Moving from Sims

[Mkenyon]

Hi

So we are a secondary school and as far as I can see there is no hope left for Sims moving forward. I would like to know if any other schools have moved off Sims to a new MIS and what they have moved to and the issues they faced.

 

Thanks

[supportman]

Hi

So we are a secondary school and as far as I can see there is no hope left for Sims moving forward. I would like to know if any other schools have moved off Sims to a new MIS and what they have moved to and the issues they faced.

 

Thanks

 

There are 3 main competitors to Sims that are cloud based in the secondary school field. iSams, Arbor and BROMCOM. We've looked at all 3 and are soon to make a decision.

 

Any of those 3 are light years ahead of Sims from the demos we've seen.

Edited February 4, 2020 by supportman

[supportman]

Some notes I have made so far from the demos:

 

Bromcom (all in one solution, most modern looking interface, price per user is high but negotiable, good apps, marketed towards MATS)

iSams (Good functionality, good pricing for state schools also negotiable to compare with Capita Sims, no timetable software, focused on independent schools, good admissions features)

Arbour (yet to see)

[Mkenyon]

Thanks.

I went to an Arbor presentation and it looked very good seemed to cover most of what Sims does. It seemed to have great reporting and they where marketing it as about 30% cheaper than Sims. Downside was it had no staff appraisal section.

[howartp]

I've not done any looking, but at a Network Managers meeting on Friday a few secondaries had moved/were moving to Bromcom.

 

They did comment though that Arbor was likely to be market leader in 5 years, it's just not quite ready yet.

[supportman]

Thanks.

I went to an Arbor presentation and it looked very good seemed to cover most of what Sims does. It seemed to have great reporting and they where marketing it as about 30% cheaper than Sims. Downside was it had no staff appraisal section.

 

Bromcom also was quite poor in the staff performance management/appraisal section but the other bits looked really good. The sales person said that it was an area they are looking into.

[kennysarmy]

We are likely to be shortlisting between Arbor and Bromcom.

 

Ideally I'd like to see them both come in for half-a-day and do sessions with all our key SIMS users so we can gauge everyone's opinion.

[Mkenyon]

We are likely to be shortlisting between Arbor and Bromcom.

 

Ideally I'd like to see them both come in for half-a-day and do sessions with all our key SIMS users so we can gauge everyone's opinion.

 

The arbor sales guy did say the way they normally work for secondaries is first a general presentation then a "deep dive" were they spend time with different departments.

[djm968]

I am running a Trust wide project to migrate all sites to Arbor. Arbor does the basics very well but there are some areas that are not quite as developed as other MIS systems and the experience and impact for Staff following the migration to Arbor, very much depends on how "heavily" they currently use SIMS. If your School is using all of the functionality within SIMS for Exams, Behaviour, Payments etc, there will possibly be some shortcomings.

 

Managing the expectations for staff is key and most of these issues can usually be addressed by training and assisting staff with the development of different processes for some of these functions. Staff in some Schools will possibly see Arbor as a step backwards until they can identify and implement different processes to replace some of the missing functionality. Where other School will find Arbor to be a massive leap forwards. This is true for any migration and so far overall feedback has been positive.

Edited February 4, 2020 by djm968

[djm968]

The arbor sales guy did say the way they normally work for secondaries is first a general presentation then a "deep dive" were they spend time with different departments.

It sounds obvious but you really need to identify everything you currently do in SIMS and everything that currently integrates with SIMS. You also need to ensure ALL key SIMS users are involved in the process to make an informed choice.

[DODICT]

It sounds obvious but you really need to identify everything you currently do in SIMS and everything that currently integrates with SIMS. You also need to ensure ALL key SIMS users are involved in the process to make an informed choice.

