Progresso - Pros and Cons please

[djrscally]

I've not had a recent quote for a 5 Year Progresso renewal, but my recent 5 year SIMS quote was cheaper than the 5 year Progresso license we're just coming out of.

 

EDIT: Scrap the word significantly, I'm bad at math. It's slightly​ cheaper. Although that's heavily weighted in the first year of SIMS being lolwtf expensive, the year on year costs are more different.

Edited March 9, 2017 by djrscally

[NotSoFast]

Interesting. For us it was about £6k a year difference in favour of Progresso.

[djrscally]

If we spread £10k for a new server across the 5 years then our SIMS quote works out about £3k cheaper year on year.

 

Like I say though, the front year of SIMS costs so much that there's not much difference in the 5 years as a whole. And I have no idea how often servers need replacing!

[deshills]

Would be interested to see how Progresso quotes compare to Bromcom. SIMS appears to be incredibly expensive by comparison.

We have our own cloud so self host Bromcom, which has brought significant savings.

[Ditto]

All very interesting. We are reviewing our MIS provider at present and cost is going to be key. As a relatively new school, we have 4 more years of growth, so the figure I'm looking at is cost per pupil each year to compare providers.

[NotSoFast]

Back of an envelope: £20.

[bigdannyb79]

from my recent review - SIMS and Progresso come out almost double the 4 other MIS I explored. Bit difficult to guesstimate SIMs as definitely more to add ons required to fulfill requirements and to offset that potentially consolidation of of other services like SMS but as a base functional spec they were both significantly higher than the rest of the market.

 

At lot to consider though - Go to a SIMS school and ask the Network manger about it and you could talk all day - as a cloud user my ICT support occasionally confirm if the internet is indeed down and that's about it. So they are some costs to account for that aren't as easy to read off the bottom of a quote for an MIS or a server.

[Mic_Impero]

@djrscally that server price is a bit on the steep side! You can buy directly from dell online, without any kind of struggle or discount, a 24 core 2.4ghz with 128gb RAM and an array of SSDs! I very much doubt even a site of your size will need that kind of spec for the MIS, and that's £6k! You could run quite a lot on that as a hypervisor let alone the MIS! A server would probably be expected to last 3 - 5 years on such an important production task, so you could budget nearer 6k for that and split over the 5 year contract.

 

 

If we spread £10k for a new server across the 5 years then our SIMS quote works out about £3k cheaper year on year.

 

Like I say though, the front year of SIMS costs so much that there's not much difference in the 5 years as a whole. And I have no idea how often servers need replacing!

[bigdannyb79]

@djrscally that server price is a bit on the steep side! You can buy directly from dell online, without any kind of struggle or discount, a 24 core 2.4ghz with 128gb RAM and an array of SSDs! I very much doubt even a site of your size will need that kind of spec for the MIS, and that's £6k! You could run quite a lot on that as a hypervisor let alone the MIS! A server would probably be expected to last 3 - 5 years on such an important production task, so you could budget nearer 6k for that and split over the 5 year contract.

 

I'll give him benefit of the doubt that hes looking at total cost - power/backup etc...

[Mic_Impero]

Ah yes, perhaps but with a server cost of about 3k, or less if it's virtualised and in reality joining existing hardware I still can't believe a SIMS server will cost 2k per year. Maybe though, we both know that server room is v. fancy.

Watching the changing landscape of MIS, and indeed cloud vs on premise in general.

I'll go back to watching for now!

[djrscally]

I'll give him benefit of the doubt that hes looking at total cost - power/backup etc...

Kind of you but in reality I just pulled the number out of my... Too lazy to go check what they actually cost!

[Banjo]

Another con, the user base of Progresso is small, and probably falling - so this will lead to a number of consequences for those schools that are using it. The pool of people familiar to the system is limited and the amount of money invested into the system won't be as much as when Facility had 1600+ schools using the system.

 

Progresso was initially supposed to be all singing all dancing, but that was quickly scaled back and modules were stripped out of the design to get the product to market.

[Banjo]

Another con, the user base of Progresso is small, and probably falling - so this will lead to a number of consequences for those schools that are using it. The pool of people familiar to the system is limited and the amount of money invested into the system won't be as much as when Facility had 1600+ schools using the system.

 

Progresso was initially supposed to be all singing all dancing, but that was quickly scaled back and modules were stripped out of the design to get the product to market.

[Green_Eggs_No_Ham]

I'm a Facility user so I've been watching this thread out of interest and not really commenting because I haven't seen much of it (Progresso) in action. I don't think their number of users is falling that much - it's clear from this thread alone that people have been unhappy and left but then also they have got a couple of big contracts lately. I do know that a lot of Advanced's development time and investment goes into Progesso - I know because I'm using Facility, which is maintained and developed gradually, nothing like at the rate that Progresso is.

