Has anyone considered creating their own in house MIS?

[aicrd]

Not sure what Bromcom charges but I believe SIMS charge around £15 per site for writeback functionality. Usually developers pass that fee down to the school or include it in the price of the software.

 

Edit: I believe its actually £200 for SIMS. My partner manager did inform me its £15 but Capita documentation seems to contradict that so it seems to have been changed.

Edited August 12, 2020 by aicrd

[SimonHooker]

I'm a developer for a SaaS product which interacts with a lot of the functionality of most MISs, and frankly the idea of making a homemade MIS would be a daunting task. Whilst things like AWS make delivering a reliable service far simpler than it used to be, there's still a lot of complexity that just isn't apparent in every day use. Factor in the fact that schools all seem to want to do things a little bit differently, and you're asking for a headache.

 

It's not impossible, but at the same time it's not trivial. Ultimately it's just cheaper to make use of an existing MIS unless you really have enough IT budget to hire a few developers, a QA team, support team, someone to manage it etc. As already mentioned, I am aware that iSAMS started this way however to get from where it started to where it is today has taken 15 years, and it's still being refined.

 

I'm not envious of the task of making and running an MIS!

[Andrew_C]

I'm sure a school could come up with a workable system, and keep it going for a while.

 

However, as with many school projects, it will unravel when the 'driving force' leaves, or gets promotion.

[DrBeaker]

I'm sure a school could come up with a workable system, and keep it going for a while.

 

However, as with many school projects, it will unravel when the 'driving force' leaves, or gets promotion.

I've seen this truth so many times it's unreal.

Same with pet projects techs have. When they leave, it just dies off.

[TASC_Software]

As SIMS Premier partners for 20+ years and with SIMS holding 85% of the market, we stayed as a front end solution to SIMS only with our PARS and INSIGHT pupil data management / parental engagement solutions. Time moves on and we developed TALAXY which either links with multiple MIS or can be standalone. Currently using Talaxy as an MIS is only recommended for smaller schools / educational establishments / hospital schools. SEN etc.... there are various background requirements including CTF which must be a main feature in a MIS. Then you have to look at external body requirements, staff, wages, etc.....

 

Our TALAXY does include employment certification however no CTF currently.... yet

 

http://www.tascsoftware.co.uk.talaxy

 

There are companies jumping on the bandwagon though with the 25+ years we have of experience in what schools need and the hidden automated requirements created over many years, it is interesting how they move forward. We have always been very good R&D for other companies (frustrating) and seen companies duplicate our work/GUI (double frustrating) though we all need competition. Bromcom have certainly done well with distributing their MIS and good customer retention and Arbour in Primary. I 've not seen this will other MIS as yet though hopefully I can add TALAXY to the full MIS for secondary list in the very near future

 

Creating a MIS is a minefield

 

Jenny Urey

Business Development Manager

Edited August 17, 2020 by TASC_Software

[mis-dev]

Hi op

 

I've been thinking about this for a while also. I have spent the last 20 years working as a developer / product manager for two large MIS providers.

 

To create a simple MIS for one school is not that difficult a task, however getting a system that works for many schools is hard, every school has their own set of priorities, often the requirements are contradictory, like one school might want the pupil id displayed on every screen, the next school will want the pupil id hidden for everyone but users within a specific role.

 

Companies like SIMS have had decades of catering to all these variances, that makes it very hard to push updates, as the chances are that with so many variances in the product they will break some of them somewhere, this is technical debt that is holding back innovation and will probably mean their cloud product will be another serco progresso.

 

That said i've been considering if there is space for another entrant into the market. My thoughts would be a modern cloud system, API first, such that we could define a database that is compatible with CTF etc then place an open API. We would then add core features such as CTF import / export / validation. An Attendance Module, a pupil database, a workforce interface, etc. A authentication module with the possibility to integrate with O365 / Google / AD

 

The product would be community lead, so schools can petition on what module / update comes next. If they are not satisfied with that they can develop their own modules on the open api and publish them for other schools to use.

 

Does this sound appealing to anyone here?

 

Cheers

 

mis-dev

[DODICT]

good insight mis-dev but just don't see why there would be interest in this now - there some great developers in the market now with a lot more resources that would be available as a community developed project. As you say a fully functioning MIS for multiple schools isnt an easy task so why take on the big boys with less resources ?

 

I agree if SIMS was still sat there will no challengers I'd be welcoming anyone looking to offer the schools better value and a better solution but we now have Arbor, Bromcom, Scholar Pack, ISAMS as examples of front runners in the market. All customer focused solutions that are rapidly evolving and offering schools a decent product at a decent price - I think offering this has come 10 years to late in my opinion.

[Jehanzeb]

I thought of it too but the amount of effort on my own seems like a daunting task but it is achievable.

[ITGURU]

I've written an in-house on-call system based on ASP and SQL - SIMS wasn't good enough and my version does the job of recording on-calls in the database, sending an email to recipients to notify them of the on-call and producing reports by student, year group, reg group etc, top 10 students with most on-calls etc!