[SIMS] What's wrong with Capita

[matt40k]

Sure I'm about to open a can of worms, but this has annoyed me a bit and I just wanted to see what others thought.
[rant]
Basically it was from Capita newsletter - New SIMS video - producing quick student lists

"Bring your own devices (BYOD)"

OK, I like the idea, but I don't like the fact that Capita is trying to muscle in to every area. Capita Children Services are software development company, I wish they could concentrate on doing just that and work with other companies to do rest, ie they're hosted solutions are done by a company that already has the infrastructure in place, has been doing it for a while and then SIMS bit is just added on. So when you see an article called "Bring your own devices (BYOD)" you aren't thinking some bright spark is going to try and tell your school that a managed wireless network will do it all. (i'm just guess that's what they'll say).

I just feel Capita are abusing they're position to resell rubbish. Anyway, just what I'm thinking, what do you all thing.

[/rant]

[pcstru]

Capita Children Services are software development company,

I don't think that's been true since they were properly SIMS (and even then they were developing support and consultancy services). Under Capita they have expended a reasonable effort developing support services and that must account for a not-to-be-sniffed-at chunk of CES year to year earnings.

[pete]

My impression with CES is that their coverage (support, knowledge, capability) on non-core products is lacking. There's several areas from a support perspective where if one key person is unavailable, customer issues that can't be resolved in a simple manner will stack up and drag on.

Add to this a lack of polish in back-end areas (audit trails(1), logging(2), infrastructure monitoring(3), hosting(4)) that end-users won't see, but sysadmins will rant about.

I do often feel they're punting the moon on a stick to people who can't always critically assess their ability to deliver the goods or fix issues above first-line helldesk in a timely manner.

1) SLG, SIMS
2) ibid
3) If I'm calling you to let you know the disk on your server is full, you should be paying me
4) Supportnet

[edutech4schools]

I assume this is the same Capita
London fire brigade to outsource 999 control centre | Guardian Government Computing | Guardian Professional

[localzuk]

I assume this is the same Capita
London fire brigade to outsource 999 control centre | Guardian Government Computing | Guardian Professional

Same Capita, different division.

[matt40k]

Yes and No. Same group, not same Capita sub-company. Capita education sector is small fry in the scale of Capita. Capita do your TV licensing and the congestion charges for London, along with alot of other things.

Also I'll say with regards to sub-departments\companies of Capita working together well, is B2B and Norfolk's centrally hosted solution.

[vikpaw]

I noticed that, and saw that they wanted you to tweet them if you were considering it. We're already going down that road with naff all planning or forethought, the last thing we want is Capita supporting the view it's great and rushing us down the road.
They have always had this IT consultancy arm on the periphery but i don't know who takes it up, maybe just Primaries without in-house know how.

[pcstru]

Yes and No. Same group, not same Capita sub-company. Capita education sector is small fry in the scale of Capita.

Yes and no. In the totality of Capita turnover, yes. But CES certainly was and probably still is one of the most profitable parts of Capita - one of a small flock of golden geese surrounded by a bunch of limited term - pure service contracts.

Also I'll say with regards to sub-departments\companies of Capita working together well, is B2B and Norfolk's centrally hosted solution.

Do you mean CES's B2B product on the One platform and SIMS?

[enjay]

They have always had this IT consultancy arm on the periphery

I think you've got that backwards - Capita is an enormous IT consultant and service provider, with Education Services on the periphery.

[matt40k]

Do you mean CES's B2B product on the One platform and SIMS?

Yer, with regards to Capita talking between departments - B2B being the "link" between ONE (LA) and SIMS (Schools).

Norfolk being the Capita talking between "companies", well rather the technical side being rubbish (from what I understand - something to do with an problem on the identity service stopping people using the live system for a number of months (or was it only weeks - someone on here posted about it anyway - feel free to correct me).

[vikpaw]

I think you've got that backwards - Capita is an enormous IT consultant and service provider, with Education Services on the periphery.

Sure, i meant, the Education Services arm, always have it in their documentation that they offer consultancy, it's always an optional service / add-on for maintenance agreements. I remember they were offering software purchase advice at my old school. They could really do well out of some Sharepoint consultancy i'm sure.

Actually came across a really cool, and cheap tool recently that will perform a rebrand / theme on a sharepoint site, which would be quite a nice service i'm sure for many schools that don't have in house tech.

[pcstru]

Yer, with regards to Capita talking between departments - B2B being the "link" between ONE (LA) and SIMS (Schools).

Perhaps it's pedantic, but I don't believe that B2B working is really the result of departments talking to each other, rather it's the result of making B2B the responsibility of a single project team (on the LA side).

[Beduffshirl]

Yes and No. Same group, not same Capita sub-company. Capita education sector is small fry in the scale of Capita. Capita do your TV licensing and the congestion charges for London, along with alot of other things.
Also I'll say with regards to sub-departments\companies of Capita working together well, is B2B and Norfolk's centrally hosted solution.

IBM have done Congestion charging for at least two years now

[tombry]

after only six months with SIMS, I hate that there is no audit trail, I hate the limited documentation (both from Capita as well as the LA support services), and I hate the general response of, "well, we offer a class for that", which really just teaches you how to do whatever one specific thing they want to show you.

been annoying me to no end this week as I start to gather things to look into over the summer holiday.

[matt40k]

I hate the limited documentation

Log in to SIMS, then click Documentation... a few thousand pages later...