 

When you talk about the product being scaled back, what do you mean? I thought it started out doing (more or less) everything Facility did and it still does but they're working on things like performance issues and the interface? They did take it to market too quickly. But I don't think they stripped modules out of it - in fact maybe they should have done. But that's water under the bridge going back about 5 or 6 years (I think).

 

I can see where you're coming from about finding new staff who are able to use a system that's not the market leader but then also .....people can always be trained up and at my school at least there's not that much external recruitment going on. You should hopefully only need one "expert" in a school. But it would be easier to find a SIMS expert I guess than for a newer product. Maybe that's a factor, I dunno. I don't think it'll be a factor in my school's consider of a new system when our contract comes up for renewal. Perhaps it should be, need to think about that one.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Green_Eggs_No_Ham

[Green_Eggs_No_Ham]

I'm a Facility user so I've been watching this thread out of interest and not really commenting because I haven't seen much of it (Progresso) in action. I don't think their number of users is falling that much - it's clear from this thread alone that people have been unhappy and left but then also they have got a couple of big contracts lately. I do know that a lot of Advanced's development time and investment goes into Progesso - I know because I'm using Facility, which is maintained and developed gradually, nothing like at the rate that Progresso is.

 

When you talk about the product being scaled back, what do you mean? I thought it started out doing (more or less) everything Facility did and it still does but they're working on things like performance issues and the interface? They did take it to market too quickly. But I don't think they stripped modules out of it - in fact maybe they should have done. But that's water under the bridge going back about 5 or 6 years (I think).

 

I can see where you're coming from about finding new staff who are able to use a system that's not the market leader but then also .....people can always be trained up and at my school at least there's not that much external recruitment going on. You should hopefully only need one "expert" in a school. But it would be easier to find a SIMS expert I guess than for a newer product. Maybe that's a factor, I dunno. I don't think it'll be a factor in my school's consider of a new system when our contract comes up for renewal. Perhaps it should be, need to think about that one.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Green_Eggs_No_Ham

[Banjo]

When you talk about the product being scaled back, what do you mean? I thought it started out doing (more or less) everything Facility did and it still does but they're working on things like performance issues and the interface? They did take it to market too quickly. But I don't think they stripped modules out of it - in fact maybe they should have done. But that's water under the bridge going back about 5 or 6 years (I think).

 

Trust me they did, one of many emails conversations that took place (below)

 

"I am currently reworking the exclusions tab for Serco’s new Progresso product. In reworking it I have identified a couple of possibilities for the tab, but I need to ensure I fully understand how exclusions should be recorded. The available government guidance doesn’t cater for these eventualities, so I thought it would be appropriate to contact you and ask for your input regarding how you expect an exclusion to be recorded.

 

Specifically, I would like to know whether you would ever foresee a fixed term exclusion or lunch time exclusion including sessions where a learner must attend (ie non-consecutive).

 

Eg one fixed term exclusion has sessions within it where a pupil should attend.

 

Or

 

One lunchtime exclusion that happens every Thursday lunch for a month, but on no other days of the week.

 

In the examples above are we looking at one exclusion or separate exclusions?

 

Eg So for the fixed term it’s either one exclusion record or, it’s one exclusion up to the session the learner is expected to attend and then another exclusion for sessions following this.

 

And for lunch time it’s one exclusion or, four/five separate exclusions.

 

Additionally, if it is the case an exclusion can only include consecutive session, would the ability to record multiple exclusion records through one window for an individual learner be useful or would it be more appropriate to deal with each exclusion record separately?"

 

 

 

If you have any thoughts or ideas of your own these would also be welcome.

 

 

 

Thanks for your time.

[bigdannyb79]

I too had many such conversations but much to everyone's disappointment any specifications that were written as a result of all this user research went over to India and came back nothing like the user wanted or indeed serco wanted - Patni then appeared to have serco over a barrel as any subsequent changes were chargeable which is why years on it hasn't moved a great deal. They eventually got out of the Patni deal but development is still outsourced to a Advanced team in india and from my observations they just arent able to keep pace with the development of other players in the market.

 

And I'm not sure much functionality was stripped out it was just woefully unfit for purpose initially. Stupid things were done like having LearnerID in one table and Learner_ID in another and when your having to build reports in a nuts and bolts way with report builder these get very annoying very fast. Year is stored as a string 'Year 7' so to sort you had to extract the number from it etc - the list goes on but these flaws are still being ironed out now . . .

 

The USP at launch and probably still now was the widgets and being able to 'Give the right info, to the right people, at the right time' but it took 2 years for them make these centrally deployable which made them essentially useless as it wasn't practical to use them. THE mistakes were that fundamental and only recently have we been able to define the size and show the parameters for these widgets which again is a significant flaw when your talking about the jewel in your crown 6 years from launch.

 

Just my thoughts but they tend to be shared by over 90% of other users I have met.

