Bromcom or Arbor?

[dunxl]

Hi Everyone,

 

We are a small secondary school currently choosing between these two MIS's to replace SIMS. We are convinced of the benefits of taking the plunge and we have already investigated both options. If you have any experiences or information to help us with selection please post here or share contact details so I can get in touch.

 

thanks

[Lonix]

I would recommend giving this a read regarding Bromcom.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/217972-disappointed-bidder-sues-mat-after-mis-tender-failure.html

 

There are certainly other choices out there if you decide to leave SIMs.

[dunxl]

Thanks Lonix, already seen that thread.

[robyholmes]

We're in a very simular position and as the network manager I can't give you exact reasons why, but we have Bromcom currently in the lead and it seems to be down to more flexibility in the product. Especially around assessment.

 

My personal view is Arbor have a very polish product, much like Apple. If how you work fits with how it expects you to work you'll get on very well. However if you want more flexibility, Bromcom while not as polished gives you this, like Windows. I do fear Bromcom could become another Capita winning a lot of contracts and then not needing to try any more, but lets see.

 

Have plenty of demos, involve as many people as you can in them. No MIS is perfect but you want everyone to agree on which is the best fit for your school.

[supportman]

We went Bromcom, their system is good and we compared to Arbour and iSams.

 

I liked Arbour as well but it was far more expensive and I thought it was a more aimed at primary schools.

 

I would urge you to test both systems with a login that they can provide you during the sales process.

 

One thing is for sure, both systems are far superior in just about every way to Sims.

[Danw2021]

I work in the office at a secondary school in South Yorkshire and we were looking at an MIS change at the start of the year, ended up putting it off because of Covid (ironic really, my job would have been far easier without sims).

 

However we'd looked at both Bromcom and Arbor and there was similar feedback with people saying it appeared to be more primary focused.. I'm not sure why really. I would agree that it perhaps looks a bit simpler, but surely this is a good thing, why make it over complicated?

 

I can't comment on assessment as it's not my remit, but I do recall Arbor are now working with quite a lot of secondary schools, and as the link above suggests a very large trust with several secondary schools.. If the really important bits weren't up to scratch then surely they wouldn't have being awarded that tender in the first place?

 

I also think that suing an educational institute just isn't cricket, more so because from what I've read they haven't got a justified argument really. This alone would be a big deciding factor for me, they should behave with a bit more decorum

[panosthegreat]

We went with Bromcom, we're an international school and are fee paying but not for profit. Our finance team are not happy with the Bromcom Finance module, they miss FMS and SIMS... and some of the modules (including the parent/student portals) don't work where someone's computer is in a different time zones or a particular version of iOS. However everyone else really likes Bromcom, especially the teachers, and the data team love how much easier it is to set everything up. Definitely better than SIMS, just needs some tweaking for international and fee paying schools... they'll get there. But Arbour may be better for now in those types of schools. Edited November 10, 2020 by panosthegreat

[Danw2021]

We went with Bromcom, we're an international school and are fee paying but not for profit. Our finance team are not happy with the Bromcom Finance module, they miss FMS and SIMS... and some of the modules (including the parent/student portals) don't work where someone's computer is in a different time zones or a particular version of iOS. However everyone else really likes Bromcom, especially the teachers.

They're working to fix our timezone and finance issues, but I would recommend Arbour for any international or independent schools, and Bromcom for any regular UK schools.

 

Interesting that you recommend them despite people not liking it and the technical issues.. Arbor work with more UK schools than Bromcom from what I can see too, I didn't even even know Arbor can accommodate foreign schools.

 

Were going to be picking it up again early next year hopefully and we'll be looking at both very closely, having said that there's a school near us on Arbor and they seem to love it. Time will tell

[panosthegreat]

Interesting that you recommend them despite people not liking it and the technical issues.. Arbor work with more UK schools than Bromcom from what I can see too, I didn't even even know Arbor can accommodate foreign schools.

