SIMS Alternatives

[yac2016]

Avoid Progresso, rubbish software, poor support. There are a fair few I would avoid to be honest.

 

If you are primary school look at Arbor, high school BromCom.

[supportman]

Thats a great post @park_bench, i'm going to take a good look at bromcom during BETT this year.

 

Their website looks interesting already if a little amateur with that horrible scrolling text!

 

Bromcom Computers Plc | Cloud Based Management Information Systems

Edited October 19, 2018 by supportman

[Leia]

we switched from CMIS to Bromcom 6 years ago and haven't looked back. The migration was very smooth, only a few hiccups, but that was our 'dirty' data, not Bromcom's fault. We've since become a MAT and the other schools have taken on Bromcom too which makes life a lot easier with information sharing. I feel we've spoilt the SLT a bit with the capability of the system and they expect more than any MIS is capable of... I cannot speak for the Bromcom support desk as we have our helpdesk support through our LA - they tend to iron out the problems in advance for us, advise on Census errors (and helped us realise we'd 'missed' £35,000 of potential funding - we know Bromcom support cant do that for us) and we get our MIS cheaper as a collective too. So in terms of recommendation - Bromcom is a hit for us at this moment in time.

[Banjo]

Avoid Progresso, rubbish software, poor support. There are a fair few I would avoid to be honest.

 

If you are primary school look at Arbor, high school BromCom.

 

Agreed - The people that developed it didn't really understand how an MIS works.

[deshills]

Hello,

 

I'm from a small MAT working with Primary and secondary schools. I'm looking into the prospect of making the change from SIMS to a cloud hosted MIS and would like any suggestions on systems and any experiences worth noting (good and bad!).

 

Thanks

Hi

i have seen on the thread that someone has mentioned that we at Harris use Bromcom and indeed we do, across all 47 schools and have been doing so since 2016.

We have found there to be a number of benefits, most around cost saving (most of your typical 3rd party apps are integrated) and physical costs (licenses, servers etc).

Despite the saving, we have not seen any drop in output, infact, Bromcom has a number of efficiencies built into it that allow our admin teams in particular to automate much of the menial tasks they were stuck with in SIMS/CMIS. Now they can just concentrate on the core purpose of their job.

For example, attendance reports are automated, so attendance officers can concentrate on supporting students and families with poor attendance rather than running reports all day. Maybe a minor example but it makes a big difference.

The game changer for us now as a central data team is having all of the schools data collectively in one place - MAT Vision.

We can access data faster and smarter than ever before and can identify individual students with a few clicks.

All MIS's have their issues, and Bromcom is no exception, but pound for pound i think that it is the best on the market at the moment (for Primary/Secondary schools). Heard some good things about ScholarPack at Primary, but i dont have any practical experience of this other than hearsay. Hope thats of some use.

[coconurtaler]

We have been with Progresso for just over a year now and you would think we would be fluent with it now but that isn't the case. There is a lot of potential with the SSRS reports but the basics just don't work. It is slow and full of bugs and you have to swap browsers as some things work on one but not another. Several tasks have to be repeated as there is a maximum of 200 pupils visible at a time so if you have just over 200 in a year group you have to do it twice. I could go on, but I'll stop now.

[Anjelica]

Add another vote for Bromcom. Excellent support, easy to use and, when we converted from SIMS 9 years ago, they did all the transition while I went on holiday. Price is good and for a MAT to have all it's data coming out in the same format is a no brainer. Parents like My Child At School and this has revolutionized Parents' Evenings so worth the money on it's own

[TwistedHelixis]

Question: If we are looking to drop Sims should we also be looking to replace FMS?

[supportman]

Question: If we are looking to drop Sims should we also be looking to replace FMS?

Yes absolutely! There are far better finance packages out there such as HCSS which are modern and cloud based.

 

FMS is poor in comparison.

[PotNoodleTech]

Question: If we are looking to drop Sims should we also be looking to replace FMS?

 

I'd say yes, otherwise your still tied to Capita.

[TechMonkey]

Question: If we are looking to drop Sims should we also be looking to replace FMS?

 

Ask your accounts team. They may love FMS with a passion. Or it may be the time to evaluate and change to something that integrates with your spangly new MIS.

[vikpaw]

Question: If we are looking to drop Sims should we also be looking to replace FMS?

 

You should, as mentioned, ask the team and plan it well.

Depending on what you are moving to, there may be an obvious choice that links in. Or you might want to stagger the transition and retain FMS with manual posting ( of Fees summary, for example) for a while until the MIS move is done and stable.

[panosthegreat]

I've been looking into Bromcom to replace SIMS, they have a new Finance package they modeled on FMS that will be available in March. That may be worth looking at if you use FMS

[RDakin]

GET OUT!!!

Best reply ever ha!

[noelmm]

If you are considering looking at Bromcom I have read somewhere recently that they have their own finance system or are in the process of releasing it (hopefully someone on here will be able to confirm).

[AsifMangera]

Ah...we had this same issue for schools who wanted to move to a cloud-based MIS but the finance system was the blocker. I have two former school business managers in my team who know FMS back to front. I asked Bromcom to work with them to co-develop a finance system that integrates with their MIS and just had them do a demo to a group of heads,SBMs, governors - were very impressed and soon to be rolled out.

 

Some key advantages over traditional FMS too (one database, one web portal etc.).

 

Happy to discuss further...

[supportman]

Just seen this on Bromcoms social media feed, looks like the blog came out yesterday:

 

Bromcom's Finance | Bromcom Computers Plc | Cloud Based Management Information Systems

 

Very interesting...

Edited November 21, 2018 by supportman

[Reverend_Dan]

Had a hour webinar walkthru with Simon from bromcom finance yesterday and our bursar was very impressed with it over fms. Mainly the better ease of drill down access from one place to the next rather than having to write down notes/ po number to go back up into other parts to then run a report off its all click here done.