[sims] SIMS 8 Press Release 30th March 2017

[localzuk]

There is a good blog on the MIS market state of play here: Bring more data Market churn is about 3% which tells you everything about the competition.

It just says moving MIS is tough, doesn't really tell you about the competition or the state of SIMS.

 

We've looked around but the school MIS market is in a terrible state, there is no real proper challenger to Capita Sims that I can work out that has gained traction in the last 10 years and I keep a very close eye on the figures. Coming from a startup culture myself i'm amazed no other company has sat down and written something ground breaking like HCSS did for the financial side of things (now sadly overtaken by access group). The closest I have seen to a good cloud MIS was Bromcom but I am still not convinced. Other competitors focus on Primary schools or specific geographical areas. Its really a £200 million market ready to be disrupted...

 

I'd suggest that this isn't the best analysis of the market to be honest. There are competitors such as PupilAsset and Arbor out there that are fully functional competing secondary MIS's.

 

Oh and I entirely agree with you about long term solutions, lets just hope one of the Capita competitors steps up and releases something ground breaking. I have my doubts though...

Define "ground breaking"? MIS's are a fairly simple database system doing a fairly simple data storage and analysis job. We put data in and take data out. From my experience, new solutions are treated with a much harsher lens than the incumbent SIMS solution - schools look at new solutions that do everything SIMS can, but if it isn't perfect it gets dismissed - even though the SIMS solution can't do it either, simply because we've all come up with workarounds for the problem in SIMS.

 

In this case, we need to start looking at Capita as a new supplier in the same light - are they a competent provider of school MIS's? I'd argue that these days? With how slowly and poorly they're progressing with their cloud based MIS? The answer is no.

 

Throwing good money after bad by simply sticking with SIMS seems like the worst option of all IMO.

[DODICT]

Trust me there are several better products than SIMS in the market already in my opinion, from both a user perspective and at an executive and strategic level. And the market wont change significantly while people pay extra to replace the flawed and limited functionality of SIMS !

 

And the areas you mentioned are definitely covered in other products and for me would be infinitely better in a native cloud based MIS.

 

Be part of the solution, not the problem

[matt40k]

Let's be honest, if it was a good solid core MIS, you could accept having to buy bolt-ons. But it isn't. All the core development \ support team have left after years of having technical debt tasks ignored because it wasn't "cost effective" and it's got so bad the new people have said we have to start from scratch. Ground up rewrite. Which is a basically a last resort hail mary. So your £££ that covers support and development of your product is being leached to cover the development of the new system that may never come. You can say meh, but look at the CTF bug! That's terrible! How on earth did that get out the door, it's going to be really interesting to see what the ICO result is.

 

And Remember SIMS 8 \ Primary \ whatever they are calling it these days is a whole new MIS system. That means you can't JUST switch. Whole procurement exercise. How on earth any can anyone in a school\MAT\LA pick SIMS 8. It's a new immature product, it's going to have bugs and missing features for years. Yes the company is established, but it's not exactly in great shape. Large companies like Capita are suffering these days and Capita is no exception. They are telling shareholders that SIMS 8 will start a new wave of Software as a service (SaaS) products, think Office365 or Google Apps.

[supportman]

Very well said, all the last 3 comments. I couldn't agree more!

[Ditto]

There is a good blog on the MIS market state of play here: Bring more data Market churn is about 3% which tells you everything about the competition.

Unfortunately I don't think the 3% churn does tell you about the competition. If it did I think you'd see a much higher figure. I think for many schools, the reason they've stuck with SIMS is the old enemy "because we've always done it that way" and frankly too many SLT members are too fearful of change, or don't feel the have the resources to make a change. Case in point is at the school where I am a governor. They converted to a stand alone academy some years ago. When I asked about costs of the SIMS, all I got was a reply of not wanting to take on further change after stepping away from the LEA. Approaching 8 years since conversion, nothing has changed. More recently they joined a MAT, and all schools are SIMS and again I see no appetite for change. Every school (3) happens to be 'Outstanding', so perversely it makes it even harder to persuade them to open their eyes and look at alternatives.

[vikpaw]

Across the industry though I think the appetite for change is growing. Particularly with MATs.

We're at the beginning of something that could and should snowball.

It's not going to be quick, as timing in an academic year is critical for change even after your've convinced everyone it's worth the effort so the effects won't be visible so easily.

I think we'll look back in 10 years and go, wow, that's when it started.

