Recent MIS Comparision

[owen1978]

Has anyone recently done an MIS comparision?

When I mean recent within the last year?

 

We are an International school going down the road of looking for a new MIS.

Currently we use SIMS.

 

We dont charge fees, so fee billing functionality is not required.

 

Thank you

[CHiLL]

While we don't have any actual documentation on the matter, there has been a large trend away from SIMS in the past couple of years. Cloud based solutions like Bromcom and Arbor have picked up a lot of those customers that left SIMS.

[Seb1780]

Info on recent market changes here https://bringmoredata.blogspot.com/2022/07/mis-market-moves-summer-2022-sims-lose.html

 

Some Government guidance here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/choosing-a-school-management-information-system-mis

 

We're currently in the process of assessing our needs, the pace of progress is glacial!

[supportman]

Arbor and Bromcom are the 2 main competitors. Both vastly superiour to Sims now. Edited October 11, 2022 by supportman

[Linfit]

We went through a long evaluation process with Arbor and Bromcom in the summer term. In the end we went with Bromcom as staff feedback was it was easier to find things and fewer mouse clicks.

Arbor has a nicer looking interface but not as good we thought for day to day use and Bromcom functionality we preferred.

 

But functionality is similar in both, in that they will do what's needed, and differs only slightly in detail. Pricing is very similar.

I thought Arbor were trading on the look and feel aspect rather than the nitty gritty detail of how it all worked - and in the engagement they mainly wanted to deal with SLT, not the end users of the system, whereas Bromcom were happy to deal with support staff who would be using the product day in day out. I thought that was telling as it shows a confidence in the product and a recognition of who really needs to be onboard with a change.

 

But the key point is that both of these are light years ahead of SIMS and I would have been happy with Arbor over SIMS if that had been the only option.

[Hate_Lee]

I was under the impression that both Arbor and Bromcom catered for maintained\free schools, their websites don't mention international or independent schools. What are other independent schools using? We are required to complete both ISC and DfE returns.

[richieh]

Have a look at Schoolbase by Furlong: https://furlongschoolbase.co.uk/furlong-schoolbase/

 

We used it when we were an Independent school and also when we moved to become a free school. We did both the DfE returns using it and the ISC returns over the years, however it has been a while since I used it as we now have SIMS (don't ask it wasn't my choice!)

[Blutarsky]

We've just started a strong review and comparison of MISes for our district. Evaluating Gradelink, Rediker, iSAMS,WCBS, Classe365, BromCom, SchoolBase, Engage, MySchool

Unfortunately, as an international school, we're not entitled to get Arbour, who focuses only on British state schools.

On paper, Bromocom and iSAMS look like the strong contenders, particularly on features and interoperability with other tools & brands. Bromcom UX very strong. Classe365 and WCBS, neat user interface, but below the leaders as for features. Will update while we go through