or Signature proposal.
Flexible Pricing for Institutions of All Sizes
SmartSuite offers per-user plans for the whole platform and the Signature plan (per-solution pricing) for large rollouts. Contact sales to scope a campus deployment.
SmartSuite Resources
Everything you need to learn, build, connect, and grow with SmartSuite — from expert guidance and self-paced learning to community collaboration and continuous innovation.
Resources to Help You Improve Campus Operations
Explore case studies, assessment guides, operational workflows, and research management templates built for higher education teams.