ESS SIMS 3 Year Contracts

[JamesWeatherill]

Thanks James, really helpful information. I doubt there has ever been a situation where one supplier has taken action to keep it's customers and the competition has delighted in the consequences! I think a 'pub chat' would be super interesting compared to what can be said in the public domain, but I do have to say I really don't think DfE have helped schools in any way whatsoever. In what are really challenging times, with schools trying to achieve a lot of educational catch-up, on top of inflation pressures all around (think open windows and rapidly rising heating costs, the recent move by ESS could not have come at a more insensitive time.

 

Always open to a pub chat! If you're at BETT this year then swing by our stand or indeed our Tapas bar and I'll be there.

 

For what it's worth I think the information schools have been given has been incredibly confusing, with a set of dates and terms that keep on changing. Even I find it hard to keep up and I'm an MIS supplier!

[mthomas08]

Hi James

Having made an initial phone enquiry with Arbor, I was informed to send a follow up email to hello@....

I sent multiple emails to your company, including to yourself, to get your company to demo to our consortium (made up of 4 schools).

I heard nothing back to these emails and as such, have decided to go with Bromcom. It's a shame, as i've heard very good things about Arbor, but if you can't respond to simple emails, it doesn't leave me feeling very convinced about your organisation providing support for schools should we switch to Arbor.

So, unfortunately, as a result, you lost 4 secondary schools' business...

Hope your customer service improves going forwards!

 

Weird, because for us it was Bromcom that took an age getting back to us.

[paulkerton]

Whoever took time to get back to you, I think it's clear ESS's decision to try and force a three year contract has backfired a little (a lot) on them, as the major alternatives have clearly been pushed to support the numbers that have suddenly landed on their doorsteps.

No doubt they're all recruiting as we speak to support the large numbers of customers heading their way!

[StevieM]

We had an email from ESS, yesterday evening, which included this paragraph:

 

You can accept your new agreement at any time, but to be confident of continuity of service from 1^stApril 2022 you should confirm acceptance of the agreement via the Gateway by 31^st March 2022, preferably sooner (and by 20^th February 2022 if you wish to opt for the six-month break clause, see below).

 

So it looks like the break clause is still available - to some schools at least. @simonw, I’d check on the ESS Gateway, if I were you, as the new agreements are with schools directly, so I can’t see why some LAs would be excluded from the offer.

[Arbor_Daniel]

Hi James

Having made an initial phone enquiry with Arbor, I was informed to send a follow up email to hello@....

I sent multiple emails to your company, including to yourself, to get your company to demo to our consortium (made up of 4 schools).

I heard nothing back to these emails and as such, have decided to go with Bromcom. It's a shame, as i've heard very good things about Arbor, but if you can't respond to simple emails, it doesn't leave me feeling very convinced about your organisation providing support for schools should we switch to Arbor.

So, unfortunately, as a result, you lost 4 secondary schools' business...

Hope your customer service improves going forwards!

Hi, we are sorry that this has happened and can assure you that any contact slipping through from either a prospective school or customer is extremely rare. Response times and customer satisfaction are taken very seriously at Arbor and we have excellent statistics in these areas:

- Email response average = 8 hours (same day)

- Web chat response average = 90 seconds

- Rolling CSAT = 95%

 

Please could we take this to PM so I can find out a bit more about what happened in your case?

Edited February 11, 2022 by Arbor_Daniel

[BKGarry]

We all seem to have not had our ESS Gateway accounts yet in Kent (if you are on the LEA License) and we don't actually know who is getting it here.

[Dr_Zeux]

Hi, we are sorry that this has happened and can assure you that any contact slipping through from either a prospective school or customer is extremely rare. Response times and customer satisfaction are taken very seriously at Arbor and we have excellent statistics in these areas:

- Email response average = 8 hours (same day)

- Web chat response average = 90 seconds

- Rolling CSAT = 95%

 

Please could we take this to PM so I can find out a bit more about what happened in your case?

Sure, so i called your customer service line on 16 Sept and was informed to email hello@arbor.... and i did so on 16 Sept 2021 @ 13:54.

