You're right, incumbent SIS/LMS vendors are rolling out AI features. We’ve studied (and, in my past life at Salesforce, helped build) some of them. What we keep hearing from IT teams is:

- Integration tax: Each module still lives in its own data model. Schools end up exporting CSVs or building Mule pipelines to reconcile SIS+LMS+CRM. Our agent sits on top of all sources with pre-built connectors and a unified schema, so coaches see enrollment + Canvas grades + attendance in one call (like in the Triage Center)

- Operational burden: Products like Data Cloud or Agentforce are powerful but need admin capacity that smaller schools just don’t have. We ship a default ruleset for advisors + prompt library so an advisor can be productive immediately.

- Cost creep: Several platforms meter GPT usage or require new AI licenses. We price per active student so budgeting is predictable, which is a big plus for universities and their unique budget cycles.

Curious if you’ve found pain points around data normalization especially (this is the hard, very custom part of our work right now). Happy to keep the discussion here for the benefit of others, and if you’d like to dive deeper my email is sadia@risely.ai