I'd agree partially - but if everything you want to achieve is delivered by SIMS why change ? So you want to widen your thinking beyond current practice surely ? ! I'd be looking at what you want your MIS to deliver - break it down to the data you have available and determine the who, how and when of how can that info be best used to have maximum impact. And then look at how the various MIS out there can best use and deliver the info you have to support you in delivering your objectives - dont let them dictate a session selling you their strengths as they may not be valuable to you. Decide what you need and want and then hand it over to them - how can xxx MIS best support us with our priorities x, y, z.

 

SIMS is a aged flawed product you aint going to get the best out of Arbor, Bromcom or ISAMS just looking at replicating functionality. And yes engage all users but dont let them get bogged down in the I currently do this, this, this and then need that on a report so I can send it to etc as there is almost certainly a better way of doing it when moving to a modern more fully functional MIS.

 

If you don't re-examine the systems and processes your MIS supports you'll end up being a bit underwhelmed by the impact of changing MIS IMHO. But agree an audit is needed to ensure there are no gaps or to capture what is currently processed to inform a review.

[djm968]

I'd agree partially - but if everything you want to achieve is delivered by SIMS why change ?.

From a MAT point of view, SIMS doesn't deliver and when Schools are running different MIS systems in the Trust, it makes sense to standardise and centralise the MIS. Arbor provides MAT leaders with instant access to the vital data they need. Edited February 4, 2020 by djm968

[supportman]

I'd agree partially - but if everything you want to achieve is delivered by SIMS why change ?

 

From a technical viewpoint then cloud based is surely the future and Capita have decided not to invest quickly enough in the that future.

 

Having used a few cloud MIS's at BETT this year it was clear that Capita are a long way behind and we are just holding on due to legacy issues rather than it being a better product.

 

And that's not even touching on the amount of functionality Sims is missing that needs to be done by 3rd parties that the new breed of MIS's have included.

[DODICT]

From a MAT point of view, SIMS doesn't deliver and when Schools are running different MIS systems in the Trust, it makes sense standardise and centralise the MIS. Arbor also provides MAT leaders instant access to vital data.

I agree with it not delivering I was trying to stress the need to look beyond current practice as I can guarantee there is a better way of achieving it. I'm SIM's biggest critic so when looking for a replacement almost ignore what you currently do and look at what you want and need is all I'm saying.

 

And I'd look carefully at the reporting is available at MAT level - Arbor has some great visually appealing dashboards from the national datasets and known fixed data like attendance but fell short for me when needing analyse custom internal data or bespoke anything for your needs. Again what they can show you is great but it may not cover everything you would want . . .

 

We could not achieve what we wanted at MAT or academy level in an efficient and scaleable way looking simply at Attendance, behaviour and exclusions using Arbor's reporting functionality.

[djm968]

I'm SIM's biggest critic

Can I ask what MIS your are using across your MAT?

[DODICT]

We opted for Bromcom after whittling it down to Arbor or Bromcom based on the flexibility of reporting - mainly due to the direct link to PowerBI. Arbor's link to PowerBI is not scaleable and crucially not secure last I checked.

[RootsSchImp]

I've been on the MIS side of a fair few procurements and I think the thing that Schools/MATs most often fail to consider but should is the trade off between the benefits of more complex functionality and the investment in skills needed to use that functionality.

 

Power BI is a great example of this - it's fantastic, and you can use it to make Analysis tools that are so much better than Performance Analysis in SIMS, Bromcom's native Analysis module or anything else that I've seen that comes 'out of the box' in an MIS. But the cost of that is the skill required to build and maintain BI reports. BI isn't super difficult to learn but it's not entry level either - put it this way, if you're expecting your data manager/assistant head to just pick it up alongside all their other day to day responsibilities you're going to be waiting a long time before you have good BI dashboards.

 

This is not to say it's not worth it - only that you should carefully about whether you're willing to commit the resources to make it work. A halfway house could be BI reports offered by the MIS provider (I used to make these for Bromcom) - be careful on that route though as it's very hard to design reports that work well with all schools' data - so you want to ask are 'will this work *for us*?' and 'can we customise it to fit our requirements?'

