[bromcom] Any Bromcom users in East Mids/Lincolnshire available for visit/call 31-Jan or 5-Feb

[sonofsanta]

We're looking at moving to Bromcom soon, but wanting to discuss with another school before we send the PO in. I'm a fan of finding my own leads rather than asking the salesperson, as you're more likely to get a representative answer rather than a cherry-picked glowing report. At this point we think it's very unlikely we'll find out anything that will put us off Bromcom, from everything we've seen so far of the system and its competitors, so the conversation we want to have is as much about the migration process and lessons learned as it is about whether we should move in this direction.

 

We have been waiting on someone at a local school to get back to us with a date for three weeks, and they finally did, and their answer was "oh, turns out everything is handled centrally, there's no point in you visiting here". Which is rather inconvenient, as I've been putting off arranging anything with anyone else while we waited on this answer, and so now everything is a rush--we'd originally hoped to have the PO in by tomorrow to make an Easter launch.

 

Anyway, long story short, I (Network Manager) and Paul Smith (Assistant Head wot does data analysis, assessments & timetabling) would very much like to have conversations with our oppos in another school. We're in Grantham, Lincs; is there anyone on Bromcom, ideally who's moved in the last year or two, who's within an hour and could spare the time for a cup of tea either tomorrow or Wednesday to have a chat with us? If no-one is that close then a phone call would suffice at this short notice.

 

Thank you all!

--Matt

[supportman]

Harris academies use them I think, they are all over the London area.

 

https://www.harrisfederation.org.uk/

 

I also just saw a new video posted by Bromcom which shows off their new user interface which is very nice indeed.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ybdWCYPv8

 

For info we are also looking to move to Bromcom or iSams so very interested in how you get on.

[DODICT]

Hi Matt - happy to chat or host a visit but were slightly outside of the hour radius up here in Wakefield. We migrated 2 secondaries in July and just doing our 2 primaries now - I think we've achieved a lot in that time and happy to talk about the successes as well as some of the challenges. Our schools came from SIMs and CMIS and so while there's been some gripes in learning a new system but I've absolutely no doubt the usage and value we get from our MIS has improved significantly since making the switch.

 

We achieved some great things with the direct feed to PowerBI if thats of interest - its saved staff loads of time and given them access to data in a way they never have previously. If anything its us as staff playing catch up to get best use out of the information we now have available.

[DODICT]

And we made a decision in Jan for a July start so should be able to get you some insight into how that timeline might work - if your just a single school fine but I only joined the trust in Jan too so had to hit the ground running to get us ready for launch !

[sonofsanta]

That sounds ideal tbh (we're coming from CMIS too, and PowerBI is a big area of interest for us)--I'll ask Paul if he minds the drive or if he'd prefer a phone call at that distance (about 90min up the A1, by the looks of it). We're only a single school so the shorter timeline should be feasible; Bromcom seem to think so!

 

Will talk to my AH and PM you in a bit cheers!

[CyBeRkId2002]

We are in Leicester. I am in the office tomorrow and could probably make myself free for an hour or so tomorrow if that's any use. If so drop me a pm and we can get something sorted.

[sonofsanta]

Thanks everyone--we've arranged a visit to @DODICT for Wednesday to have a natter with him and his experience as data boss and person what done the migration, as well as his PowerBI expert, so that's pretty much perfect for our needs. I look forward to paying this favour forward in time, especially as we squeezed extra pricing out of Bromcom in exchange for being a reference site!

[DODICT]

I wouldn't call him a power BI expert

[Marci]

o_O Thy'll be getting a nerf bullet to the back of the head... altho you're technically correct. I wouldn't call me a PowerBI expert either.

[samread]

Hoping somebody out there can help. Started using PowerBi with Bromcom last year and was then assuming that this year would be able to make comparisons to last year but when I refreshed the data last week I just got this year’s data and last year’s isn’t pulling through. Any help appreciated, thank you.

[Marci]

https://vision.bromcom.com/odata for multiyear API. Needs your vision MatID and api key from a vision user account with access rights to the school in question.

 

https://cloudmis.bromcom.com/nucleus/odata is current academic year only, as you’ve found. Haul a full backup of it via Excel at end of august each year to build your own multi year dataset without Vision, or make an incremental refresh dataset storing to CSV in OneDrive / to SQL via PowerBI service.