Bromcom vs Arbor... is there a difference?

[ashleighbrown]

I haven't experienced Arbor as I came into my current role where our Trust had already moved to Bromcom, where in my previous school we were using SIMS so I can't comment on Arbor which I know is the entire point of the post so apologies I'm not particularly answering your initial question but just wanted to comment on my experience with Bromcom. The difference between SIMS and Bromcom is light-years apart, it's really refreshing to see how much is invested into constant developments and updates, I'm particularly interested to see what comes from the upcoming timetabling updates. I also think it is great that Bromcom have the ideas portal where users can suggest developments that would be beneficial for users. We also really value how flexible MCAS is, and the adaptability of the reports and PowerBI intergration. At the Trust level, Vision is great for ensuring everything is consistent between schools and it is hugely beneficial being able to push things out into each school's Bromcom like assessment sheets and roles and permissions to reduce the time spent recreating the exact same information between sites.

[robjduk]

Chances are that if you're posting on here, you'll do fine with whichever of Arbor or Bromcom you choose. The schools I know of that have hard harder transitions to a new MIS lacked a member of staff to drive the process and make the decisions who was also the key operator/trainer/user of the software. In our school, it was essentially my decision, my tender process, and me implementing most of it, so if people didn't know how things worked or were unsure, they asked me. I won't say that didn't put a ridiculous amount of strain on me personally (and that is no comment on other support/training options - staff will always go to someone they know/trust inside the building before contacting an outside agency). A nearby school asked to borrow my rationale, costings etc for our choice and made the same move at the same time. Their experience of the transition was more awkward than ours, as there was nobody there to drive it with the correct experience (there were members of SLT who were convinced by what I'd written, but they weren't the ones making it work or explaining how to do things on the ground), plus there were some users with an aversion to any changes, and nobody to talk them through how to do it, or how changes could make their lives easier.

 

I spoke with technical and leadership staff at several schools using both options before making a decision - I'd rather hear their real world experience than sales personnel.

 

As for timetabling, we moved to Edval and I've found it very good. Previously used Nova-T6. Of course that may involve changes - when we made the decision to move our timetabler decided he didn't fancy learning new software, so I went from helping/altering/doing bits of the timetable in NOVA to being the sole timetabler in Edval. Either way, the timetable was created much more quickly and available and uploaded to our MIS earlier than it had been for many years! Subsequent timetables have of course been easier. Mid year alterations on the fly within the MIS are much much easier than they were in SIMS.

 

 

There are one or two things that were easier in SIMS, but mostly it is just a vastly better user experience all round, from reception/admin/classroom staff all the way through.

 

Thank you for that insight. Luckily I have a good SLT driving the process and am looking for help finding the differences from a real world usage case.

[Theblacksheep]

If we didnt have to deal with secondary school timetabling complications and histortical desire for specific timetabling software, then for Primary, Arbor looks more attractive than Bromcom.

 

Look at the 3rd party apps you use to paint the complete picture of the MIS needs. This get more complex with more schools and cross school data. If you use CPOMS, the Bromcom safeguarding is a stepdown. Arbor last time I checked didnt have safguarding and relies on 3rd party software.

[ABR82]

For clarity, we chose Arbor, and have no regrets at all. Either product is so far ahead of SIMS that I suspect anyone making a shift won't have cause to regret it.

 

Whilst Arbor does have some safeguarding stuff built in, when I spoke to the Sales guy he asked what we used, I told him CPOMS, and he replied: "That's better than what we can offer, so I'd stick with it if I were you, and we'll just set up a data integration." I like honesty. It's nice to fold things into the MIS where it works, but if a 3rd party product works better in your environment/case and is worth the money, then better to stick with that than be dogmatic about pulling everything into one place, be it Bromcom, Arbor, SIMS or whatever.

 

Looking at Bringmoredata's market share and churn blog posts for the past few years essentially shows the overall truth. Churn for either Bromcom or Arbor is very small, but higher for Bromcom at the moment, which tells you more than that pointless PR puff post they stuck up the other day on here about winning some tiny primary chain who switch their MIS every year - looks like there is no real dissatisfaction with either product.

 

Timetabling wise, we're a secondary and Edval has been very good and easy to use, plus whilst their current product works well, they are interested in changing/improving it over time, and do so. That isn't really the case with some of the more er, traditional timetabling options!

[DanTheLacky]

Have you considering going to any other local schools that use the systems? Perhaps getting some of the keys users to visit schools and look at the systems in use? Data managers, exams officers, office managers etc.

 

What ever you choose, the majority of people will complain, no one likes change [emoji23]

[sakhgar]

Having recently gone through the process of choosing between Arbour and Bromcom, I found that the MCAS app is what really edged Bromcom over Arbour. Talking to a few Arbour schools the app is not very good.

