Serco CMIS Facility

[bursar]

As a school, we've had CMIS for several years now and have been using more and more of the functionality. We would now like to recruit a full time Data Manager. We also have a new CMS-style website coming (which the DM would manage) and would like to integrate data from our Alumni database (in mySQL) with other data (parent's association etc) in a portal (encompassing e-portal). It would be useful if the DM could also write scripts for example to transfer data from an accounts package that runs our fees billing (producing CVS files) to the main nominal ledger running off SQL Server. Could I ask
1) Is this too much to ask of a DM?
2) Does £35K sound about right?
3) Could anyone point me to where this kind of job would be advertised?


Thanks.

[DaveP]

Edugeek has a jobs section here: http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=jobs.

Would that help?

[StewartKnight]

It would help if you gave the location and name of the school as well

[limbo]

I am currently charged with doing the kind of things you are talking about asking for - so I would say it is not too much to ask at all. My worry would be that these things, if done right, are only a few months work and then should work pretty much without anybody spending huge amounts of time on them - so you need to make sure that there is enough future development to make it challenging enough for the kind of person that would take this post, and cost effective for yourselves once you have committed to that kind of salary.

Whether the salary is right does depend a little on your geography and whether you are looking for any specific experience in Education (not a lot of jobs around like this so your choice would be fairly small) and then how appealing you think our school would be - we have a strange set of priorities and care about things like having an office that is not a converted toilet (and in some cases not yet converted!) - and the opportunity to choose our own laptop etc!

I think at £35k you would get a lot of applicants, but I do no know how many of them would already be doing the job and be able to impact straight away.

As for where to advertise, here is good and maybe the TES but somewhere that will get found on a web search is probably the most likely to get noticed - advertising in most local papers will get your advert onto a site like fish4jobs.

[GeorgeFaux]

Sounds quite reasonable but I would say that the job is less data manager and more of a Technical position. I agree that if you are not looking for the manager to do the analysis of the data and present it to your SMT you can probably find some consultancy out there to do the techy parts for you. I certainly got outside help in on the technical parts when I was a data manager asking for very similar things and it only cost about £3k in total.

[alumni]

If it's not too late, before you hire a full time staff member to do this, it would be worth checking what alumni package options Serco offers ... it might not be necessary to re-invent the wheel!

[mark80]

If you are based around the warwick area i'll apply... im currently the MIS manager at a school in Derbyshire

[StArbiter]

Alumni - what do you mean by alunmi package options ? I see it's your first post but some of us need a little more help than others ...

[bursar]

Thanks for your feedback. The School is in Dulwich SE22. We've pretty much decided to turn the job on its head and recruit a person with the technical abilities (web, databases, scripting languages etc) who we can then train up in CMIS as necessary. An ideal candidate would have some knowledge of an MIS and possibly a education-related job history. In this way, instead of pulling from a pool of 3000(?) or so current CMIS-based data managers, we can recruit from a much larger pool of talent.

[alumni]

StArbiter - I mean the sort of package provided by the suppliers whose adds you see if you enter "alumni package" in Google.... Abattia, Youralumni, SubHub, Interology.

I believe that most of the major school MIS suppliers in the UK (including Serco) will offer supported integration with, and possibly re-sell, one or other of these offerings (or have their own in-house "alumni" functionality in their products). If your alumni database functionality is integrated with your school MIS, annual leavers migrations, putting your sixth form on your alumni site before they leave, reporting CVA ("contextual value added"), matching work experience opportunities provided by alumni with aspirations of current students, etc ... all become much easier.

Hope that helps!

[StArbiter]

StArbiter - I mean the sort of package provided by the suppliers whose adds you see if you enter "alumni package" in Google.... Abattia, Youralumni, SubHub, Interology.

I believe that most of the major school MIS suppliers in the UK (including Serco) will offer supported integration with, and possibly re-sell, one or other of these offerings (or have their own in-house "alumni" functionality in their products). If your alumni database functionality is integrated with your school MIS, annual leavers migrations, putting your sixth form on your alumni site before they leave, reporting CVA ("contextual value added"), matching work experience opportunities provided by alumni with aspirations of current students, etc ... all become much easier.

Hope that helps!

I didn't know that ! So who does integration with Serco CMIS ?

[alumni]

'fraid I don't know for certain, but my guess is that it's Abattia ... they are the most widely used in the UK Education sector, and I do know they integrate with Capita's SIMS (and I think some others) ... so probably with Serco's CMIS too ...