Everything Watermark governs.On the database you already own.
Watermark Curriculum Strategy is an established name in curriculum and catalog governance, with roughly 225 institutions and more than 35,000 approved curriculum changes behind it. Kenii takes on the same job and runs it on the WordPress site and database your college already operates, so the approval record and the published catalog are the same record.
We would rather name their strengths than pretend they are not real.
A deep, configured workflow.
Branching approval paths, per-step routing, tracked changes and administrative dashboards, refined across hundreds of institutions over many years.
Banner and Colleague integration.
Approved course changes sync to Ellucian through a field-mapped Ethos integration, with a review step before the sync and a report when one fails. We do not have this.
Scale we cannot claim.
Roughly 225 institutions, more than 35,000 approved curriculum changes, and 1.5 million student catalog visits a year. Kenii is live at one community college.
A wider suite behind it.
Curriculum Strategy connects to assessment, planning and student outcomes through their Insights Hub. Kenii connects to catalog, pathways and the student-facing side instead.
A named support organization.
Implementation runs on an established methodology with a dedicated client experience team behind it, which matters when a catalog deadline is close.
They run the approval process on their servers and publish the result to your catalog.
We keep the approval and the catalog in one database.
The approved proposal
writes the catalog record.
There is no publish step between the vote and the page. An approved change updates the course or program record itself, and if the catalog year is already live to students it lands as a dated addendum instead of a silent rewrite.
What the Curriculum package includes
The catalog students read
is on your own domain.
Your catalog renders on your college website, under your brand, indexed as your pages. Nothing sends a prospective student to a vendor portal to find out what you teach, and the recruiting value stays with you.
Compare against Acalog
Where the two actually differ.
| Feature | Watermark | Kenii |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Hosted on Watermark's servers and reached through their portal | On your own WordPress site, in your own database |
| Curriculum and catalog | Connected modules, with approved changes published into the catalog | One database, where the approved proposal writes the record it changed |
| SIS integration | Syncs approved course changes to Ellucian Banner and Colleague through a field-mapped Ethos integration | None today. Your registrar moves changes into the SIS the way they do now |
| Install base | Roughly 225 institutions | Live in production at a community college today |
| Student experience | A searchable, mobile-friendly online catalog | Mobile-first and goal-based, connected to wage and transfer data through Pathways |
| Document formats | Web catalog plus a Word export | Web catalog plus Word, CSV and JSON, all generated from the same record |
| Accessibility standard | Published target is WCAG 2.1 AA | Built to WCAG 2.2 AA |
| Cost | Not published. Quoted per institution | Scoped to your catalog's size, with a written quote after we see it |
What sets Kenii aside is that it is all built into one, and it is inside your own website.Jason Freeman Chief Information Officer Martin Community College
The questions worth putting to both of us.
- Does Kenii sync to Banner or Colleague?
- Not today, and it is the clearest gap between us. Watermark syncs approved course changes to Ellucian through a field-mapped Ethos integration, reviews each change before it syncs, and reports a failure. Kenii keeps the catalog and the approval record in one database on your own site, so there is no sync to fail between those two, but a change your registrar needs inside the SIS still gets there the way it does now. If an Ethos integration is a hard requirement, tell us early and we will say plainly whether we are a fit.
- Is Watermark more mature than Kenii?
- Yes, and we would rather say so than dodge it. Their workflow has been configured and reconfigured across hundreds of institutions, and that depth is real. Kenii is newer with a narrower feature set, aimed at owning the record and doing recruiting work rather than covering every governance variation in higher education.
- What does Watermark cost?
- They do not publish pricing and we are not going to invent a figure for them. Ask them for a written quote covering license, implementation and any SIS integration fee, then ask us for ours. Kenii is scoped to the size of your catalog, so we quote after we have seen it rather than publish a number that fits nobody.
- Why would we move off something 225 institutions already use?
- If it is working for your institution, that is a fair reason to stay, and we will tell you so. Institutions look at us when they want the catalog and the approval record on their own site instead of a vendor portal, when they want the catalog doing recruiting work rather than sitting beside it, or when running one connected platform for catalog, pathways and curriculum beats running several.
- Can we run both while we decide?
- Yes. Kenii installs as a plugin on the WordPress site you already operate, so it does not displace anything while you evaluate it. Request a branded demo and we stand up a site with your logo and colors on demo catalog content, and you can put the two side by side with your own committee.
Put them side by sidewith your own committee.
Request a branded demo and we will stand up a live Kenii site carrying your college logo and colors, running on demo catalog content, so your curriculum team can move a real proposal through committee and judge it against what you use today.