The sales person at Bromcom was definitely more transparent with me in regards to packages and cost. The Arbour team for what ever reason kept forcing me into multiple meetings/demonstrations when all I wanted was a price!!!! The tailored demonstration from both were good and clearly showed that my existing MIS was awful!

[Jaan]

The parent and students apps are used massively here (Bromcom).

 

We came from SIMs. We use the apps as a payment gateway also so that parents have one app to credit their children's cashless accounts, see homework and they can also communicate to the school through it. They can also self serve with regards to updating details like address, phone and email.

 

We got rid of so many 3rd party systems!

Edited December 14, 2023 by Jaan

[supportman]

The parent and students apps are used massively here (Bromcom).

 

We came from SIMs. We use the apps as a payment gateway also so that parents have one app to credit their children's cashless accounts, see homework and they can also communicate to the school through it. They can also self serve with regards to updating details like address, phone and email.

 

We got rid of so many 3rd party systems!

 

Bromcom are also working on a ipad specific app for MCAS as well.

 

Another very cool improvement if they get it right as the increased screen real estate should be very useful.

[TimetableClaire]

I know of a MAT who moved from Sims to Arbor this year and another which moved from Sims to Bromcom. I think both wish they had stayed with Sims.

[6Foot2]

I know of a MAT who moved from Sims to Arbor this year and another which moved from Sims to Bromcom. I think both wish they had stayed with Sims.

 

The transition can be difficult. In my last place, we went from SIMS, to Facility ePortal. We had all kinds of assurances about how smooth the process was going to be, few if any were factually accurate.

 

I understand they will have to move to another provider, if they haven't already, since Advanced Learning notified customers that their product was going EOL.

[ABR82]

I know of a MAT who moved from Sims to Arbor this year and another which moved from Sims to Bromcom. I think both wish they had stayed with Sims.

 

 

Well one of those chains will presumably be getting Bromcom's lawyers on them for having the temerity to choose to purchase someone else's product...

 

Change is difficult, no matter which direction you go in. I thought our transition was as smooth as it could've been, and staff/student/parent wise there was barely a bump. To be honest I was amazed at how easily we moved from one to the other. As the person leading the change, it was an incredibly stressful 7 months or so (both leading up to and after the switch). Everyone within the school shouting and asking me how to do everything (which I often then had to find out), not listening when it was shown them, and not bothering to use the help files at all. However, we got there, and I'm glad we did it. Even the aged die hards don't want to go back now. I know of another school who made the same move we did at a similar time, but without any single individual to 'push' the change through, and their experience of the transition was a lot less happy/smooth, although I don't think they regret the move now.

 

I went to help out a former colleague at their new school a while ago and they're still using SIMS, but with classcharts to try and cover some of it's more glaring deficiencies (I wonder what proportion of those schools still with SIMS are doing this?).

 

Looking at SIMS again 2 years on from moving it seems so backwards (not just in it's grey windows 3.1 appearance, but in operation and limitations). Classcharts is OK if you do your analysis within it, in their way, but getting data out of it to do any analysis elsewhere is pretty hard (in particular, the export data to excel button just gives you a nice blue bar on the screen that never moves).

A bit spoiled when you've got used to custom reporting and live data exports! Equally, paying for a MIS then paying for another system to take attendance and behaviour in (which should absolutely be a core MIS function) is daft, but then trying to straddle the two for analysis is a nightmare. Get a decent modern MIS rather than continue to pay for a poor one, then paying more for lots of other bits and pieces clunkily bolted on to try and make it work slightly better.

 

Using additional software to work with data you've taken out of your MIS is fine, but you really shouldn't be using 3rd party software to feed (some of the) data into it as well.

[bradleyatkinson]

Bromcom has been fairly poor for us, seriously slow response times (around 15 seconds to do anything per click). Those who use it every day all say that it is quite poor and recently this week 2 days it has just not been working first thing in a morning.

[TwistedHelixis]

I now have 4 schools using Arbor and also Arbor Finance.

 

Don't forget, we in IT only get to know about the issues / problem. I thought one of my schools really hated it, until I suggested going back to SIMS. Then I released how much they prefer Arbor over SIMS.

 

On a side note, they all seem to prefer Arbor Finance over FMS.

[synaesthesia]

 

On a side note, they all seem to prefer Arbor Finance over FMS.

 

I think a majority would prefer Excel to FMS. Or maybe even Calc 123 or whatever it was called in the old days on black & orange monitors - it looks more up to date.

[Bromcom_Darren]

Bromcom has been fairly poor for us, seriously slow response times (around 15 seconds to do anything per click). Those who use it every day all say that it is quite poor and recently this week 2 days it has just not been working first thing in a morning.

 

Hi Bradley,

 

We are always looking to improve performance, please could you raise a support ticket and email the case number to [email protected] as I would like to investigate this further for you.

 

Thanks

Darren Moody

Bromcom Community Manager