How Clever Helps App Partners Prepare for Back to School

Every August, districts flip a switch. Rosters change overnight. Students log in for the first time. And if their accounts in your app aren’t ready, you’ll hear about it fast.

We’ve been through this season with thousands of app partners. We know what separates the ones who come out ahead from the ones who spend September putting out fires. It comes down to three things.

Start your integrations earlier than you think you need to.

A single SIS integration can take longer than expected. Add an LMS integration – like Canvas, Schoology, or Google Classroom – to the list and it becomes a significant engineering commitment: testing, QA, rollout, and all.

Ed Keller, CEO of Smart Science, told us his team had scoped their LMS integration as a 6-month project. With Clever handling the heavy lifting, they finished in under a month. Amey Laud, CEO of ClassHero, put it simply: “There’s a lot more we could be doing with that same developer time.”

The earlier you get connected, the more runway you have to test, troubleshoot, and show up ready on Day One.

Make sure your support team has the right tools.

Back to School is when your support queue fills up overnight. Login failures, rostering issues, district data mismatches: your team will see all of it, and they need to be able to move fast.

Megan Timmerman, Director of Customer Support at BrightThinker, told us: “When schools say they have Clever, it’s a breath of fresh air because we know it’ll work.”

That confidence going into Back to School matters. We’re here to help you build it.

Set your onboarding up to scale.

We know you are focused on showing value to your current customers, and making a bigger impact by bringing new schools into the fold. The worst position to be in is signing a contract in July and scrambling to get them live in time. The partners who grow fastest have onboarding that holds up under pressure.

Rocket Math saw a 500% increase in school connections after partnering with Clever. Don Crawford, co-founder and owner, credited automated rostering: “Clever’s automated rostering ensures continuity in student progress across school years, preventing the loss of valuable data and fostering long-term contracts with our customers.”

The next Back to School is coming sooner than you think.

Whether you’re new to Clever or coming back before the season hits, now is the time to get connected. We support 77% of U.S. schools and are actively growing internationally, and have powered Back to School for thousands of app partners. Interested in getting set up? Let us know.