MIS geared towards Primary

[owen1978]

We area Birmingham Primary School who currently use CMIS.

 

Was originally looking at migrating to Progresso but I am a bit less certain now

due to their recent sale.

 

We would like a cloud based solution, which of the many MIS's out there

would you say is more geared towards a primary school.

 

Also our school might become an academy so does the effect the choice

of MIS.

[elsiegee40]

We area Birmingham Primary School who currently use CMIS.

 

Was originally looking at migrating to Progresso but I am a bit less certain now

due to their recent sale.

 

We would like a cloud based solution, which of the many MIS's out there

would you say is more geared towards a primary school.

 

Also our school might become an academy so does the effect the choice

of MIS.

Whatever you get, make sure the licenses can be transferred with minimal cost (preferably none) if you convert to academy status. Get it in writing!

 

The actual MIS isn't an issue with academy status, though if you are to be part of an academy group it would be worth talking to other schools in the group. Running the same platform across schools in the group is good for reporting.

 

The finance software is an issue with academy status, especially if you become multi-school academy. FMS (the finance part of SIMS) doesn't provide everything that academy bursars need. My governor school is a SIMS school, but is dropping FMS in favour of PS Financials.

Edited February 28, 2013 by elsiegee40

[CAM]

I thought the finance part was FMS?

[elsiegee40]

Typo caused by CMIS Corrected

[Kyle]

My governor school is a SIMS school, but is dropping FMS in favour of PS Financials.

 

We had to do this as well!

[matt40k]

FYI - FMS will work for academy's, you can record all the required information and get the data out. You can't however just use your existing LA setup, you need a fresh new academy fms database. Getting the data into the correct format can be, well lets just say capita need to do some work - the last time heard about the bits they done, they weren't fit for purpose and was pulled. We have academies that use PS Financials, it works ok, just no sims integration, yet, sure enough people wanted it, it would happen - its not difficult.

 

As for licensing, you can transfer SIMS direct licenses for a fee, you can't do it for LA licenses. So if you buy direct, your ok. Reason being basically the LA license was purchased for a lot less then what you'll pay capita direct and it had a clause that prevent transferring the license - I guess this stops other LA nicking the other local LA schools support contract once they'd bought the license - not that we'd do such a things

[owen1978]

Understood about the Academy side of things...

I believe SIMS is not cloud based, so it rules that out

 

ASPEN looks more for secondary, HE establishments

[The_Windy_Miller]

"Could based solution" - for a Primary - is this really necessary? If your internet goes down, you have no data!

[SimpleSi]

If their server fails (with no 2 hours SLA fix support in place) then they have no data either

 

SImon

 

Plus the school sec knows all their names and where they live

[The_Windy_Miller]

If the server controlling your gateway goes down, you've still got access to the data with no internet.

 

If the server with the data goes down, restore from backup to a different workstation and away you go. If the internet goes down, you're in the hands of (more often than not) BT

[CAM]

Said it again and again, if your mission critical stuff is up in the clouds make sure you have another means of getting to it! Namely redundant Internet connections.

 

That's the most important piece of any cloud infrastructure but it gets dismissed as a "waste of money!"

[DavKellyPro]

You can put in redundant (and relatively cost-effective) broadband by using small routers which allow you to plug in mobile dongles. For those odd times you really need a connection, a £25 TP-link box with a £25 O2 dongle and £5 worth of data on it is a really small price to pay to ensure at least a couple of megabits of connection! We've suggested that to a few schools who've asked - it's rough, and certainly not ideal, but it means that the 0.1% of time your internet connection goes down, you can just flick a switch and maintain mission critical stuff until your main connection comes back online.

[owen1978]

What ever cloud based system we choose... I would have redundancy in place... otherwise i wouldn't be doing my job

[elsiegee40]

What is it about the MIS that you have seen so far that makes you feel that they are not for Primary Schools?

 

SIMS for example has a large number of Primary users... so do most, if not all, of the other big players.

