MIS Support comparison

[maxbradley]

Sorry if this has been asked before. If it has I haven't found it.

How is the support for your MIS? For those who are, like me, looking for a new MIS, a frank discussion of the quality of support could be helpful.

 

My experience of Bromcom support

My current MAT is looking for a new MIS, but I previously worked a lot with Bromcom. Your options for support ther are a web chat, a phone line, and you can also raise tickets yourself.

 

When I started there shortly after we moved to Bromcom (beginning of 2021) the support was really good. The chat support was really helpful and I got a good grasp of the MIS quickly by speaking to them regularly. This was essential because I didn't find the training material to be great, a lot of 3 hour seminar recordings that had very little content for the amount of time involved.

 

I think they got wise to the fact that their support staff were spending a lot of time training or resolving common/simple issues, because they improved the quality of the training material, but the support staff also became more willing to write issues up as tickets or refer you to the materials/ the phonelines (web chat is for simpler issues, phones for more complex ones, though I don't think this is stated anywhere). Fair enough, really. My only comment on this is that it isn't applied consistently, some staff would always commit to solve your issue there and then, whereas others were much more likely to write up a ticket or refer you elsewhere, but that isn't a major problem.

 

Occasionally tickets would fall between the cracks and you'd need to chase a response. In my experience, these tended to be questions for which there is no good solution, and I'd appreciate support being more willing to say that than let the ticket languish. That said, I'd get an update if I asked for it.

 

Overall I'd rate Bromcom support pretty highly.

[supportman]

Yeh Bromcoms support is good overall, I've had best success with usage questions over their live chat but also their online ticket system works well.

 

It's frustrating when they close a call such as recently when I asked how to auto approve 'Equipment Booking' requests and they said it doesn't work that way and simply closed the call. That didn't help me when I had teachers double booking resources and still do

 

I love their community forum and the fact their support staff post on here with detailed reasons and explanations.

 

Overall it is very good compared to Sims. Let's hope they can keep it up now they have a lot more customers.

[Primus]

Yeh Bromcoms support is good overall, I've had best success with usage questions over their live chat but also their online ticket system works well.

 

It's frustrating when they close a call such as recently when I asked how to auto approve 'Equipment Booking' requests and they said it doesn't work that way and simply closed the call. That didn't help me when I had teachers double booking resources and still do

 

I love their community forum and the fact their support staff post on here with detailed reasons and explanations.

 

Overall it is very good compared to Sims. Let's hope they can keep it up now they have a lot more customers.

 

When one of our schools used Bromcom I found the support to be brief and desperate to close tickets. Even where I specifically asked them not to close a ticket until I confirmed it was resolved - they still replied and then immediately closed the ticket.

[Theblacksheep]

Bromcom support is the worst aspect of Bromcom.

 

High priority areas such as timetabling, which Bromcom requires the customer to have a level of understanding of (training) does not seem to be reflective in the Bromcom support team. They have long SLAs, so they are not "breached" but we've seen fairly urgent requests go two weeks without being answered.

 

Bromcom seem to blitz tickets at the end of the day, after schools have gone home which means a cycle of "report->clarification->reply" can take 2-3 days alone.

 

Documentation is lacking and online documentation is not kept upto date.

 

They have a good product, the system seems to go down alot more than I would hope and the support lets it down.

[supportman]

You can actually fill this form in to give feedback on Bromcoms support, I believe the head of support reads it

 

Bromcom support - we need your feedback (office.com)

[Oaktech]

Bromcom support is the worst aspect of Bromcom.

 

High priority areas such as timetabling, which Bromcom requires the customer to have a level of understanding of (training) does not seem to be reflective in the Bromcom support team. They have long SLAs, so they are not "breached" but we've seen fairly urgent requests go two weeks without being answered.

 

Bromcom seem to blitz tickets at the end of the day, after schools have gone home which means a cycle of "report->clarification->reply" can take 2-3 days alone.

 

Documentation is lacking and online documentation is not kept upto date.

 

They have a good product, the system seems to go down alot more than I would hope and the support lets it down.

