[sims] Capita is trying to sell off non-core businesses (SIMS is for sale)

[psydii]

https://www.cityam.com/private-equity-firms-preparing-bids-for-capita-sell-off/

 

I was a little pre-occupied when this was published, standing-up our remote operations, so perhaps I missed this discussion.

 

Does anyone know where SIMS sits?

[Brimstone]

SIMS is one of their cash cows so very much doubt this will get sold.

[psydii]

But it doesn't sit in its own BU, so if that BU is not core....

[smarties11]

Anyone got a spare 500 mil?

 

Capita SIMS for Sale: Capita looks to sell its education software solutions (ESS) unit as the board prepares to approve an auction - Finnemore Consulting

[hardtailstar]

Anyone got a spare 500 mil?

 

Capita SIMS for Sale: Capita looks to sell its education software solutions (ESS) unit as the board prepares to approve an auction - Finnemore Consulting

 

Maybe they have been hit elsewhere in the business so looking to sell?

[Arthur]

At least the software can't be made any worse than it already is!

[ass17]

It’s a fire sale, they know they will start to lose customers based on their lack of SaaS like other MIS’s out there.

 

They are looking to sell while they hold a large market share and there is money to be made to plough into other capita businesses.

 

Ultimately the product is far too big and some elements far old for them to commit the money and resources to bring it fully SaaS web based.

 

Will be interested to see who makes the purchase!

[Ditto]

Anyone got a spare 500 mil?

 

Capita SIMS for Sale: Capita looks to sell its education software solutions (ESS) unit as the board prepares to approve an auction - Finnemore Consulting

 

Thanks for posting this - now this is really interesting news in the MIS sector. I doubt any of the main competitors could raise a bid. An investment group maybe? Progresso (which at one point were second only to SIMS in secondary) went that way and I saw investment in spite of reducing client base. Not sure how they fair now, but I can't see how the investors would have made a profit. SIMS, with their market share is a very different proposition. Will be interesting to see if a new owner can kick them in to life and perhaps most importantly, get a cloud based MIS up running sooner rather than later. I'll be watching this space for sure.

[rogerdnixon]

I emailed James Leonard (Head of Google for Education UK) and told him to snap it up and give it a proper makeover..... They would not notice 500m.

[psydii]

This feels similar in some ways to what happened with cmis/progresso. The move to the SaaS version basically fails, initially technically but then financially, and the whole Business unit is put up for sale.

[Ditto]

I emailed James Leonard (Head of Google for Education UK) and told him to snap it up and give it a proper makeover..... They would not notice 500m.

Love this idea - could you imagine a cloud based MIS tightly integrated with GSuite!

[elsiegee40]

I emailed James Leonard (Head of Google for Education UK) and told him to snap it up and give it a proper makeover..... They would not notice 500m.

 

Nice idea, but the whole thing needs a complete rewrite from scratch and has done for at least a decade.

 

If Google wants to enter the MIS market it would do better to write its own rather than try to unpick the total mess of spaghetti code that SIMS has become.

[smurfomatic]

Nice idea, but the whole thing needs a complete rewrite from scratch and has done for at least a decade.

 

If Google wants to enter the MIS market it would do better to write its own rather than try to unpick the total mess of spaghetti code that SIMS has become.

 

Worth buying SIMS for the name and the current customer base, then start from scratch on a new product behind the scenes?

[XiJ]

Sims is dead in primary and dying in secondary. The smartest thing capita have done in years is to try and sell.

 

I just can’t see who would buy (but then I never understood why anyone would actually pay money to capita for anything)

[elsiegee40]

No. It’s not exactly Aston Martin or Mini. Better to disassociate yourself and have the clean modern image!

[Dos_Box]

Worth buying SIMS for the name and the current customer base, then start from scratch on a new product behind the scenes?

 

It may depend on what the long term stats are for their customer base are I suppose (up/down etc.). £500m is a big ask if the customer base has been declining and as others have pointed out, the code base would need a complete re-write to bring it close to many of its competitors.

Interesting times indeed.

Edited June 19, 2020 by Dos_Box

[Norphy]

I emailed James Leonard (Head of Google for Education UK) and told him to snap it up and give it a proper makeover..... They would not notice 500m.

