Bromcom Users

[sluggster66]

Hi

 

Currently looking at moving away from SIMS to BROMCOM. Are their any schools in the West Mids area who would allow myself and a member of our SLT to come to site and talk to stakeholders about BROMCOM.

 

Cheers

Simon

[DODICT]

sure @deshills must have one of his DRET empire local to yourself - he's seen as much as most of Bromcom from a schools perspective.

 

Are you the NM ? Just asking as while I rate Bromcom highly I believe any MIS needs appropriately leading and supporting and in my opinion if you don't have any data staff capable of contributing to the process I'm not sure how much you will get from a new MIS.

 

No disrespect intended I just think a NM is a job in its on right, and a critical and important one too . . .

[sluggster66]

sure @deshills must have one of his DRET empire local to yourself - he's seen as much as most of Bromcom from a schools perspective.

 

Are you the NM ? Just asking as while I rate Bromcom highly I believe any MIS needs appropriately leading and supporting and in my opinion if you don't have any data staff capable of contributing to the process I'm not sure how much you will get from a new MIS.

 

No disrespect intended I just think a NM is a job in its on right, and a critical and important one too . . .

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

I am the NM, and will be running the project, but our Data Manager and exams manager are heavily involved, so I am there more as a point of contact for everyone rather than needing to understand everything.

[deshills]

Hi

 

Currently looking at moving away from SIMS to BROMCOM. Are their any schools in the West Mids area who would allow myself and a member of our SLT to come to site and talk to stakeholders about BROMCOM.

 

Cheers

Simon

 

Hi @sluggster66

You would be very welcome to come over to our Head Office in Loughborough, or to one of our schools and we'll give you a run through the system

[kennysarmy]

I've got a DM who is very anti against any move from SIMS to Bromcom, which will be one of the MIS providers we'll be looking at when our new MAT comes online and the new school we're going to run goes live in 2021!

 

Interested in any comments from school's who have transitioned from SIMS to Bromcom.

[msi_school]

We are in a similar situation to the OP, I as NM am leading a project to initially look at new MIS products and then to implement a move to Bromcom, the DM and Deputy curriculum are in the group but the DH is too busy and the DM is not a project manager so I am leading the project.

 

This has all gone well and we are hoping to change over to Bromcom unfortunately no one seems to have realised that we will have to pay for two MIS products during the change over.

[DODICT]

I would have some discussions with Bromcom over your year one costings if you have some overlap - they are normally pretty flexible.

[Stevew303]

I've got a DM who is very anti against any move from SIMS to Bromcom, which will be one of the MIS providers we'll be looking at when our new MAT comes online and the new school we're going to run goes live in 2021!

 

Interested in any comments from school's who have transitioned from SIMS to Bromcom.

 

Why is your DM so against the change? Sounds like that is the initial hurdle to address. Always do what you have always done and you will always get what you always got! We made the change with lots of staff not so keen but it was smooth and does so much for us. Happy to show people around the system at our school if you need.

[kennysarmy]

Why is your DM so against the change? Sounds like that is the initial hurdle to address. Always do what you have always done and you will always get what you always got! We made the change with lots of staff not so keen but it was smooth and does so much for us. Happy to show people around the system at our school if you need.

 

I don't think they likes change!

[DODICT]

In my experience those DM's they are resistant to even looking at alternatives to SIMS are ultimately as limiting as the software itself. They like sitting there spending ages creating aspects in Assessment manager and achieving little with the data entered into the MIS. If they cant see how alternatives can make them more effective in their role they are not somebody I would want to employ in a data capacity. I get its your comfort zone but if you have any kind of affinity for working with data your time can be better used with other solutions in the current market.

 

So looks like an opportunity kill two birds as it were . . .

[elJukes]

I've got a DM who is very anti against any move from SIMS to Bromcom, which will be one of the MIS providers we'll be looking at when our new MAT comes online and the new school we're going to run goes live in 2021!

 

Interested in any comments from school's who have transitioned from SIMS to Bromcom.

 

We moved from SIMS to Bromcom a year ago. The physical transition of information was very smooth, we had almost daily contact with the mirgation and support teams throughout. They gave each of our schools a test system using a sample of their actual data so they could train and explore for a couple of months before the switch over.

 

One of the reasons we decided to look at other MIS packages was because we saw that SIMS were building a new product in the cloud & so knew the current system had a limited self life. We thought if we were going to have to move data and more importantly retrain a lot of staff on a new SIMS MIS why not see what other products were out there.

 

Our Secondary behaviour lead has found the alerts and auto-escalation features really useful in keeping staff and parents up to date with goings on. Assessment is a bit of a step up too, the build tools are very familiar but we make one template and tag it for X subjects a voilá we have a whole school monitoring system in half the time it took us in SIMS.

 

I find the company to be very open to discussion, we're developing our own PowerBI dashboards using live feeds from the MIS and they've been really helpful in not only getting data out but working with PBI to get what we want.

 

And of course they put us in touch with @deshills ( not sure that's a good thing from his perspective!! ).

[sluggster66]

Hi @sluggster66

You would be very welcome to come over to our Head Office in Loughborough, or to one of our schools and we'll give you a run through the system

 

Hi

 

Thanks for this really appreciate it.

 

Would you be able to PM me your contact info so that we can look at getting something organised?

 

Cheers

[park_bench]

I've got a DM who is very anti against any move from SIMS to Bromcom, which will be one of the MIS providers we'll be looking at when our new MAT comes online and the new school we're going to run goes live in 2021!

 

Interested in any comments from school's who have transitioned from SIMS to Bromcom.