[supportman]

We've been moving towards cloud only systems for a number of years now, our SMT are on board with that and keep asking me why Sims hasn't made the jump yet. Specifically they want registers to be taken over a 3G connection and emergency contact details available on trips. So I have exactly the opposite problem

 

We've been testing EduLink One all day today and I have to say its pretty much the gateway product we've been looking for with a nice web interface for the most common teacher usage of Sims. Emerge nearly did it all those years ago but stalled in development. Anyway i'm really impressed with Edulink so far...

 

I'd jump to a better modern MIS in a heartbeat though if it existed(looking at the competition it simply isn't out there in my opinion). The technical debt around Sims is astonishing.

 

EDIT: to say the shift to MATS is going to speed up the shift for sure. MATs need overviews of schools which cloud systems give them easily.

Edited February 27, 2019 by supportman

[DODICT]

think your getting it wrong personally - the power of your MIS is what you can get out and by augmenting the front end you arent sorting the fundamental issue of SIMS. So if input is your issue fine but its not just the interface of SIMS thats broken so I'd question the quality and timeliness of the information you're getting out.

 

I'd love to spend a day looking at what you use information for as a school and I'd be able to show you how other systems would help you be more efficient and more effective by timely use of the information you have. I've seen that in two trusts I've worked for now and its galling that even in successful outstanding schools the inefficiencies created by using SIMS.

 

I see it time and time again and its fear of change that make people think changing will be really problematic - any transition period will last weeks, if that from my experience, which is preferable to perpetually sticking with a flawed dated solution.

 

Its not just the reporting overview that makes MATs change its often personnel - they have someone with seniority and expertise in the area of data that when tasked with leading the provision of intelligence and information across multiple sites quickly demand (need) better than SIMS. I can see that where there isn't that insight and understanding in a school there is no catalyst for change but from a school perspective thats a problem too. The time I can save 100's of staff on a daily basis covers makes it pretty easy to justify my salary and I do ok ! So schools need to recognise the skills needed to run a modern school are changing and they might not exist in their SLT but to get the best VFM and be most effective they need the right people leading the right systems.

 

So yes we are in a period of change but please dont think that their aren't viable alternatives out there right now as there are.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I'd be happy I could make any school better off within 12 months by migrating away from SIMS both financially and in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. Schools work in making improvements year on year by their nature so I think its strange a , often inflated, fear of the possibility of issues associated with change stops many schools making a change that can deliver benefits within 12 months.

 

But hey it earns me a decent living and provides ample opportunity to make an impact so maybe I should be happy with the current situation ?

[CAM]

All I want from SIMS8 is the ability to write some SQL statements and have it interact with industry standard technology.

[vikpaw]

All I want from SIMS8 is the ability to write some SQL statements and have it interact with industry standard technology.

 

So if it’s not there, presumably they would fail the obligatory tender process you will undertake when they offer you the product . . . In 2026

[PhilNeal]

I think it would be a brave cloud supplier that allowed direct SQL calls on the database especially if it was multi-tenanted. Also it may well not be a SQL database when dealing with cloud solutions.

 

PS I'm not speaking for Capita being largely retired.

[matt40k]

Phil, Row-Level security limits users to only their data. Resource Governor limits users performance. Solved problems.

[PhilNeal]

Matt - would that still not allow by-passing of any school permissions for accessing sensitive data?

[matt40k]

Nope. Row-level security. So quick example, our server admins have full rights on the database \ server \ everything - sysadmin, administrator, sa - the lot. They query the staff performance table, it returns 1 row - their own record. HR queries the same table, returns everyone's. Server admins backup as normal, restore as normal. It's amazingly clever stuff that's transparent.

[RootsSchImp]

Phil, Row-Level security limits users to only their data. Resource Governor limits users performance. Solved problems.

 

For me the interesting question for schools and MATs is not 'Can we use our MIS as a data warehouse and build our own reporting and analytics?' because if you find the right MIS you can. Even SIMS are joining the Power BI party albeit with question marks over the data security of using report outputs as data sources for BI.

 

The real question is do you want to? Ie do you want to gamble that when your talented Data Manager who knows how to set it all up leaves, will you be able to replace him/her with someone with the skills to keep it going?

 

What do yous think? Could a school/MAT be reasonably confident of hiring someone with this skill level?

[PhilNeal]

Great question worthy of its own thread

[CAM]

For me the interesting question for schools and MATs is not 'Can we use our MIS as a data warehouse and build our own reporting and analytics?' because if you find the right MIS you can. Even SIMS are joining the Power BI party albeit with question marks over the data security of using report outputs as data sources for BI.

 

The real question is do you want to? Ie do you want to gamble that when your talented Data Manager who knows how to set it all up leaves, will you be able to replace him/her with someone with the skills to keep it going?

 

What do yous think? Could a school/MAT be reasonably confident of hiring someone with this skill level?

