SIMs or iSams for an Independent School

[Gregbell9]

Hi All,

 

This is the first time on here for me so be nice!

 

I have become the Network Manager at an Independent School recently. One of my first big challenges is to move the school away from it's current MIS (which will stay nameless at the moment). The school started the process before I join but since I have joined it has gathered speed and we are now at the point where we are going to make decision. I worked in a state school before and know SIMs and know more about this system. I have never used iSams but like the look of it for the teachers who struggle with IT systems.

 

I have visited four independent schools and found that with both systems that the IT team spent a lot of time working to improve the systems to get the most out of the MIS. i have look a post on edugeek and found that they are four/five years old so want an update opinions.

 

So my question is: we are changing our MIS, i would like the thoughts of IT departments on pros and cons for both systems and if given a choice between SIMs and iSams which one you would choose today?

 

Thanks

 

Greg

[elsiegee40]

Hi there

 

As you are probably realising the whole MIS debate in independents is complicated by fees.

 

The need to be able to charge for sessions and extras that are inconsistent across the school and requiring seemingly infinite timetable variations means the MIS must do much more than in a state school.

 

I'm speaking from the experience of having been in a prep school where the answer to the problem of pre school fees seemed to be "I've got this spreadsheet" from everyone I talked to and the billing was never straightforward.

 

What type/size of independent are you at? At prep level @Ant, @TechMonkey and @Jollity come to mind as current NMs. At secondary level @Andrew_C springs to mind. From an international school, there's @vikpaw. I will undoubtedly remember others as soon as I have posted

Edited January 11, 2016 by elsiegee40

[vikpaw]

@Gregbell9

 

We were on SIMS for nigh on 10 years I think, it worked well, but there were a few niggly issues it couldn't cope with. Haven't used iSAMS but I know many have gone from SIMS to iSAMS.

 

Not sure what you're on now, but if you're open to suggestion we went with Double First Engage, some info here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/148000-end-era.html#post1267132

 

It really is a nifty piece of software that has all the features you need in one package. I'm currently playing with the Fees module.

 

I've heard both really good things and bad things about iSAMS, SIMS there is defo good and bad and everything in between. It depends on which modules you are going to use, what your priorities are in the school.

 

One big factor for us, was we wanted to have a VLE, or online ish elements. iSAMS will do this, it will have portals and as you say is easier for the luddites to get to grips with. SIMS is gonna need add-ons like Sharepoint Learning Gateway, or something from TASC software, Schoolcomms, Groupcall etc.

This should be factored in to your process, not just because of cost, but the complexity of setup, maintenance and use.

 

SIMS comes with lots of established modules and is a behemoth. iSAMS will be slicker and still developing rapidly. I can see they would be more responsive to requests for changes.

 

Personally, if I HAD to choose between them, I'd go with SIMS because it's a known quantity to me, I know the flaws and the workarounds

If my hands weren't tied - as I've said, Engage is working wonders for us and is constantly developing - we can get changes put in within a few months.

[edmokeski]

I manage the MIS at an independent secondary, and we use iSAMS. Coming from abroad, I've no direct experience of other MIS systems in the UK market, but have managed home-grown ones in previous roles "back in the old country."

I'd say that for an independent, there are probably some significant advantages to iSAMS, as it's targeted specifically at independent schools and has been written with flexibility in mind to accommodate all the different variations within the sector. They're not the world's most nimble and responsive company, but I can only imagine that placing them next to Capita makes them look that way. My impression from others I've spoken to is that SIMS is so clearly targeted at the state sector (Who can blame them? There are masses more state schools out there than private ones.), that it has trouble accommodating the ways in which private schools do things differently, including terminology (I've never once heard the term "key stage" used at my school), school structure, etc. I have the impression that it would feel a bit straight jacket-y for an independent NM/MIS Mgr. Also, I think there are some pretty real differences in culture between state and independent sectors, and iSAMS as a company are very used to the way private schools work, etc.

That said, I'd say the big advantage of SIMS is that is' the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Everything that integrates with an MIS will integrate with SIMS first and foremost, because of the gravitational pull of that massive market share. iSAMS only opened APIs maybe two years ago, and third-party integrations are still fairly limited. The best one is probably their integration with Firefly, which was originally written to be paired with it and then adapted to integrate with other MIS systems.

iSAMS is not the best MIS system one could imagine, but even when we've gotten really annoyed with it, the NM and I have never found another MIS out there that would be a better fit for us. However, we've got the impetus of years of investment into iSAMS behind us, so need a really convincing case to change. If you're changing anyway, then I'd cast a wide net and consider some of the other systems out there, rather than just these two, before making up your mind.

