Switch to SIMS from CMIS?

[HPPMBOL]

Good Morning

 

We are at the crossroads of whether to switch from CMIS to SIMS or something else entirely.

 

I'm looking to get some first hand info from Data Managers who are using SIMS regarding potential effects on our in-house, "business processes"

 

I'd be really grateful for any thoughts/comments , even "one liners" regarding any of these issues.

 

Behaviour Management

In SIMS, can you customise behaviour management?

 

• eg, we give negative behaviour points for a predefined set of specific poor behaviour actions. eg 2 points if 3 minutes late for a lesson, .
  

 

 

• These points accumulate and they then receive sanctions as they cross the predefined boundaries depending on their total points.
  

 

So, my question is, In SIMS, can staff select from a range of customised bad behaviour types (which attract different points value) or is it that they can only give a single bad behaviour mark?

 

Progress 8

 

We've devised a method of monitoring progress in this Brave New World of Life without levels.

 

To what extent and how well does SIMS allow analysis of Progress 8?

 

Exams

 

Is Exam management straightforward in SIMS?

 

Timetabling

I've heard anecdotally that Timetabling can be done in a Day in SIMs!

 

What are the top 3 gripes about Timetabling in SIMS?

 

Staff Acceptance

What do your Teaching and Support staff say about SIMS?

 

Any replies will be greatly appreciated.

[6Foot2]

I don't use either package, but I can say that a few years ago we went in the other direction: SIMS -> CMIS. We have had a number of changes in our staff but for those who are still here who recall using SIMS that is their preference. I am hearing whispers that a move back to SIMS might be on the cards.

[Chuckster]

In my previous school they went from CMIS to SIMS, but they continued to pay some form of a license fee to CMIS to retain access to historial data. Because we had support for our MIS through the LA they took care of the data transfer at an additional cost to the school. This, however, was just before I took up the post.

 

Now, a friend of mine at his school is going from SIMS to CMIS as the school is now part of a MAT. They are having to run manual reports and import them into CMIS. If they're unable to do that, then they're having to manually type the data. This is a very costly exercise as they're having to pay overtime and/or time off in lieu to the admin team.

[michael2k6]

I've used Facility (CMIS), and Progresso in schools (2004-2006 and 2013-2014), and have been through change from SIMS to CMIS and also CMIS to Progresso (different schools), but do not have experience of other MIS.

Just to avoid any backlash, I will make clear immediately I now work for Advanced Learning (previously Serco Learning), suppliers of Facility (CMIS) and Progresso, and so am biased.

What I would suggest is that if you are looking at changing MIS, it must be because you're not happy with your current solution. If that's the case, write a list of objectives and measurables that you can use to ensure the project is a success, and also to ensure you can justify the change; changing MIS is not for the faint hearted, from any MIS to any MIS, it needs great consideration because of the reach to such a wide audience.

 

In the post above, you've pretty much said this is what we do, can others do it.. . what I'd recommend you do is take that list of requirements, and potential improvements to process, including cost and time saving capabilities, and assess the entire market. The market is wider than your current solution and SIMS (to remain as unbiased as possible I shan't list them all), and I fully recommend you explore it completely; this is a process you only want to do once, for the right reasons, with clear objectives and direction.

 

Michael Sanderson

Advanced Learning

[HPPMBOL]

Many thanks for taking the time to reply, Chuckster and DaveP. All contributions from Data Managers working on the front line are most greatly appreciated.

 

Hello Michael.

 

For the sake of brevity in my post, I didn't add that I have been a Data Manager for over 20 years, am a Prince 2 Practitioner and have managed Education DB migration projects in the past. I say this now, so that in the future you won't inadvertently insult my intelligence again by misreading the content of my post, nor wade in with your lesson from Page one of the manual for Database Migration Projects.

 

In this instance, I am not the Project Executive, nor the Project Manager. As a Senior User on the project, I am simply using this forum as one of many methods to glean some first hand insight from Data Managers regarding their experience specifically with SIMS on a very small subset of functionality Issues.

 

All responses that I receive from ""on the job Data Managers, such as myself will be very much appreciated.

[matt40k]

Just to be clear, your at a school, they are thinking about switching MIS system, you are happy with the process, business justification, measurable targets and so on. You're after specific answers about SIMS, ie the stuff you wont get from Capita Sales guys, but from actual SIMS users

[HPPMBOL]

Just to be clear, your at a school, they are thinking about switching MIS system, you are happy with the process, business justification, measurable targets and so on. You're after specific answers about SIMS, ie the stuff you wont get from Capita Sales guys, but from actual SIMS users

 

Precisely.