 

If you are using industry standard technologies and techniques then you hire someone with basic industry standard skills. A data analyst trained in SQL could walk into any company and use those skills for their work. Why can't they put those basic skills to work in a school? Maybe the leading and highest share MIS in the market not supporting something as basic as writing and running SQL queries to fetch data from the database could have something to do with it.

Edited February 28, 2019 by CAM

[RootsSchImp]

If you are using industry standard technologies and techniques then you hire someone with basic industry standard skills. A data analyst trained in SQL could walk into any company and use those skills for their work. Why can't they put those basic skills to work in a school? Maybe the leading and highest share MIS in the market not supporting something as basic as writing and running SQL queries to fetch data from the database could have something to do with it.

 

If there's a massive pool of SQL Analysts willing to work in schools for a Data Manager's salary, how come I keep meeting DM's who struggle with formulas in Excel?

[GREED]

Couple of observations on this:

 

Skilled people cost money, and support staff positions are not often known to have the best salaries - particularly where schools are struggling in many aspects of funding... not enough teachers but we want a SQL and Analytics guru please?

 

To the point further above - if they build something really great and complex and cool and then leave - yes that is a risk, but surely is not a reason to say 'we'll just not do it at all then just in case'...

[CAM]

Because people tend to get thrust into the position from admin roles. I'm only a data manager because they gave me some data entry tasks whilst supervising a study area all day and it grew from there thanks to coding and technical skills under my belt. My replacement after I left that employer didn't even have basic Excel skills.

[matt40k]

PowerBI is an end-user tool. We're finding it takes people about 2 days to learn the tool - this is basically someone who this is their first real job (other then maybe working part time at McD whilst at college) - thanks to LOT of Microsoft training on YouTube, tons of great blogs and a FREE EDX course. Don't get me wrong, they have to WANT to learn and they can't be a complete idiot - if they struggling to just use the computer they prob aren't going to work out. The other bonus is this is independent, transferable training. People can do this without throwing money at some large company, they can learn the basics off their own back which they can take to other jobs in other sectors.

 

Don't get me wrong, they'll have to learn about how a school works but regardless of the tool this will happen.

 

If Capita was halfway serious about PowerBI they'd have paid someone a few thousand to build that connector. Especially as they have a Microsoft MVP who's built a few pretty much on their doorstep.

 

Writing SIMS reports, creating a batch\powershell script, then creating a task schedule, then using OneDrive to upload spreadsheets isn't a solution. It isn't end-user friendly. It's a developer POC. They are completely missing the PowerBI point.

 

If Capita aren't going to get serious about data, then schools are going to have to accept they will have to buy another bolt-on to plug the gap. And yes, this means if Capita gets serious, they need to build a connector for PowerBI or picking another tool.

 

We are in the age of data.

 

If someone says - KS3 perform better with female teachers you should be able to pull that data and answer that question and it shouldn't take days. You should be able to do it in mins. You should be able to interact with the report so you when the question changes to KS3 boys in RE perform better with a female teacher who has 3 or more years experience you can just update it not break down in tears at the idea of having to go back to the start and starting from scratch.

 

[/rant]

[matt40k]

If there's a massive pool of SQL Analysts willing to work in schools for a Data Manager's salary, how come I keep meeting DM's who struggle with formulas in Excel?

 

Schools have trouble recruiting. Full stop.

[localzuk]

One thing to consider with this is - MATs change the game slightly when it comes to data. Many trusts are going down the route of a trust Data Manager instead of one at each school, so that person is able to be paid more and therefore should be able to do more. So, asking for SQL ability isn't that outlandish.

[FishCustard]

Schools have trouble recruiting. Full stop.

 

Usually because of lower pay - as @localzuk says, as things change and trusts/groups can afford to pay more for centralised roles, so the skillsets should increase too.

 

I would not consider it at all unreasonable to expect a Data Manager on a £35-40k salary to know T-SQL, SSRS, etc.

[Ditto]

Usually because of lower pay - as @localzuk says, as things change and trusts/groups can afford to pay more for centralised roles, so the skillsets should increase too.

I would not consider it at all unreasonable to expect a Data Manager on a £35-40k salary to know T-SQL, SSRS, etc.

I'm wary on this financial viewpoint. MATs get their funding by top-slicing from their schools, so each school has less to spend. Unless the MATs can produce financial efficiencies across the group, they're going to be an additional expense and mostly for the salary costs, which invariably are for more senior roles. I think some MATs can achieve this, but I think some won't. As a governor in a member school, I don't think we have done enough to ensure we are getting value for money for our top-slice. But as we are now less empowered, we have to do so via skills of influence rather than having any real authority to do so.