Then, on 26 November, as a response to James's email to our info@ email address (as a marketing type email), i responded to say that we still hadn't had a response from the initial enquiry email to hello@... and then i sent him another email forwarding the initial email - these emails were sent at 11:23 & 11:24 to james@... To be honest, i was slightly more disturbed that the Co-founder & CEO didn't respond, rather than the initial email to hello@!

To date, i haven't heard anything back to any of these emails. Can't imagine that's helped your stats you quoted above.

Hope this helps to improve your service.

[tmleafs]

I have had a great contract with Arbor but terrible from Bromcom

 

Bromcom

Used their contact us form on Thursday/Friday hadn't received anything by Tuesday morning, not even a confirmation of the contact us form was received

Phoned them Tuesday and was passed on to our allocated specialist had a chat and said she would email me

Not received anything

Phoned again they said they would get back to me and retook my number

 

On the CMA survey, I put 6 months is enough time to tender and move but I didn't take into account there are 1,000s of schools all doing the same thing especially after the 6month break offer

and the CMA survey arriving late Friday, I think more schools are taking notice ESS are taking advantage of them.

[Primus]

Sure, so i called your customer service line on 16 Sept and was informed to email hello@arbor.... and i did so on 16 Sept 2021 @ 13:54.

Then, on 26 November, as a response to James's email to our info@ email address (as a marketing type email), i responded to say that we still hadn't had a response from the initial enquiry email to hello@... and then i sent him another email forwarding the initial email - these emails were sent at 11:23 & 11:24 to james@... To be honest, i was slightly more disturbed that the Co-founder & CEO didn't respond, rather than the initial email to hello@!

To date, i haven't heard anything back to any of these emails. Can't imagine that's helped your stats you quoted above.

Hope this helps to improve your service.

 

Are you sure they've got your emails - have you got SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc setup correctly?

 

It does sound very odd, our experience with Arbor is very much the opposite.

[Dr_Zeux]

Are you sure they've got your emails - have you got SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc setup correctly?

 

It does sound very odd, our experience with Arbor is very much the opposite.

 

We use Office 365, so i assume these protocols are available for tweaking by our IT team, but that they're probably at a 'default' type setting currently, which should allow emails from Arbor.

Interesting though, that we have received marketing emails from james@... and daniel@.... to our info@ email address, so i know the emails from Arbor get through to our domain!

 

I don't dispute that Arbor are probably very good at what they do as a MIS supplier, and i've heard the same, which is why we wanted them to come in for a demo, but customer service and responding to potential customers hasn't been a good experience for us...

[Primus]

We use Office 365, so i assume these protocols are available for tweaking by our IT team, but that they're probably at a 'default' type setting currently, which should allow emails from Arbor.

Interesting though, that we have received marketing emails from james@... and daniel@.... to our info@ email address, so i know the emails from Arbor get through to our domain!

 

I don't dispute that Arbor are probably very good at what they do as a MIS supplier, and i've heard the same, which is why we wanted them to come in for a demo, but customer service and responding to potential customers hasn't been a good experience for us...

 

They're settings that govern whether others can receive your emails rather than you receiving emails from them. If they're misconfigured or not configured at all this may have led to Arbor not receiving your emails as they use Google Workspace and the spam filtering is very effective! Office 365 doesn't automatically set these up for you, you have to do them yourself in DNS.

 

They're easily checked and if you wanted to PM you could email me as I use Google Workspace and I could tell you if I receive your emails/help you check your email records.

[StevieM]

We all seem to have not had our ESS Gateway accounts yet in Kent (if you are on the LEA License) and we don't actually know who is getting it here.

 

Try visiting https://ess-gateway.co.uk/. Click ‘ Forgot Password?’ and enter the email address(es) that you think would be associated with SIMS licensing, e.g. head, finance, etc.*. If an account has been set up, you will get a password to log in with (or a reset password link; I can’t remember which).

 

(*Let them know first, obviously.)

 

EDIT: You could also do a message trace to see if any emails from ess-renewals.co.uk have been missed/deleted/quarantined.