Many thanks.

[michael2k6]

Well, that got me told. Up until a year ago, I was an on the job data manager, albeit not using SIMS, as I mentioned. I'm genuinely sorry you found my post insulting, it was absolutely intended with the greatest of respect, I was just trying to be helpful.

 

Unfortunately I see on a weekly basis people making decisions for potentially the wrong reasons, I ask exactly the same questions of people implementing our solutions; not just going the other way. I didn't post this really as an employee of any provider but as someone with experience, I only declared my employer because I feel it was right to do so professionally, and I've seen others criticised for not doing so previously.

 

Again, didn't mean to cause any offence, nor did I mean to imply I'm the world's greatest knowledge on this, if I'd known your background etc I could have made some better assumptions, but I had no idea, for example you had 20 years of experience... I said what I thought I'd need to see if I were me a few years ago. I guess it's taught me a valuable lesson!

 

I'll refrain from posting further on the thread in the hope it stays on topic and is useful for you, sincerely all the best.

 

Michael

[vikpaw]

SIMS is good, very robust, but can be set in its ways at times. I've used it for over a decade, but never CMIS. We changed from SIMS to Double First Engage 2 years back as it was more flexible for our needs, we are an independent, international K12.

 

You can configure points on various behaviour types. It's not I believe directly linked to lateness, but you could create a behaviour type for lateness so the teacher adds it manually. This can be done as a simple right click from the register. So defo customisable.

 

A lot of work has been done to assist with Progress 8, and Assessment without Levels - lots of blogs on the subject, and worth a look at their youtube channel. Haven't really used that side myself.

 

Exams - it can be done, it's one of the oldest modules and suffers from problems during updates, but not insurmountable. As a tool it does the job.

 

Timetabling - I don't know about a day, it can be done and is very robust. In order to have more than one timetable, say a different one for secondary / primary you'd have to license an extra module for multi-timetables. This was a weakness for us as we wanted it to do 3 or more and it couldn't, that's one gripe for us. This is also one of the older modules and involves transfer from the TT module Nova to SIMS.net it's built-in and usually problem free. It can manage non-standard days of the week, but it's not easy and the reporting doesn't reflect this. We operate Sun-Thur and it used to be Sat-Wed, when the weekend changed, we changed MIS!

 

Staff - well it's always a love hate relationship, it involves work, accountability, and can highlight their mistakes. Interesting tweet the other day, can't remember from who, along the lines of '12 staff failed to take a register by midday; they were not given a warning...' . Anyway, when we had it they hated it, now we've changed they want it back. The grass is always greener. It's a long established product that does well.

 

It can be hard to get changes made to the system, even bug repairs can be a painful process. It isn't flexible, and you won't have access to the underlying database or data for that matter. So you can't engineer your own solutions easily. Scheduling your own data exports is tricky and the fields you can access will be limited. On the bright side it's a stalwart system with many third party add-ons that make it really fancy.

 

It won't do portals out of the box - that's another module, or more likely a third party add-on that works way better from both a user and technical perspective. Home access can be difficult for that reason.

 

Personally, I'd consider another system (Engage if you are independent) if you can, or hold on to what you've got and look at SIMS when the new SIMS 8 super duper fancy web version launches. I don't believe it would be a direct / free upgrade, so better to take it on when it's launched. But, for this you could be waiting for 2, 3 or more years.

[CAM]

SIMS user of eight years here. Can answer some of your questions, although be aware I've never used another MIS.

 

- Behaviour Management can be customised with your own categories and behaviour point value. You can also run reports for them which is neat, add custom categories for intervention, etc. It's also tied in directly with the Student/Teacher View and individual staff homepages to provide a quick summary. I think you give only one category per point though.

 

- Progress 8 support came in after I'd already set up analysis in 4Matrix. I think you have to use the Assessment Mapping Tool and then run something called School Report. I still haven't worked it out... Assessment Without Levels is coming but, again, I don't know how it works as this area seems to move quickly with all the changes.

 

- Exams is never straightforward, just ask anyone who has dealings with the exams board. The Exams Module does feel rather old though, like it was resurrected from a past version of SIMS that should be dead and buried by now.

 

- Anyone who tells you they knocked their timetable together in a day isn't including the months of preparation. It uses Nova-T6 which is powerful but you will need training in how to use it. It's the most complex and user-unfriendly piece of software I have seen. Also it doesn't like Windows Aero and breaks with windows that are larger than the frame it appears in generating two sets of scroll bars. :/

 

- Staff reaction swings from good to bad. One day SIMS is fine, the next I work out how to do something rather neat and then the following day I'm cursing it for doing something utterly stupid. (Legit CTD Reason: User pressed Cancel button. AAAARGH!).