 

Oh, and one last thing -- no idea if this is how SIMS works, but the fact that iSAMS is based on MS SQL and allows me to directly query those databases and build my own reports in SSRS is huge for my ability as MIS mgr to present data in useful ways for senior management.

[vikpaw]

I love being able to interrogate the DB via SQL, no chance of that with SIMS. All my reports here are mostly based on my own SQL code now.

iSAMS has a really tight integration with ManageBAC for handling IB stuff which could be useful.

[TechMonkey]

Thanks Elsie for flagging me.

 

Funnily enough we are going through the same process and have reached the same conclusion as you. I will drop a PM as I think we are probably coming from the same starting point.

 

I used SIMS in a previous incarnation and by the time I left it was running really well and was very useful to the school. The issue was that it had got to that state by having a full time Data Manager looking after it and immersing themselves in SIMS. They did everything from run the Reporting periods to run training sessions. I don't think SIMS could be made to work that well without someone, in fact I know it as we had SIMS in place for many years before just ticking along while we in IT tried to wrangle it into shape and then a few years of someone running it who had no interest in the system. I am not suggesting it for my current place for precisely that reason. I know there are plenty of IT managers who keep SIMS in check while running everything else, but having seen it run by a dedicated person I just don't feel able to keep up with the complexity while keeping everything else spinning.

 

iSAMS seems to be a good system, we have had a demo and like the look of it. We are still trying to decide on hosted or on site install. I need to check with them that if it is hosted do we still have the same level of access as if it were on site (SQL queries, third party add ons etc). I like the idea of having one less thing to worry about, with the added benefit of an element of Disaster Recovery/Planning mixed in. Beyond that it seems to do everything we want and in a friendly way. We still have to introduce it to a select group of staff from across the school as a final sanity check, but so far so good.

 

We were also recommended SchoolBase, but had a few reservations on usability, and 3SYS, had concerns on the model they use.

 

Overall it is what fills the need of the school and your staff, within the limitations of your setup.

[elsiegee40]

We were also recommended SchoolBase, but had a few reservations on usability, and 3SYS, had concerns on the model they use.

 

We had Schoolbase, but our staff really struggled with it. I feel inclined to say that was more them than the product. However, it wasn't everything we'd hoped, especially when it came to billing, either. At the point I left, 12 months ago, they were seriously considering a change but hadn't got as far as making a short list

[matt40k]

@Gregbell9 - are you going to BETT?

[RichCowell]

When I worked in an independent school we used SIMS, and I think they moved to Phoenix after I left... Of the ANME members from Independent Schools, the following MIS's are used - in decreasing order of popularity:

 

 

1. PASS
   
2. SIMS
   
3. SchoolBase
   
4. iSAMS
   
5. None
   

[Gregbell9]

Hi Matt40k - yes on the Thursday

[Ant]

Hi @Gregbell9,

 

As has been said, we're an independent prep school.

 

In our case we changed MIS shortly before I started here so I wasn't really part of the decision process however we went with Double First Engage. I am an ex-SIMS user for a number of years, but don't have any experience of the others mentioned other than brief demos of WCBS Pass and iSams.

 

After a bit of slow start for various reasons, we're really starting to pick up the pace in terms of our usage of Engage and using the functionality more to its potential. There are a few aspects of it I find a little annoying, but overall it's doing the job nicely and support from DF has been really good for us.

 

As far as the other systems I have seen go, I was most impressed with iSams. The interface looked clean and I liked the fact it was completely web based. It's been a while since I've last looked at PASS, but I can't remember anything in particular standing out for me.

 

If you're going to BETT, think that's the easiest place to have quick demos of them all one after the other for some direct comparisons.

[vikpaw]

I can't believe there are no Engage Schools in the ANME network.

We hadn't listed it, until encountering it at BETT and being blown away.

 

One thing that was annoying for me when I considered iSAMS was that it only worked with Internet Explorer, it was a rather unforgivable sin for a modern day web enabled system. It was fixed around that time, but it makes you wonder.

 

Saying that though, IE is the one browser we're told to avoid these days as it's so screwed up. Google Chrome is much better.

[Ant]

I can't believe there are no Engage Schools in the ANME network.

I think I may need to update our details in that case @RichCowell

 

@vikpaw, it's interesting reading some of your past posts. Although it looks like we've had Engage longer than you, you appear to have dived in head first since you made the change and are using it far more than we are at the moment. We're still working on improving our usage, but your posts have been encouraging.

[RichCowell]

I can't believe there are no Engage Schools in the ANME network.

We hadn't listed it, until encountering it at BETT and being blown away.

 

MIS was added to the stats later, and there are a lot who haven't updated everything... There's a fairly long list of details to confirm so it'll be one of those things that gets forgotten about...