Edited February 11, 2022 by StevieM

[mthomas08]

We all seem to have not had our ESS Gateway accounts yet in Kent (if you are on the LEA License) and we don't actually know who is getting it here.

 

Might be finance or someone that signs off SIMs (DHT or SBM).

[simonw]

EDIT: You could also do a message trace to see if any emails from ess-renewals.co.uk have been missed/deleted/quarantined.

 

Thank you for the tip, sadly a 10 day report came back blank. Waiting for a 30 day one to be run.

[Scifigirl]

Yep nothing on our message trace - Kent as well

 

Have asked the relevant people to keep an eye out.

[Dr_Zeux]

They're settings that govern whether others can receive your emails rather than you receiving emails from them. If they're misconfigured or not configured at all this may have led to Arbor not receiving your emails as they use Google Workspace and the spam filtering is very effective! Office 365 doesn't automatically set these up for you, you have to do them yourself in DNS.

 

They're easily checked and if you wanted to PM you could email me as I use Google Workspace and I could tell you if I receive your emails/help you check your email records.

 

They've replied to my follow up email today, so these settings must be correct.

In addition, if emailing from a school with a '.sch.uk' email address at the end, and subsequently being caught in a spam filter, I would argue the spam filtering is not very effective!

[Primus]

They've replied to my follow up email today, so these settings must be correct.

In addition, if emailing from a school with a '.sch.uk' email address at the end, and subsequently being caught in a spam filter, I would argue the spam filtering is not very effective!

 

I'm not trying to be unkind but I don't think you understand how SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc works.

 

At least they've replied now.

[mavhc]

Sign up for https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/mailcheck to fix your email sending

[psydii]

For what it’s worth our details came through to a contact capita had for us back in 2001.

[Mike_Bostock]

We have the 6-month break in contract option in writing, we will look at Arbor and Bromcom to replace if cost-saving allow us to do so for a switch in the summer

Currently Sims + Edulink + 4Matrix + Alps

 

Hello All. Mike from 4Matrix here. As there has been a mention of 4Matrix, a data analysis system which imports data from an MIS, I thought it would be useful to say that 4Matrix works in conjunction with the major MIS used by English secondary schools. This means that if your school is moving from, say, SIMS to Arbor or Bromcom or Cloud School, you will find that 4Matrix will continue to work really well with these MIS. As technical partners to these companies we have developed Easy Importers which make it really easy to import rich data from each of these MIS. If you are staying with SIMS then you can be reassured that our Easy Importer will continue to work effectively with this MIS.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Mike_Bostock

[enjay]

If you are staying with SIMS then you can be reassured that our Easy Importer will continue to work effectively with this MIS.

 

Have you had that reassurance from ESS? One of my concerns is they could start paring back so only Parent Pay Group companies work properly with "next gen SIMS". The CMA are presumably concerned about that too, hence their investigation!

[psydii]

Has anyone actually read the "scrollwap text" contract? 30 pages! I find it difficult to believe that most schools can be sure to what they have just signed up.

[BKGarry]

So, new letter sent out to Kent Schools, which are still on the LEA License, they (KCC) have now decided to keep the LEA License for the next 2 years in order to setup a Working Group in Jan 2023 to assess what is on the market

[mthomas08]

So, new letter sent out to Kent Schools, which are still on the LEA License, they (KCC) have now decided to keep the LEA License for the next 2 years in order to setup a Working Group in Jan 2023 to assess what is on the market

 

Now this makes sense. Spend 6-12 months on the a steady tender process plus a few more months making sure all relevant parties are in the loop - IF decision is to leave - hand in notice and prepare for the switch. Well under a 2 year process with plenty of spare time for any unknowns/issues/delays. No rush but not wasting a whole 3 years.

 

ESS - Take note.

[supportman]

As i've said before, it took us less than 6 months to research 3 different MIS's, Demo and test then once the final decision was made deploy our new MIS during the easter break.

 

Anything more than that is just sitting on hands doing nothing.

 

Saying that, we are an academy and the move was our choosing reacting to the remote teaching need last year.

Edited February 28, 2022 by supportman