 

Overall I'd say consider SIMS as it is the leading MIS and has improved considerably since the market opened up with a full set of features, but the software is severely hampered by the poor UI and over-complicated modules with some glaring let downs. No SQL queries is a particularly terrible oversight and there are many modules that are so old they could have been pulled from the Windows 9.x era. I'd expect a newer MIS to offer integrated portal features and a sleeker and more responsive UI with less convoluted workflows. The days of automatically jumping for SIMS are long gone as whilst it is good, it feels like the software was once the king of a previous era and still stuck there scrabbling to get out.

 

 

 

(Sorry Phil! )

Edited December 7, 2015 by CAM

[bobsmith]

I've been a data manager for the best part of a decade and have experience with both Facility CMIS and SIMS.

 

To answer the SIMS questions first:

 

Behaviour Management: highly customisable - but no triggers. which leads to reporting - which is often appalling slow and complicated.

 

Progress 8 - the school report is built in and isn't customisable as far as i can see. I do my P8 calculations using assessment manager and marksheets. Though if I want something more reliable I dump my data into SISRA.

 

Exams - it does what you expect it to do, while looking like something made during the early 90s. Apparently it's written in Delphi which might explain why new functionality appears in SIMS.Net rather than exams organiser. I found exams in CMIS to be friendlier - AND you could customise results slips etc.

 

Timetable - NOVA-T may be used by more schools (due to the huge market share that SIMS has...) but having used both I will testify that things that are simply impossible in Nova-T are easy peasy in Facility Scheduler. (Multiple timetables as one basic example).

 

Staff Acceptance - SIMS gives more power to your end user than CMIS (in the guise of ePORTAL), but workforce reform and all that means that they don't particularly make use of the power at their finger tips. Admin staff still spend much of their time running things off for teaching staff that they could do themselves.

 

SIMS demands on your infrastructure and technician time are a lot higher than more modern web based MIS, this may be a huge issue for you, but it all depends on your situation I suppose.

 

Going from CMIS to SIMS just felt like a step backwards, Progresso (son of CMIS) really impressed me during the demos but I've not had a chance to play with it for real yet.

[Banjo]

I've been a data manager for the best part of a decade and have experience with both Facility CMIS and SIMS.

 

To answer the SIMS questions first:

 

Behaviour Management: highly customisable - but no triggers. which leads to reporting - which is often appalling slow and complicated.

 

Progress 8 - the school report is built in and isn't customisable as far as i can see. I do my P8 calculations using assessment manager and marksheets. Though if I want something more reliable I dump my data into SISRA.

 

Exams - it does what you expect it to do, while looking like something made during the early 90s. Apparently it's written in Delphi which might explain why new functionality appears in SIMS.Net rather than exams organiser. I found exams in CMIS to be friendlier - AND you could customise results slips etc.

 

Timetable - NOVA-T may be used by more schools (due to the huge market share that SIMS has...) but having used both I will testify that things that are simply impossible in Nova-T are easy peasy in Facility Scheduler. (Multiple timetables as one basic example).

 

Staff Acceptance - SIMS gives more power to your end user than CMIS (in the guise of ePORTAL), but workforce reform and all that means that they don't particularly make use of the power at their finger tips. Admin staff still spend much of their time running things off for teaching staff that they could do themselves.

 

SIMS demands on your infrastructure and technician time are a lot higher than more modern web based MIS, this may be a huge issue for you, but it all depends on your situation I suppose.

 

Going from CMIS to SIMS just felt like a step backwards, Progresso (son of CMIS) really impressed me during the demos but I've not had a chance to play with it for real yet.

 

TT printing in Facility is a nightmare. The hours spent trying to create a useable staff/student print off was $£&*! annoying

 

It also used to crash a lot when auto scheduling, but printing was it's biggest drawback.

[RootsSchImp]

I'm a consultant working mainly with SIMS but I've timetabled with Facility Scheduler as well.

 

Re: Behaviour SIMS might not be flexible enough to migrate your system seamlessly. Achievements (positive behaviour actions) are logged separately from Behaviour (negative actions). I'm not sure if you can assign negative values to incidents to run one single (positive and negative) behaviour tally. Actual SIMS data managers might be able to answer this one.

RE: Assessment (including Progress 8). SIMS Assessment Manager is really flexible and that's its greatest strength and weakness. It will be able to do what you want, but you'll have to invest time and training to set everything up. It's also designed more as an interface for SLT and Heads of Faculty that as an engine to produce reports/spreadsheets - so that again might give you pause as you'll need to train lots of people as SIMS users.

