Arbor or Bromcom

[petben]

We are (like most schools) investigating moving away from SIMS as an MIS. There seems to be 2 big players - Arbor and Bromcom both which we have had demos of.

 

What were the factors that made you choose one over the other? Bromcom looks more mature but slightly less pretty, and with Arbor we would have to use a 3rd party timetable creation process (Timetabler probably), basically they seem to promise the same things.

 

Our main drives to move are:

 

1. A cloud MIS
   
2. SIMS ££
   
3. Consolidate into the MIS all our various systems
   
   • parent mail
     
   • absence call
     
   • room bookings
     
   • parents evenings
     
   • sisra data analytics
     
   • classcharts (behaviour)
     
   • staff absence manager
     
   • Bluesky CPD (maybe)
     

 

 

any thoughts would be great.

Thanks

[mavhc]

What are you using for Finance?

[petben]

Admin are also looking to change that. But we currently use Civica which is also terrible.

[Michael]

I like both, but the fact you've mentioned timetabling, I'm guessing this is for a Secondary school?

 

It's more so about what's the best fit, rather which is the best MIS, as in all honesty there's very little between them functionality wise.

[petben]

Yes we are a secondary ~1500 students. We are struggling to see differences. Does one have a better finance package option? Are their support options good?

 

I can't wait to leave SIMS behind personally, they just don’t seem to be able to keep up and seem unwilling to even try.

[Michael]

Have a look here for granular MIS market stats.

[howartp]

We're also looking to move but it's been on the back burner for a year or two.

 

A perception I had formed/impressed on me when looking was that student progress/monitoring reports (whatever your school calls them, issued at parents evening time) are far better in Bromcom, but Arbor was by far my favourite - I will therefore be looking carefully at this as we do a lot with our SPM Reports and associated reports so will need to see where things are at when we're looking again.

[Chris_Cook]

You need to get your data and admin staff to use it and run through some of your critical day-to-day/annual activities like admissions, attendance, reports, data collection, behavioral management etc.

 

Once you've chosen, the leads in these areas need to do some training/setup sessions with your new provider.

 

You will get much better user acceptance once you've done this. Its no good your IT savvy staff picking the best or easiest looking to them, if you've got to make major changes to your processes.

 

Something you and your staff need to accept is something mentioned in another thread : Bromcom and Arbor (And all the others) are not sims and work differently. (Better in many cases, but some will argue not all). However, many of the differences are why you are changing.

 

You also want to make sure your data around parental contacts and staff contracts are good in sims. The data migration is very slick, but we had a lot of tidying up after our migration.

[ASA-Simon]

I would recommend taking a look at Compass as well. They have their own timetabling software.

 

They seem to have a broad range of features even though they are new to the UK.

 

https://www.compass.education/uk/

[supportman]

We went with Bromcom because it covered more bases (at the time). It was also a better secondary school app and Arbor was better for Primary (again at the time, not sure now).

 

Specifically Cashless integration, Power Bi reporting and better parent and student portal apps.

 

EDIT: Future stuff like cloud timetabling and AI integration would make me still choose bromcom today, they are great at development.

 

Either are good at the end of the day, far superior to Sims anyway.

Edited July 7, 2023 by supportman

[Frodo_Baggins]

Having used both Arbor & Bromcom at different schools I would go with Arbor in the future - It might have been the rollout at the time but learning curve from SIMS to Bromcom seemed to be quite big and staff seemed to struggle whereas SIMS\Go4schools to Arbor seems to have been quite quick for staff and everything seems to be "where it should be" in the UI.

 

Would disagree on the usual comments of Arbor being a primary school MIS, they have put a lot of work in and ticks all the boxes for me in a medium-large secondary school (good Intergrations, support & support qualifications for IT\ DM CPD, clean UI without continuous changes like Bromcom at the time, and very easy to use.)

 

Sure it will come down to what leadership decide (as it should really) and tender but anything is better than SIMS and SOLUS!

[PotNoodleTech]

Good thread we've got exactly this dilemma. Interesting to see people swinging both ways.

[mthomas08]

We went through the same process.

Both are very close to one another and really depends what you want from it down the line.

 

We plan on migrating away from our current cashless system at some point.

 

I can't remember exactly but it is very important to note Timetabling - we had to purchase a 3rd party app even with Bromcom. Not sure if this was because we had SIMs (NovaT) or because of the limitations of Bromcom - I think the latter. It might have been updated in the last year or so, but we had to purchase Timetabler.

 

The pros/cons - these are going to be the little things. Get the data manager involved and what they do all day every day - even the little once a year things.

 

I can't speak for Arbor but Bromcom does have little niggles compared to SIMs. There are functions not available that we had before - little things (mainly to do with the data manager).