 

So much this!

[Theblacksheep]

You can actually fill this form in to give feedback on Bromcoms support, I believe the head of support reads it

 

Max was asking others for their opinion of the MIS

[supportman]

Max was asking others for their opinion of the MIS

 

Yeh I'd be interested in Arbors support experience, not heard many people speak about it and they have a lot of customers now.

 

They also post on this forum though, so thats a good thing.

[Primus]

Max was asking others for their opinion of the MIS

 

I think he was asking about support - the thread title is "MIS Support comparison".

[AlistairB1983]

So, this answer relates to my previous employment (2018 - 2021) where we used Arbor, sadly my current school uses SIMS (for now!).

 

When I initially joined, I must admit I did have some issues with Arbor support. It often felt like I was talking to more of a sales rep than someone with a technical understanding of what I was asking for/requesting (help with the assessment module was the most frequent issue). So it was a bit frustrating at times - promises of calls back that took a while to come through, not being able to resolve the issue etc.

 

However, by the time I left, I could not have been happier. Admittedly the school had signed up for a support package, meaning we had a dedicated person to resolve our issues, but resolved they were - and quickly! Any support tickets/calls went direct to them, rather than through the 'general' support routes, and I was offered termly video updates to go through anything that was an issue (couldn't always utilise them due to other commitments). The final summer I was there, I even had someone come down and visit for the day to help me get everything set up properly for the following academic year, instead of just having to do it 'how I'd been taught' (which, incidentally, was the wrong way!) like I'd done for the previous two.

 

On top of this, they seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say regarding developments and changes. I spoke, at some length, to James (the CEO) at their first 'Arborfest' back in 2020 about my issues and what I wanted out of the software. He explained their reasoning behind certain decisions they'd made but was also very keen for the feedback and to show me what they had planned for future developments, most of which I saw arrive before I moved schools.

 

Sadly, I joined my current school too close to the SIMS '3 year deadline' to be able to influence the decision to renew, but if I'm still here when it comes to the next renewal time, I'm certainly going to be lobbying as strongly as I can for a change of MIS and preferably to Arbor.

 

(FWIW - I'm a Date & Assessment Manager rather than 'IT')

[psydii]

I do think it is telling that we don't see that much grumbling about Arbor in these parts. They grew faster than Bromcom (across secondary schools) for the last couple of years. It seems to suggest they have a more supportable/ better supported product. That said in terms of total numbers they have fewer users, so perhaps that is the reason. With SIM's new three-year contracts, we've got one more cycle of churn to go before the market is frozen in place for a couple of years, so tracking how customer satisfaction changes in this period should be a key indicator for people looking to switch in future.

[bobwylde]

Hi theblacksheep,

 

I'm gutted that you haven't had a good experience with Bromcom Support. Personally, I find the whole team to be outstanding. Everyone I have worked with could not have been more willing to support my school and work through my issues (or lack of understanding) until a resolution was found.

 

When we joined Bromcom, we were a little overwhelmed with everything it could do - coming from SIMS which hasn't had any functionality added in years to a system which can do everything was hard to get our heads round. We found the webinars extremely useful and guided staff (of differing expertise) through all of the processes so that we have become familiar with all of our core systems. We are continually updating our knowledge using the How to Guides which are very comprehensive. The Bromcom Community is also an excellent place to get ideas of what Bromcom can do but also ask for support from a) the support team and b) other Bromcom users. The support staff that manage the Community give timely and helpful responses to a whole host of questions that users post. I also like that we can share what we do and how we use some of the features to support other schools - I've stolen lots of ideas from others on the Community!

 

The ticket system works well for us as we tend to only use this when we have a more complex case. The phone and chat lines sort out the majority of issues - not knowing exactly how to do something - so only those which need further investigation end up with a ticket.

 

Personally we haven't had issues with the system going down. I am aware of other sites having issues but we generally find that closing the browser and signing in again does the trick.

 

I often compare the functionality of Bromcom to SIMS and likewise the support that is available - Bromcom is LIGHTYEARS ahead of SIMS in all aspects and especially the support team!