[SimpleSi]

@DavKellyPro

 

I'd love to have such a system in my schools but its one of the downsides of having RBC t'internet - they just don't seem to understand the necessity of such a setup

 

1st thing that will be done if any of my schools goes academy is to ditch CLEO

 

Simon

[vikpaw]

Aspen is having a facelift soon .. . . @GREED and it can look good for primary schools too, it all depends on what you make of it.

Scholarpack and iSAMS have nice friendly interfaces, and the iSAMS API interface looks awesome (not relevant, but it makes other integrations easy).

Frog has a very friendly interface for primary and they are retrofitting MIS features for the malaysian market, so worth keeping an eye on.

 

On the subject of cloud - i think Aspen would let you host it, but you might pay a bit more for install / support. Others do this as well. So you get the benefit of Cloud, but it's onsite. I'd always want a paper backup at least once per term of key numbers even if it's on site, as let's face it, it's piece of mind for very little cost.

[ghafoor]

I would say RM Integris G2 would be better suited as its less pricey as compare to SIMS and centrally host.

[matt40k]

Two things, first I dislike the word cloud - SIMS can be made into a "cloud" MIS - you can access it along with MS Office over a web browser anywhere in the world. Is that "cloud" enough for you?

 

The other thing, I laugh when I saw a picture of a companys internet connection with redundany - it was dual fibre with a ADSL backup - I think I saw a place for a 3G dongle - I laughed because it didn't have a UPS backup and it was all plugged into the same PDU. All the money they have spend and they couldn't be bothered to put in a solution to cover the cleaner unplugged the power. Just saying, you can't cover all the bases - at least with a "cloud" solution you could get at the data - that's assuming its something wrong at your end - not at the data center.

 

Other news - I think you'd be suprised how cheap SIMS is - its the bolt on that costs alot - I've setup a small school with SIMS for sub £1k!

[scholarpack]

Two things, first I dislike the word cloud - SIMS can be made into a "cloud" MIS - you can access it along with MS Office over a web browser anywhere in the world. Is that "cloud" enough for you?

 

Not really. Most people would consider a cloud based product one you access through a browser without any of the faffing around setting up VPNs and the like. Not to mention the dire speed most VPN based products inflict on their users!!

[matt40k]

Faff? Seriously? I would suggest you see Cambs solution or look up Sonicwall SSL VPN. Only faff I could find was the security token - but you'd hope every supplier forces you into using the extra security when your data is avalible anywhere in the world.

 

From a technical point of view you'd want something like Aspen I agree. But you don't select a MIS system based on technical point of view, if you did, you'd be using notepad.

[vikpaw]

Ahem wordpad at least, come on!

[scholarpack]

Whenever you try to squeeze a desktop application through a browser you're invariably going to provide a poorer user experience than if that product were simply designed from scratch to be browser based.

 

Most of our customers have come from SIMS and many remark how poor the experience over a VPN is. Not just SIMS, but other desktop apps that have been virtualised too.

[matt40k]

I guess you can say the same about access via mobile devices.

[scholarpack]

I guess you can say the same about access via mobile devices.

 

Yup, exactly. About 6-7% of our users now access via tablets so at the moment we are content to allow them access via a browser and not a native app but obviously the best experience is a custom built app. Something for us to consider in the near future.

[GREED]

Well Well, I can see my presence is not needed! Thanks @vikpaw @matt40k for the mentions!

 

There are a number of points made which I would like to answer:

 

# Aspen MIS is in the process of a 'facelift', which while does give an improved visual interface, has a huge investment into making the interface available and usable (or more usable) to mobile and tablet devices. Going much the same way as Windows 8 did, build core elements for touch devices, and build it out for the desktop. More on that in the summer!

 

# Aspen MIS can be hosted locally if you want to. There is no increased cost, however you lose the cost savings for server, power, upkeep, backups, maintenance, DR etc.

 

# I agree with @matt40k: just saying an MIS is 'cloud' because you can access it over a VPN is very different to a dedicated web based/web presented system. Making a client type system available over the internet compared to one that is naturally available via web browsers is a huge gap. Lets leave that one there!

 

Graham

Edited March 5, 2013 by GREED