[bromcom] Bromcom, current thoughts?

[Disease]

Hi,

 

I attended a presentation of the Bromcom MIS system yesterday and came away feeling impressed with it, like all presentations it's easy to feel this way, but before I can properly advise SMT I need more views:)

 

For a balanced opinion is there anyone who currently runs the Bromcom MIS system prepared to give me the low down on it from an active school use perspective. Even better if you were a SIMS.net school and moved to Bromcom, how do they compare in your view? Pro's Con's etc.

 

Thanks in Advance

[JonThompson]

We are a SIMS school, but last year we purchased Bromcoms Teachers Web Folder for access to SIMS data from home. Our teachers here love it, and we are renewing for another year. We dont use Bromcom for our MIS, but we may look at this again as the council are in the process of retendering.

[Rebelgirl]

We made the decision to move from Sims to Bromcom this time two years ago. We spent the summer holidays moving accross and were ready to start with the new system in the September (including downloading our Exam results to the new MIS). We didn't run any training for Teachers WebFolder - it is so intuative; if you can't use it you shouldn't be a teacher!!! The MIS side was a little more complicated to get to grips with - I'd been using SIMS for 15+ years. Two years on we are still glad we moved. I'm not saying it's all been plain sailing - we've had our moments. What's good about it is I know my Helpdesk engineer by name - if I have a problem we can talk it through. He can log into my system instantly to sort out problems - none of this "put the DB on a CD and send it to Bedford". The upgrades are done by them while I sleep too (that's what got my vote) and as it is web based none of this running round to PC's making sure they have upgraded. Our parents prefer MCAS (MyChildAtSchool) too - always a benefit. Several of our feeder Primaries have moved accross this year too and so far all seems well.

[psydii]

on premises or in their cloud?

[Rebelgirl]

On our own server. Our Primaries are on the cloud

[psydii]

Oooh. How many sites in total?

[xenonive]

Another vote for Teachers Webfolder and Mychild at school , works well and doesn't need any training.

[StacyLarkin]

Oooh. How many sites in total?

 

If I can answer on Rebelgirl's behalf, then Bromcom have clusters of feeder schools around the UK that number anywhere from 3 up to 10.

[Bromcom_John]

The upgrades are done by them while I sleep too (that's what got my vote) and as it is web based none of this running round to PC's making sure they have upgraded.

Just wanted to clarify this point that Rebelgril made. Even when the system is hosted at the school we offer a "Managed Service" and our support desk carries out all routine upgrades remotely without interrupting the school operations. It's all scheduled and arranged with the school IT support team to ensure that it seamlessly integrates with all the schools usual technical processes.

With the cloud MIS version, upgrade and backups are of course transparent to the user and are completed automatically within the service.