 

We started the migration from SIMS to Bromcom in our small academy (1 secondary and 3 primaries) about 12 months ago. No regrets!

 

I think a crucial part of the process is to get all key personnel around a table with one of Bromcom's account managers and address any concerns that staff may have about changing the MIS - Ask tough questions - and then carefully evaluate the pros and cons together. Ensure anybody who is resistant to change is part of the decision-making process, empower them to express any valid concerns and weed out those who just want to stay in their comfort zone. It's a big decision and potentially a big opportunity to make a difference in your school/MAT.

 

Cheers,

Ben

[Stevew303]

I have been writing a piece on this recently (excerpt below)

 

3 years ago we made the change in our MAT to bring all our schools under the one MIS provider – Bromcom. The providers that we were using “worked – did the job” but we wanted more – much more. We previously had some of the big players in our schools, CMIS, SIMS but through a competitive procurement found that there was one other provider that we were not currently using that could provide for all our needs (and more) at a fantastic price (I’ll put this bit in now as I’m sure you all want to know about cost… we have saved around £2.8m over 40 schools in the three years since the change).

 

Fear of change:

 

When I talk with other senior school leaders the fear of change is often their biggest challenge that holds them back. We too went through the fear stage… “what could the system do? How would we learn to use it? What if staff couldn’t even take registers? How much more work was this going to be for us? How difficult would the transition from one MIS to another be? The questions went on and on and the list just grew each time we spoke to different departments about their needs. In reality the migration was seamless. A very well planned out strategy was in place ensuring that systems were tested and tested again before actually making the change. Bromcom did by far the majority of the work bringing so many different schools together without schools even realising it was taking place. The school I worked in at the time was the first to make the change, it was changed over half term and teachers were shown on the first day back how to take registers and add behaviour points (there was a comprehensive training roll out for many departments but this genuinely was all teachers needed to get going). The user interface was so responsive and user friendly it was easy for staff to navigate around the system, try things that they had not been shown how to do and still save time. Schools were feeling empowered as they could now report, manipulate data for their own use, import and export using excel and other programs with ease – there was no dependence on the central team from head office or local “super-users” as there had been before. There were so many “back-up systems” ready in case we couldn’t use Bromcom and none of them were needed.

 

Current MIS “does the job…..”:

 

Of course many MIS systems can “do the job” but my question here would be what job is being done? Is it being done in the best most efficient way? Is there more that you could be getting from your MIS? If you don’t look around and see what else is out there you will never know what you are missing! A great Head Teacher once used to say to me “we don’t know what we don’t know”.

It costs nothing to look around and see what else is out there. If it was your own personal money being spent would you be so relaxed? How often do you shop around for the best phone tariff, TV package, motor insurance, holiday deal…..? With many of the best deals going to “new customers only” we have to have the mentality of looking around for the best offer out there - especially with school budgets being cut more and more. I mentioned earlier in this blog the savings we have made changing our MIS systems all to Bromcom, those savings are now being used in other areas to have a positive impact on children’s lives which is the reason we all came in to this profession initially!

 

Functional superiority:

 

Despite not actually needing much training and support due to the system being so easy to use I should still highlight Bromcom have a fantastic support service. Where we have wanted to do more it is often the case that Bromcom already has the functionality and we have not seen it due to only scratching the surface of the capabilities of the MIS. Further developments have seen the creation of PowerBi and MAT Vision with more on the way. In a MAT of our size having quick easy access to data across the federation is fundamental to our success and Bromcom deliver on this where our previous MIS providers didn’t. This is all without even going in to the extra modules provided saving us further expenditure on other 3rd party software, (MCAS, Medical tracker, Show my homework, SEND profile, Bromcom parent app and communications). Educational institutions have some of the most qualified individuals in the country, degrees, PHD’s, etc….. we do not stay stagnant in our own development or teaching and welfare strategies for pupils so we should apply this same mindset to our MIS and all other support systems.

 

My experience of Bromcom has opened my eyes like they hadn’t been before.

[deshills]

We moved from SIMS to Bromcom a year ago. The physical transition of information was very smooth, we had almost daily contact with the mirgation and support teams throughout. They gave each of our schools a test system using a sample of their actual data so they could train and explore for a couple of months before the switch over.

 

One of the reasons we decided to look at other MIS packages was because we saw that SIMS were building a new product in the cloud & so knew the current system had a limited self life. We thought if we were going to have to move data and more importantly retrain a lot of staff on a new SIMS MIS why not see what other products were out there.

 

Our Secondary behaviour lead has found the alerts and auto-escalation features really useful in keeping staff and parents up to date with goings on. Assessment is a bit of a step up too, the build tools are very familiar but we make one template and tag it for X subjects a voilá we have a whole school monitoring system in half the time it took us in SIMS.

 

I find the company to be very open to discussion, we're developing our own PowerBI dashboards using live feeds from the MIS and they've been really helpful in not only getting data out but working with PBI to get what we want.

 

And of course they put us in touch with @deshills ( not sure that's a good thing from his perspective!! ).

haha @elJukes - always happy to help out where we can aren't we.

 

In regards to the comments about resistant to change - you do find that, especially when people are so familiar with using a particular system. I think people equate change to a risk to peoples jobs, but that is simply not the case.I would echo Sam's point that getting a test database and having a play with it is a great idea. In my last job, we involved DMs in the procurement process so they felt part of the journey and bought into it alot more.

I don't think we (as a community spending public money) can continuing paying for expensive and outdated systems simply because we are fearful of change, its our responsibility to choose a cost effective, efficient and sustainable product.