[matt40k]

went over to India and came back nothing like the user wanted or indeed serco wanted

I've found alot of outsourced workers to be very prescriptive. They deliver exactly what you ask for, the problem is we're (ie the folks outsourcing the work) are rubbish at being prescriptive! We assume too much and rely on "common sense" - like we assume they understand our objective (cause we've told them that) and they can actually sympathize with the end-users and understand how they'd use the system. Alas, when you're outsourcing, its all about turnover, so corners are cut and that results in a poor system. Look at Nova-T, written by a timetabler to do timetabling. Fully understood the problem, created an excellent product.

 

Stupid things were done like having LearnerID in one table and Learner_ID in another and when your having to build reports in a nuts and bolts way with report builder these get very annoying very fast. Year is stored as a string 'Year 7' so to sort you had to extract the number from it etc - the list goes on but these flaws are still being ironed out now . . .

 

Pff... that's pretty good for public sector software! Easy to fix with some report views over the top and a few functions.

[Ditto]

I too had many such conversations but much to everyone's disappointment any specifications that were written as a result of all this user research went over to India and came back nothing like the user wanted or indeed serco wanted - Patni then appeared to have serco over a barrel as any subsequent changes were chargeable which is why years on it hasn't moved a great deal. They eventually got out of the Patni deal but development is still outsourced to a Advanced team in india and from my observations they just arent able to keep pace with the development of other players in the market.

 

OMG!!! as seems to be the expression nowadays. I've always struggled to understand the development structure, but the mention of Patni has filled in such a gap! In a previous life, I worked in the insurance sector and the exact same Patni relationship existed - it explains so much!

[Michael]

The three biggest issues I come across are as follows (quotes from Staff) -

 

- The interface is slow, irrelevant what browser you're using. And yes, every other website works as expected.

- Support is hit and miss, depending on the nature of the problem

- It has no finance package, whereas Facility CMIS does

 

The last point has particularly interested me. To the best of my knowledge Advanced haven't teamed up with a finance provider, or alternatively offered customers a choice. It's a very strange decision, whereby I've then seen schools using Progresso, but still have Facility running just to do finance!?

 

Recently I think they've introduce SSO support for Google customers, but not Microsoft! I'd probably say statistically I come across more O365 schools than Google.

 

The speed issue could easily be resolved - more powerful servers and faster bandwidth, it's not really rocket science! I personally don't think schools would have an issue paying that little bit more knowing you're on a faster or virtualised/dedicated server, depending on the school or MAT needs. In saying that, sometimes just the way it's designed can also be influential. Scrappy coding isn't going to help anyone, but I'd like to think a great deal of care is taken by all providers.

[djrscally]

Recently I think they've introduce SSO support for Google customers, but not Microsoft! I'd probably say statistically I come across more O365 schools than Google.

 

There's not just Google SSO tbf, we have it working with O365 via I Am Cloud, you can run your own ADFS server etc.

 

The speed issue could easily be resolved - more powerful servers and faster bandwidth, it's not really rocket science!

 

One suspects there's more to it given we're 5 years down the line and it's still a nightmare at times. It's definitely more than that anyway as you'll often experience vastly different speeds with different sections of the software.

Edited March 15, 2017 by djrscally

[Banjo]

From memory there was a link up to a financial package could have been HCSS, but this was never carried through into Progresso. As for the Patni deal, it didn't so much go to India, but came to Derby. The coach would turn up offload the developers in the morning and then pick them up in the evening. Desperate times, desperate measures, but a reflection of how poor the communication was across the organisation and project.

[crocco_john]

As per the title - just trying to find out more about this little know product. (I am a current SIMS user 6yrs +)

 

Just a simple list of what you do / don't like about progresso would be really helpful :-)

 

We've just gone live and with any system there are good and less good bits.... the interface is clear and staff like using it all of the front end stuff works but it's slow and we have 500mb fibre. It does seem fragile compared to sims.net and the reporting server is unbelievably over complicated for ordinary primary school staff to use and time consuming In sims I could design a simple EAL / Home Language and admissions report in few minutes in Progresso it has taken an hour, hoping that this will improve with familiarity. Support on the whole has been good so far...

[matt40k]

...and the reporting server is unbelievably over complicated for ordinary primary school staff to use and time consuming In sims I could design a simple EAL / Home Language and admissions report in few minutes in Progresso it has taken an hour, hoping that this will improve with familiarity.

 

I know your talking about kinda data dump reports that really should be built in, but do you use the Progresso Analytics (white-labelled Pyramid Analytics) as discussed here: https://eduwarenetwork.com/2015/03/10/advanced_learning_progresso_user_group/?

[crocco_john]

I know your talking about kinda data dump reports that really should be built in, but do you use the Progresso Analytics (white-labelled Pyramid Analytics) as discussed here: https://eduwarenetwork.com/2015/03/10/advanced_learning_progresso_user_group/?

 

Nope never seen that in our version... where is that located?