 

Another example is in native reporting from the MIS. Progresso (and I think ISams) allow you to build reports using SQL in MS Report Builder - that means you can do fancier stuff than you can from Bromcom's reporting module (which is pretty basic) but a) do you want to? and b) is it worth the time and money to train someone/replace the person you've got who knows SQL with someone else at the same skill level?

 

There's also no shame in saying you're going to accept a lower functionality MIS and simpler processes because you don't want to invest in more complex ones - that's far better in my opinion that paying for the dream of an all singing all dancing system but then not having the tech know how to make it work.

 

Good luck with the search

 

Ed

[Bromcom_John]

Just wading in to assist the decision making process, as BI keeps getting mentioned.

BI is probably one of the simplest learning curves I personally have encountered in any analysis product out there. Kudos to Microsoft on this, I certainly won't be taking any credit for it.

So, while correct that you are going to need someone proficient in order to get the "really" shiny toys out of the toolkit, getting someone to that level is not as arduous as you might think.

Example from Quora (where I admittedly spend far too much time reading responses from) - https://www.quora.com/How-easy-is-Power-BI-to-learn

Plus there are a metric tonne of free tutorials.

 

In my experience with our users (and beyond), there are probably 4 different kinds of BI user

 

1. MAT or school that have little or no time to develop their own content ; These should talk to their MIS provider and see what the provider can deliver out of the box (or at least with a minimal amount of config, everyone does Assessment slightly differently after all).
   
2. MAT or school that have a bit of time but limited expertise ; Take the templates your given and copy them, adjust them, use them as springboard from which to develop. As long as you work on the copy then you're not going to break anything. This is great if you have personnel that have the learning itch but little time.
   
3. MAT or School that do their own "ground up" analytics ; This user is likely to have personnel who already commit the time to do these task. The right tools really help that user get more efficiency. The number of schools I have dealt with who have ssomeone spending "days on an excel spreadsheet that could be replaced with a few charts etc. This category also covers 3rd party support teams who write content for their schools.
   
4. Large MAT's with their own data warehousing etc. ; Well, these users know who they are (eg. Oasis, Harris) and they are always looking for means to make things take less time. Plus MAT's can and DO continue to create dashboard content that work at an individual school level. So even the single schools in these MAT's may benefit from being in category 1 or 2
   
5. 
   

 

Each of these groups stands to benefit from the "right" implementation of BI or similar tools.

A "good" dashboard to use Rootschimp's term is any dashboard that gives "you" the information "you" need.

Just make sure you know which one you are and pitch your data project at the right level.

 

You don't need to be an expert, and you can always build on what you achieve later!

I've seen users move up categories in short order.

[Damon]

Yeah I've taught a fair few people how to use BI and everyone has picked up the concepts fairly promptly. However, MIS providers should always be providing as much built in analysis as possible. You go to BI when you need that extra bit of customisation. One thing I think we can agree on, is that the education space has been crying out for powerful, customisable reporting for a long time. I made a living from coding Excel macro reports and they are far less powerful than what you can produce in an hour of Power BI. Having support for third party reporting tools is a major benefit. I even use BI in single site schools for custom Assessment analysis, something that is difficult for MIS providers to produce an out of the box solution for.

[cabezon1989]

Has anyone considered developing their own MIS?? We havent really been wow'd by anyone!

[RootsSchImp]

That's interesting - what would you like to develop that's currently lacking from the market?

[supportman]

Has anyone considered developing their own MIS?? We havent really been wow'd by anyone!

Yes! I'm a PHP developer and open-source contributor.

 

To be honest I could whip something up in a weekend that completes with the basic MIS functions of the products out there using a modern framework like Laravel.

 

But the real work comes from the extra bits like timetable processing, data migration and local authority census requirements. That's just boring and I have no real motivation unless paid to do something like that

 

We went with Bromcom in the end as its basically what I would write if I wanted a web based Sims alternative. Quite happy so far if you look at the my other thread.