 

Ugh. No thank you. Google already has too much data about people as it is. The last thing we should wish for is for them to get even more!

 

Plus, given their history, it would probably get discontinued after two years when they get bored with it...

Edited June 19, 2020 by Norphy

[3s-gtech]

I’ve got my business case ready. Just got to work out the finer points of converting it to a completely web-based app, using a combination of Java and Silverlight. I’ll be rich!

[smurfomatic]

I’ve got my business case ready. Just got to work out the finer points of converting it to a completely web-based app, using a combination of Java and Silverlight. I’ll be rich!

 

What, no Flash?

[localzuk]

I'd be a fan of the DfE buying it, and spinning it into a govt owned non-profit business, with a board made up of elected members from the various education markets - schools, MATs, LEAs, universities etc...

 

All profit gets put back into the business and it is there to serve its customers instead of make money.

 

Would never happen though. Far too socialist.

[Ditto]

I'd be a fan of the DfE buying it, and spinning it into a govt owned non-profit business, with a board made up of elected members from the various education markets - schools, MATs, LEAs, universities etc...

 

All profit gets put back into the business and it is there to serve its customers instead of make money.

 

Would never happen though. Far too socialist.

Just noticed the games mod banner - nice! As for government bodies running software projects, well I'm trying to remain non-political, but recent events suggests it's better to leave it to software professionals.

[localzuk]

Just noticed the games mod banner - nice! As for government bodies running software projects, well I'm trying to remain non-political, but recent events suggests it's better to leave it to software professionals.

It'd be a govt owned business rather than govt run, with a specific set of rules for how it is run. I fear direct control would just end up killing it as political interference would occur too often based on the short term goals of whatever minister was in charge at the time.

 

And yeah been doing the games stuff for a few years, including running the gaming servers Edugeek offers. [emoji4]

[paulkerton]

£500n for ESS (Which is essentially just SIMS and FMS really, let's face it) is about £24,000 per customer, estimating about 21,000 schools.

Yeah, it's not worth that to anyone for a tarnished brand name and a software product that needs a root and branch rebuild from the ground up.

 

I emailed James Leonard (Head of Google for Education UK) and told him to snap it up and give it a proper makeover..... They would not notice 500m.

They definitely don't have that kind of money in the Google for Education EMEA though, and if they wanted to get into the MIS market they'd be better off purchasing Bromcom or Arbor or Scholarpack or virtually any of the others that went online years ago, really.

Hell, even RM Integris would be a better buy right now!

[localzuk]

£500n for ESS (Which is essentially just SIMS and FMS really, let's face it) is about £24,000 per customer, estimating about 21,000 schools.

Yeah, it's not worth that to anyone for a tarnished brand name and a software product that needs a root and branch rebuild from the ground up.

 

They also sell to universities and further education colleges. So there's more to the business than just SIMS.

[paulkerton]

They also sell to universities and further education colleges. So there's more to the business than just SIMS.

They're a tiny, tiny miniscule part of the business though. ESS is SIMS, Reading Cloud, Unit-e and Agilit-e.

 

https://www.capitaeducationsoftware.co.uk/

They have 21,700 school customers just on SIMS, and 130 using Unit-e and Agilit-e. That's 166 times more schools than FE and HE organisations. Just to match the money they'd be making on schools, FE and HE would have to be spending hundreds upon thousands of pounds each. If those 21,700 customers spent £5k on average (and we know its much more per average) that'd be over £100m coming in from the schools.

FEs and HEs would have to spend £800k or more each with Capita ESS to be bringing in the same kind of cash as the schools would be.

 

Fantasy purchasing here:

If I'm buying Capita ESS, I'm buying the brand, the staff contracts and the customer base and then selling the FE and HE software and customers to generate some revenue back.

Then I'm working to wind down the .net software and rebuild the next generation of the software from the ground up for the fourth time I think it is? If I'm lucky I might retain my customer base of 21,000 but I've also got to prepare for the worst and expect to lose a chunk of it. There is no way I'm paying £500m though. That's £23k per current customer in the UK. That'd take me 4 years or more just to break even on the acquisition based on my rough numbers, let alone all the outgoings I'm going to be taking on.