Were going to be picking it up again early next year hopefully and we'll be looking at both very closely, having said that there's a school near us on Arbor and they seem to love it. Time will tell

 

Arbour had a number of foreign schools already set up and willing to vouch for the system. Bromcom didn't have any before us (I think they might have a Dubai school now). I prefered Bromcom over Arbour so we took a risk and went with them, and on the whole they're doing a lot to get the system working abroad, they just need more time.

They're not quite ready for different time zones or bulk-invoicing of fees... but they'll get there. There's an update on Friday that promises to fix the time zone issue but time will tell... I'm heading back to the UK soon so hopefully I can find a job in a Bromcom school. I can't go back to SIMS.

[paulkerton]

Interesting that you recommend them despite people not liking it and the technical issues.. Arbor work with more UK schools than Bromcom from what I can see too, I didn't even even know Arbor can accommodate foreign schools.

 

Were going to be picking it up again early next year hopefully and we'll be looking at both very closely, having said that there's a school near us on Arbor and they seem to love it. Time will tell

 

Some people not liking a platform is completely subjective. It doesn't surprise me that there are people in education that don't appreciate change and are stuck clinging to software. You will always get those people. I had a staff member tell me that they didn't like Google Docs because, and I wish I was joking... "I don't like how the tables are formatted". People get stuck in their ways. It's an IT departments job not only to make change happen, but to manage that change and make sure people go along. There will always will be refusniks and laggards. Look into the Rogers Curve and diffusion of innovations. It plays out true all the time, and its 58 years old!

I mean, I've met teachers who won't change any techniques they use because it wasn't how they were trained in the 80s and 90s. We even get it now with people clinging onto their smartboards rather than moving towards flat screen devices. Or schools that won't even entertain the idea of the cloud and are wed to on-site applications and servers.

The timezone thing is also a security feature that applies to most online platforms too. Try logging into Office 365 and Google Workspace when your clock is out of sync with where you're supposed to be and see how that goes. Ultimately both of those issues are not a developer issue, they're an administration issue. Clocks on computers and versions of operating systems should be kept up to do date. International time-zones is a unique case due to the fact Bromcom is used almost exclusively in the UK.

 

Having used both, I like both of them, certainly compared to the traditional rivals. They're modern, forward thinking platforms that are fully featured on the whole, and aren't dependent on bolting on third party tools to get things done.

However, having used both now, I would say that Bromcom is certainly the more mature product. Bromcom have been in the market for over 30 years now too, which gives me confidence in the product and longevity. Have you seen how many takeovers and mergers are going on in the MIS market at the moment? It's a bit of a wild west out there right now!

 

And purely from an asthetic view point, I prefer Bromcom too. The greens and browns aren't particularly pleasing on the eye with Arbor.

Edited November 16, 2020 by paulkerton

[Bromcom_Hus]

Arbour had a number of foreign schools already set up and willing to vouch for the system. Bromcom didn't have any before us (I think they might have a Dubai school now). I prefered Bromcom over Arbour so we took a risk and went with them, and on the whole they're doing a lot to get the system working abroad, they just need more time.

They're not quite ready for different time zones or bulk-invoicing of fees... but they'll get there. There's an update on Friday that promises to fix the time zone issue but time will tell... I'm heading back to the UK soon so hopefully I can find a job in a Bromcom school. I can't go back to SIMS.

 

Thanks Panos. Bromcom did win Ministry of Defence contracts and we have 25+ schools across 4 different time-zones around world, and system supports different time-zones. Just to be clear for everyone's benefit, issue only occurs for the users who are not in the same configured time-zone of the school, and issue has been identified with few pages that has specific time-component used. Our team did work on this, and update applied Friday night to resolve the reported areas. Testing Team also carrying out further checks to make sure there are no other missed pages.

 

I hope this clarifies the confusion regarding Bromcom does not work for different time-zones.

[Arbor_Daniel]

Arbor have 156 secondary schools including many complex, large cross-site with post 16 provision. The number of our secondary schools grew by 86% since this time last year and we have had 0% churn.