Cost Per Year for MIS System

[pete]

Prices mentioned from other suppliers in this thread (RM or Serco etc..) are factored in the cost of the new software licenses.

Do others agree with this?

Ish. The OP was asking for a per-year cost and the £5K is our per-year cost. Saying "but if you bought it new it would cost more in Year 1" is pretty obvious.

But having said that, we were using SIMS long before Capita got involved - I'm not sure how much it cost back then, but I suspect it was considerably less than our current annual maintenance.

[ntm1275]

Goodness knows where you got that astronomical amount from Alice. It is absolute nonsense!

I repeat what I said above - get quotes and then compare!

One of our secondary schools of less than 1200 pupils moved from Serco to Capita in 2008 with no LEA support, and the first year invoice was over £33,000 before VAT, and that includes all costs - initial licence, training, annual support

Subsequent years are just over £6000 before VAT for the annual maintenance

If Capita was supported by our LEA, the cost would most likely have be less


Alice's quote was about correct for the first year costs for Capita for a single school

Most new MIS systems will be more during the first year, because of training costs and initial licence costs


Most of our schools are on RM's Integris G2/S2, which does not have an initial licence cost, and the LEA funds the training, so no costs there either for our schools

[kylewilliamson]

My understanding is that you don't actually purchase a CMIS license, you just pay for the annual license with the maintenance. SIMS should be cheaper year-by-year but will have an initial up-start cost for licenses etc that'll be greater.

Kyle

[vikpaw]

At my old school, with SIMS coming centrally from the LEA, i remember we had to pay a contribution towards the licence cost and then our annual maintenance on top of that.

Here we pay upwards of £10k for our 1500 pupils, and that includes having Lesson Monitor, Sims Learning Gateway, Curriculum & Lesson Planner, Timetabling (i think that is an add-on).

I don't recall seeing licence costs on the invoice, it just seems to be made up of the annual maintenance fees now, but adds up with all the modules. We are an independent here, and so direct with Capita.

I know when we looked around before the cost of a total new system could cost upto £30k or more, but then you were in a position to bargain and there were big discounts being offered.

[Tiger]

One of our secondary schools of less than 1200 pupils moved from Serco to Capita in 2008 with no LEA support, and the first year invoice was over £33,000 before VAT, and that includes all costs - initial licence, training, annual support

Subsequent years are just over £6000 before VAT for the annual maintenance

If Capita was supported by our LEA, the cost would most likely have be less


Alice's quote was about correct for the first year costs for Capita for a single school

Most new MIS systems will be more during the first year, because of training costs and initial licence costs

Most of our schools are on RM's Integris G2/S2, which does not have an initial licence cost, and the LEA funds the training, so no costs there either for our schools

ntm1275 ,

Very interesting account.

ntm1275, are you able to tell us which LA this relates to?

Does your LA apply "top slicing" funds for support & maintenance for MIS chosen by LA (Serco in your case). Schools righly complain about "top slicing" funds.

Top slicing means schools pay twice for maintenenace and support, first of all for LA chosen MIS (in your case for Serco which school does not use) and then one that the school chooses (Capita - in your example). How injustice this must be!! It would be an unfair incentive for the school to stick to LA choice for such fundemental facility running a school. To decide to pay £33,000 (before VAT) for a new MIS means the school feels strong enough for their choice to invest such amount of money!

[ntm1275]

There is no top slicing for our Secondary schools

We have a prefered supplier, which is RM, but Secondary schools can choose which MIS they go for

Each of our 4 Capita Secondary schools chose to go with Capita before we went through a recent LEA tendering process for our prefered MIS system

Those 4 schools have decided to stay with Capita as they have invested a lot of money in recent years when they moved from Serco

The remaining Secondary schools have chosen to go with our prefered supplier (but at a reduced cost due to the tendering process), but they still have to pay for it themselves, apart from the training costs, as this is done in house by our LEA training team

We don't have any objection to the use of Capita, but there is no direct LEA help with any software problems, so these 4 schools have to go directly to Capita

[Oops_my_bad]

After reading this thread I don't think I'll ever again complain about the cost of SIMS!

[Jeremy69]

The cost for my school this year is about £6.4k (School over 1000 pupils). If we added a module we had not had before then that would be an additional cost.
We did have a look at SERCO sometime ago to see what else was out there and it was the preferred LA solution. The sales people were quite reluctant to specify exact costs but after some dancing around it came to about £14-15K each year i.e. not just a starting up cost which seemed to be getting on for 2.5 times what we paid at that point. Couldn't see how that was any sort of value for money.

[Serco_Rob]

As Business Development Manager for Serco I've got a pretty good handle on MIS prices from all MIS suppliers. Our MIS is based on pupil numbers, and rather than be modular our core MIS includes all aspects of key school management as well as parental access and e-registration. I visit many schools where they pay for the LA endorsed MIS but then pay other suppliers for add on systems. You have to compare the full range of functionality.

It is true that where LAs offer a central license for an MIS it can be cheaper - so as Capita SIMS has historical had the percentage of the market (at the moment) there are lots of established relationships. In the same way, in the LAs where we supply our MIS to the majority of schools in that LAa we have a central license with the LA and there are economies of scale and reductions in price. I would love it if all LAs did a review of their MIS so schools could compare systems and prices. We have tried to approach all LAs in this way.

Im happy to talk price with any school and justify it in relation to their existing supplier or existing setup. PM me to discuss.

Thanks

Rob

[zag]

Sims costs us about 6k a year I think

[ntm1275]

As Business Development Manager for Serco I've got a pretty good handle on MIS prices from all MIS suppliers. Our MIS is based on pupil numbers, and rather than be modular our core MIS includes all aspects of key school management as well as parental access and e-registration. I visit many schools where they pay for the LA endorsed MIS but then pay other suppliers for add on systems. You have to compare the full range of functionality.

It is true that where LAs offer a central license for an MIS it can be cheaper - so as Capita SIMS has historical had the percentage of the market (at the moment) there are lots of established relationships. In the same way, in the LAs where we supply our MIS to the majority of schools in that LAa we have a central license with the LA and there are economies of scale and reductions in price. I would love it if all LAs did a review of their MIS so schools could compare systems and prices. We have tried to approach all LAs in this way.

Im happy to talk price with any school and justify it in relation to their existing supplier or existing setup. PM me to discuss.

Thanks

Rob

A couple of years ago our LEA went through a review of our MIS systems, and invited tenders from all suppliers, but only Capita and RM responded

Why didn't Serco respond??

All our Serco secondary schools have now moved to either Capita or RM as the cost per year was far too expensive for CMIS/Portal and the support they received from Serco was very poor

Being a Welsh County, we found that Serco were totally ignoring the needs of Welsh schools

Every year at Census/PLASC time, or for the End of Key Stage Assessment Returns, the Return files were always in the incorrect format, didn't include the specified data, or totally broke the system

I would have to manually edit the XML files so that the school could submit the Return

When the schools rang up Serco's support line, they were disinterested and did not have the knowledge on how to proceed with fixing the problems

Since these schools have migrated away from Serco to Capita and RM, we have had no problems at all

So if your pricing is based on pupil numbers, can you explain why our Serco secondary school were being charged in excess of £14000 per year, when those now with Capita are paying less than £7000 per year and those with RM are paying less than £5000, and this includes ALL the features that Serco provided to them

[CyberNerd]

Sims costs us about 6k a year I think

not very good value if you only got 50 students

[pete]

@Serco_rob

Can you cut back on the fonts please, my eyes are starting to bleed.