 

Re Timetabling I love Nova T6 (Point taken about multiple timetables but that's pretty niche) and I think it's better than scheduler which I've always found a bit shoddy. That said the autoscheduling in Nova isn't as good as Facility so you might find the timetable takes longer. Timetable in a day sounds pretty unrealistic to me.

 

Exams Organiser works OK but I second the other posters who've pointed out it's really old and not very intuitive.

 

Hope this helps - good luck if you decide to take the plunge!

 

Ed

[HPPMBOL]

Thank you very much to all for taking the time to reply. Much appreciated.

[vikpaw]

@HPPMBOL - I would be (and I'm sure the others too) interested to hear how you move forward and what decision you make.

The landscape is opening up and it's always really useful to hear what people are doing.

to EG by the way

[CAM]

I'm a consultant working mainly with SIMS but I've timetabled with Facility Scheduler as well.

 

Re: Behaviour SIMS might not be flexible enough to migrate your system seamlessly. Achievements (positive behaviour actions) are logged separately from Behaviour (negative actions). I'm not sure if you can assign negative values to incidents to run one single (positive and negative) behaviour tally. Actual SIMS data managers might be able to answer this one.

RE: Assessment (including Progress 8). SIMS Assessment Manager is really flexible and that's its greatest strength and weakness. It will be able to do what you want, but you'll have to invest time and training to set everything up. It's also designed more as an interface for SLT and Heads of Faculty that as an engine to produce reports/spreadsheets - so that again might give you pause as you'll need to train lots of people as SIMS users.

 

Re Timetabling I love Nova T6 (Point taken about multiple timetables but that's pretty niche) and I think it's better than scheduler which I've always found a bit shoddy. That said the autoscheduling in Nova isn't as good as Facility so you might find the timetable takes longer. Timetable in a day sounds pretty unrealistic to me.

 

Exams Organiser works OK but I second the other posters who've pointed out it's really old and not very intuitive.

 

Hope this helps - good luck if you decide to take the plunge!

 

Ed

 

You can report on a Conduct field which is the number of Behaviour Points minus the number of Achievement Points. But you can only do this as a total for the Academic Year AFAIK.

[RootsSchImp]

Hi @HPPMBOL,

 

Have you looked at Bromcom? www.Bromcom.com For disclosure I am currently in talks with Bromcom about consulting for them but I'm not on commission so have no financial stake in whether you choose them. Here are the pros and cons of SIMS v Bromcom as I see them:

 

Top Level: Bromcom is hosted remotely and teachers access registers and marksheets via web browser. This means working from home is already sorted and you don't have to install/update individual machines in school as is the case with SIMS. The userinterface for the teachers' section is pretty intuitive so I don't think much staff training would be required but then it's fairly good in SIMS too. The back end of Bromcom isn't as nice to use but it's OK and as SIMS has its quirks too I'd call that a draw. Unfair though it may be SIMS does have an advantage by virtue of it's huge market share. It's easier to recruit staff who are already familiar with it and if DFE make changes that require MIS upgrades (think school census or sixth form funding) if SIMS are late reacting then it's DFE's problem, on the other hand if Bromcom lag behind you're more exposed. I would ask Bromcom about their procedures and track record in this regard.

 

Assessment: SIMS has what I call a user bias - it assumes that those interested in Assessment Data will get it directly from SIMS. So let's say at each Assessment Collection heads of faculty need to monitor overall grade percentages and progress and compare them with PP Pupils, EAL etc. It's easy to set up a marksheet that they can filter and look up those figures BUT if your school requires you the Data Manager to compile those figures and email them round that is a pain in the MIS. You would either have to set up lots of different Aspect Analyses and run them all separately or build a pretty complicated spreadsheet to calc everything for you (with all the risk of corruption/inaccuracy that entails). Also Assessment analysis in SIMS is pure assessment, you can add %attendance and #unauthorised absences to a marksheet but you can't really integrate Attendance and Behaviour with Assessment outside of SIMS Discover. Discover is very nice to look at but the extent to which you can customise is limited so it may frustrate you.

Bromcom isn't miles ahead of SIMS in regards to these two issues, but it is better. Its eAnalysis tool fully integrates Assessment with Behaviour and Attendance and allows you to provide SLT/Heads of Dept with a better place to do their analysis then SIMS (IMO).

 

Important caveat: I've so far only played with a demo of Bromcom so if you're interested, as a first step I would recommend skipping the sales pitch and asking them to put you in touch with a Data Manager who's using the system for real. They're the best placed to tell you if it's the right choice.

 

Cheers

 

Ed