 

We've had our ups and downs. Some of it caused by us as a school.

The niggles I hate with Bromcom

-getting students on the portal (it isn't fully automated)

-getting parents on MCAS (but I do believe they are looking at this) - long winded process and not simple

[gszech]

Search Bromcom posts on this forum and see how many schools complained on slow Bromcom performance or service not working at all. When we were comparing both solutions this was one of the key issues with Bromcom.

 

Here are other minor differences that I've found: Arbor uses 256bit SSL encryption. Bromcom uses 128bit Arbor support is available between 8am-5pm. Bromcom support is available from 8am-5pm Monday to Friday except Wednesdays 8am-4pmArbor support page is more detailed and includes a lot of videos for every Arbor activity. There are no support videos on Bromcom support pages. Arbor will automatically flag records that are missing key information and potential duplicates, and the Data Retention page will help you delete unnecessary data. Bromcom will not flag this information automatically.

 

 

Arbor Parent app is really bad to the point that I don't understand why this really exist. They might as well adjust their parent web portal to fit mobile phones screens, enable notifications and call this the app.

From what I can see on Google Play store reviews Bromcom parent app is not any better.

[Aprice]

Also Bromcom's status page is useless

 

not the biggest issue in the world but it is irritating.e.g. Problem with reporting / DMS server affecting multiple schools, no issue on status page - All systems operational. So had to phone and check.

 

Unfortunately no experience with Arbor yet, but looking forward to seeing it at some point.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Aprice

[Bromcom_Support_2]

Search Bromcom posts on this forum and see how many schools complained on slow Bromcom performance or service not working at all. When we were comparing both solutions this was one of the key issues with Bromcom.

 

Here are other minor differences that I've found: Arbor uses 256bit SSL encryption. Bromcom uses 128bit Arbor support is available between 8am-5pm. Bromcom support is available from 8am-5pm Monday to Friday except Wednesdays 8am-4pmArbor support page is more detailed and includes a lot of videos for every Arbor activity. There are no support videos on Bromcom support pages. Arbor will automatically flag records that are missing key information and potential duplicates, and the Data Retention page will help you delete unnecessary data. Bromcom will not flag this information automatically.

 

 

Arbor Parent app is really bad to the point that I don't understand why this really exist. They might as well adjust their parent web portal to fit mobile phones screens, enable notifications and call this the app.

From what I can see on Google Play store reviews Bromcom parent app is not any better.

 

 

 

Hi gszech

 

We would love to try and clarify some of the points raised if we may

 

Our Helpdesk operates the same hours every working day and week all year round, including half terms (the only exceptions are Bank Holidays/Christmas). Our support does finish at 4 on Wednesdays, which is purely for staff training. Without this, our 1st line agents knowledge would fall behind as the system evolves.

 

In the past, many of our competitors have reduced their support hours or even closed their support for days at a time (outside of Bank Holidays), this is not something we have ever done.

 

Regarding support videos, we have hundreds available on our Documentation Centre. Granted they are not all stored in a single location/section but there are many throughout the site. We also offer free training via online courses, unlimited CSM calls and unlimited free webinar training, all of which can be booked easily online

 

Also, just to be safe we have raised your query about 128-bit vs 256-bit with our technical teams. They confirmed to us that our solutions use 256-bit's encryption with 2048-bit RSA key.

 

We are more than happy to discuss this further via PM if you wish.

 

Kind regard

Bromcom Support

Edited July 7, 2023 by Bromcom_Support_2

[gszech]

Hi gszech

 

We would love to try and clarify some of the points raised if we may

 

Our Helpdesk operates the same hours every working day and week all year round, including half terms (the only exceptions are Bank Holidays/Christmas). Our support does finish at 4 on Wednesdays, which is purely for staff training. Without this, our 1st line agents knowledge would fall behind as the system evolves.

 

In the past, many of our competitors have reduced their support hours or even closed their support for days at a time (outside of Bank Holidays), this is not something we have ever done.

 

Regarding support videos, we have hundreds available on our Documentation Centre. Granted they are not all stored in a single location/section but there are many throughout the site. We also offer free training via online courses, unlimited CSM calls and unlimited free webinar training, all of which can be booked easily online

 

Also, just to be safe we have raised your query about 128-bit vs 256-bit with our technical teams. They confirmed to us that our solutions use 256-bit's encryption with 2048-bit RSA key.

 

We are more than happy to discuss this further via PM if you wish.

 

Kind regard

Bromcom Support

I'm suggesting updating the faq page as this page clearly says the encryption is 128 bit https://bromcom.com/faq/how-secure-is-my-data-with-bromcom

[maxbradley]

You also want to make sure your data around parental contacts and staff contracts are good in sims. The data migration is very slick, but we had a lot of tidying up after our migration.