 

 

 

I think I may need to update our details in that case @RichCowell

 

@vikpaw, it's interesting reading some of your past posts. Although it looks like we've had Engage longer than you, you appear to have dived in head first since you made the change and are using it far more than we are at the moment. We're still working on improving our usage, but your posts have been encouraging.

 

Yep, there's quite a bit missing in your details - all stuff that's been added after you joined... I'll send another update email out in the next couple of days...

[edmokeski]

Just FYI, iSAMS now works w/ all major browsers. It even seems to work (unsupported) on iOS Safari, if you like pain (display far too small to be workable, except maybe the iPad Pro).

It's a great improvement, even if they did totally foul up some of my reports when they did the upgrade.

[mthomas08]

No experience in iSAMS but I have a large experience with SIMs. It's been primarily used at every School I've worked at.

 

From a Teaching perspective I am told it's great because of all the front end "looking" pieces.

 

From the Technical perspective, It can be the worst nightmare or smooth sailing every 6 months. We've had consistent issues with outs:

Recently tried to do the AUTUMN Upgrade and Solus 3 didn't want to deploy, turns out we was on the "Bad Version" of Solus even though it was the next recent version. I must have missed the Capita Notes on this...

 

We've had random crashes of SIMs which required patches (All users must be out of SIMs and a backup taken).

 

Consistently in almost 3 Years we have had only a single major upgrade process that ran smoothly. Others required Capita remote assistance on to the server or re-deploying updates to all the clients.

 

SIMs/Solus is much better now in some ways, I am hoping we now have a smoother run but in all honesty I am not holding my breath.

 

Not to mention the issues we had when we upgraded SQL, there were a lot of things we had to change that were not included in all the documentation and even that was limited.

[ajp233]

A number of years ago I moved from a SIMS school to an independent that was using iSAMS having previously used SIMS. All of the staff seemed to like iSAMS and I was very impressed with it. I would say it is definitely more geared to the independent sector.

 

I'm now working with SIMS again having moved onto a new job

[vikpaw]

...

@vikpaw, it's interesting reading some of your past posts. Although it looks like we've had Engage longer than you, you appear to have dived in head first since you made the change and are using it far more than we are at the moment. We're still working on improving our usage, but your posts have been encouraging.

 

We had several years of heavy SIMS usage to replicate so we hit the ground running. I do a lot of hacking around, especially with reports, and even directing how some of the procedures work on site for links to third parties e.g. Groupcall, Early Essence etc.

 

We should stay in touch, maybe there are some reports or other info we can share. Are you on the Share Ideas portal? I'll drop you a PM.

Edited January 12, 2016 by vikpaw

[Andrew_C]

Not my bailiwick, but:- We were using Phoenix, and went to SIMS 6 or so years ago. I believe that our bean-counters don't use SIMS at all but they use something else that means we have to do a fair bit of fudging lists when we need to bill kids for something.

[gillp]

We moved from SIMS to iSAMS around 6 years ago. Teaching staff found iSAMS much easier but the office staff would still prefer to go back to SIMS. You will need a separate timetabling package. We tried the Australian timetable software and Keith Johnson's. The latter was better and is used by quite a few schools. However, some former SIMS schools still use (or have moved back to) NOVA T6 and getting the data into iSAMS works well. Extracting data from SIMS is much easier than iSAMS as it is pretty much all available and many users can do this. With iSAMS you need 1 or 2 developers to set these reports up.

 

Setting up all the structures pupil reports is so much easier on iSAMS than it was on SIMS. You can set up the output templates yourself or iSAMS do it for a very reasonable price. iSAMS have a parent portal. Iit is not 'very pretty' but our parents like it. iSAMS are going down the APP route, which looks interesting. iSAMS also works well with the Firefly VLE. We have our website and VLE with Firefly but they are moving away from website development, which I think is a bit of an own goal. A number of schools have moved their school calendar from iSAMS to SOCS and we are also looking quite seriously at that.

 

Overall, I prefer iSAMS as it is web based. Much of the functionality also works on iPADS so we can register in assemblies etc

 

The big issue is the sheer number of packages available which all fill a ‘little niche’ but full integration can be a pain.

[tben2505]

It's best to arrive at your decision with the knowledge there there is no 1 system that will fit 100% of your needs.

 

Every single school does things in their own ways, and the trick is to find an MIS that fits most of them.

 

I've been in this profession since 2003, and PERSONALLY my option is SIMS - having moved from troubled times with Engage at my current school; it wasn't at all popular. However I know some people do like it and embrace its flexibility.

 

It took us over a year of consulting and demonstrations, research and communication to come to our decision, involving about a dozen people and even an IT consultant. It's not a decision to be taken in a week or so. You need buy-in from staff (key staff particularly) and consider training and implementation implications.

 

Moving is a huge project in itself, and my advice would be to take your time with it.

 

And good luck!