[integris] opinions please: switching to Integris for a secondary school

[Xeba37]

Good afternoon (again).

 

On to my second topic for the day, moving to Integris. The powers that be are considering a switch to RM Integris, we currently run SIMS and are a secondary school with a 6th form. I have been party to meetings with RM to discuss our needs as a school and have a look at their test system.

 

From what I understand both from word of mouth and what I have seen first hand, Integris is a fantastic and viable alternative to SIMS for primary, but it is not developed enough to be a viable alternative to SIMS for a secondary school. I noticed that the links with exams and assessment were going to be an issue (i.e. they don't link and any data downloaded from exam boards would have to be exported and copied and pasted into assessment), and the fact there is no exam seating planner. Also there were some features in assessment manager I rely on that are not going to be available (individual reports are not so customisable as the Word mail-merge you can work with in SIMS, no result sets).

 

I have also heard that Integris are quick to promise changes and upgrades to parts of their system, but do not deliver these in the timescales quoted, if at all.

 

Does anyone have any useful comments that I can bring to the table at our next meeting on this subject so we go in to this with our eyes open and are more likely to make the right choice.

[Banjo]

Some schools have reported that they have been cold called by RM and offered Integris free for 12 months! Might be worth contacting some of those schools that use it to find out what they think. I know Dudley schools use it and I believe Oxford moved to RM quite recently. HT's I've spoken to who use it haven't been very complimentary about it.

[ntm1275]

Our LA have a mix of Secondary schools using SIMS and Integris and all appear happy with the system they've got

The SIMS schools host on site and the Integris school are hosted with RM

 

From an LA point of view, SIMS is the more feature rich system, but it also costs considerably more, where as Integris does all the things you would expect an MIS to do but without the bells and whistles

 

The one thing that our Integris schools love is access to Integris from outside of the school network i.e from home, where as the SIMS schools can only access from the school itself

The other thing that the Integris schools love is not having to deploy updates themselves and manage the MIS servers. This is all done by RM

 

If you are happy to continue paying Capita prices, then by all means stay with them, but if you want a MIS that does all the basics well at a cheaper price, then go with RM

 

From an LA point of view, we prefer Integris because we have a simple to use login to access the data (Integris is web based)

With the SIMS schools we have to request data from the schools as we have no direct access to the school servers

Edited February 14, 2015 by ntm1275