 

I'd be interested to hear where you found discrepancies in your data migration Chris. We've received our test systems with school data moved into them prior to the actual migration this summer. I haven't found any discrepancies, but it's obviously such a huge area to cover it would be good to know where there might be issues.

 

If I were to boil the result of our procurement exercise down into a sentence or two, it would be something like this;

The Bromcom system seems to have the most potential, but the Arbor sales team inspires more confidence. I would guess that you'd get the best overall system through Bromcom and a fair amount of hard work, but you could get a decent system up and running most easily with Arbor.

 

The usual caveats apply; we've gone with Bromcom and haven't completed the migration yet, so this opinon comes from viewing countless demos, rather than working with both the systems long-term.

Edited July 10, 2023 by maxbradley

[Bromcom_Support_2]

I'm suggesting updating the faq page as this page clearly says the encryption is 128 bit https://bromcom.com/faq/how-secure-is-my-data-with-bromcom

 

Many thanks Gszech

 

 

I have updated the article now. Thank you for highlighting that and apologies for any confusion caused.

 

 

Kind regards

Bromcom Support

[ultimatepie]

used both, arbor for the win because there actuary update there status page, unlike bromcom

 

https://status.arbor-education.com/

 

https://status.bromcomcloud.com/

 

you can see arbors more realistic

Edited July 10, 2023 by ultimatepie

[supportman]

used both, arbor for the win because there actuary update there status page, unlike bromcom

 

https://status.arbor-education.com/

 

https://status.bromcomcloud.com/

 

you can see arbors more realistic

 

All the speed issues with Bromcom were fixed a while ago though.

 

We haven't had any downtime since they found the culprit (I think a 3rd party API integration) which caused all those issues. Its been great recently

[Chris_Cook]

I'd be interested to hear where you found discrepancies in your data migration Chris. We've received our test systems with school data moved into them prior to the actual migration this summer. I haven't found any discrepancies, but it's obviously such a huge area to cover it would be good to know where there might be issues.

 

So the 2 main issues were duplicate contacts, and old staff contracts not having ended (so staff seemed to be on multiple contracts if they have changed roles).

 

Its entirely possible that these are peculiarities in the way our schools have used and entered data onto sims. My point would be to allow some time for correcting this as it can be quite admin intensive and issues might well be school-specific.

 

With the duplicate contacts, we made the conscious decision to wait until after migration to fix, as Arbor is easier. We also had issues where the same email address was linked to multiple entities on Arbor - EG family email addresses. This causes issues with parents logging in if say the child has this email address as personal email address. Its easy to fix, just causes odd error messages and takes time.

 

The staff contracts was picked up months after migration.

[PotNoodleTech]

So the 2 main issues were duplicate contacts, and old staff contracts not having ended (so staff seemed to be on multiple contracts if they have changed roles).

 

Its entirely possible that these are peculiarities in the way our schools have used and entered data onto sims. My point would be to allow some time for correcting this as it can be quite admin intensive and issues might well be school-specific.

 

With the duplicate contacts, we made the conscious decision to wait until after migration to fix, as Arbor is easier. We also had issues where the same email address was linked to multiple entities on Arbor - EG family email addresses. This causes issues with parents logging in if say the child has this email address as personal email address. Its easy to fix, just causes odd error messages and takes time.

 

The staff contracts was picked up months after migration.

 

I guess the tighter and more accurate your SIMS data the smoother the migration will go.

[Linfit]

I guess the tighter and more accurate your SIMS data the smoother the migration will go.

 

This this and this.

We spent literally months housekeeping SIMS before our migration: we moved to Bromcom in Feb half term but worked on SIMS tidying on and off for the whole of the Autumn Term.

It really helped, and the migration in terms of data was very smooth. We had a big migration document which tells you exactly which data fields in SIMS are moved and where they end up, and this was invaluable.

 

Whichever system you choose, its all in the prep really. I feel sorry for schools that have been forced to move at short notice because of external factors, as it would be very difficult to get all the required data prep and training done.

 

For what its worth, to answer the original question, we went with Bromcom because we felt it was a more rounded product - we felt Arbor looked nicer but actually the workflows in Bromcom were better.

There were also one or two things in Arbor we just didn't like, the App being a good example.

In the end, either are miles better than SIMS and I would happily have used Arbor if required in order to rid ourselves of SIMS.

[PotNoodleTech]

In the end, either are miles better than SIMS and I would happily have used Arbor if required in order to rid ourselves of SIMS.

 

I think this is key really isn't it.