[bromcom] Academy trust got £1m indemnity to challenge edtech firm

[gszech]

Old news but more information was revealed:

"Ministers handed England’s biggest academy trust £1 million to fight a legal challenge from a tech firm “with a history of litigiousness” in a bid to protect the wider academy sector, documents obtained by Schools Week reveal.

However United Learning Trust (ULT) went on to lose the High Court case against Bromcom over a £2 million contract to provide its schools with a cloud-based management information system (MIS).

The new information came to light after Schools Week obtained the business case for the funding, written by ULT chief executive Sir Jon Coles last year and submitted to the Treasury, which approved the deal."

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/academy-trust-got-1m-indemnity-to-challenge-edtech-firm/

 

If only the trust would use an argument "but the Bromcom system never works" in court and point to this: https://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/233791-bromcom-sso-issue-slowness.html

That would be a 100% win for them

Edited January 26, 2024 by gszech

[PotNoodleTech]

It's not a good look for Bromcom though is it they might have won the legal and moral high ground - what school is going to want to even engage with a company that will send the rabid lawyers in at any available opportunity? I mean that's the kind of moronic big business bully tactics we are all trying to get away from with ESS/CAPITA/etc

[gszech]

It's not a good look for Bromcom though is it they might have won the legal and moral high ground - what school is going to want to even engage with a company that will send the rabid lawyers in at any available opportunity? I mean that's the kind of moronic big business bully tactics we are all trying to get away from with ESS/CAPITA/etc

 

Agreed. The article also says: "Bromcom is also suing Academies Enterprise Trust, another large trust, and took high court action against both Cambridgeshire and Leicestershire councils around ten years ago."

I guess this is how they work.

 

I wonder if schools can only include Arbor, iSAMS and SIMS (cloud if it exists) for the bid and just ignore Bromcom completely. They can't take you to court if you are not part of the bid

[Banjo]

Maybe add a section on 'litigation' to your MIS procurement specification document

[TechMonkey]

To play devil's advocate, maybe schools and trusts need to get better at procurement and tendering? A company can't sue if there is nothing to sue about.

 

& @gsztech you may want to edit your initial post as you have the word "threat" in it, and I presume you mean "thread". Accidentally saying a company who is known to use the legal system is using threats wouldn't be where I would want to be

[gszech]

To play devil's advocate, maybe schools and trusts need to get better at procurement and tendering? A company can't sue if there is nothing to sue about.

 

& @gsztech you may want to edit your initial post as you have the word "threat" in it, and I presume you mean "thread". Accidentally saying a company who is known to use the legal system is using threats wouldn't be where I would want to be

 

Updated, thanks.

 

Agree. Trusts like this one with almost 100 schools offer their own procurement service. For a project of this scale they should be very transparent.

Saying this single schools or primary schools can't afford to hire their own procurement team and decisions like this are done by the business manager that is also covering HR, Finance and MIS manager role.

[hallamke]

We used to have the wonderful task of managing a dual MIS setup (SIMS & Bromcom). We mainly leveraged Bromcom for its excellent registrations system Web Folder (we migrated from the old Radio Folders, remember them?). Attendance used to utilise the main Bromcom MIS but its performance was "poor" to say the least. This obviously wasn't helped by the link with SIMS. We eventually moved everything to SIMS in about 2014 with Lesson Monitor and, finally, during last summer escaped the SIMS nightmare by switching to Arbor whole sale. Really don't miss those days

[PotNoodleTech]

Maybe add a section on 'litigation' to your MIS procurement specification document

 

I was thinking this earlier. "Risk of unnecessary litigation" or "Risk of underhanded legal documentation" (like when capita forced all schools to accept data loss/corruption as part of the contract, or stop using the product immediately) could be definite items you would want to consider in a procurement exercise and that would immediate preclude a couple of companies.

 

 

I guess it's Arbour from now on then?

[dmj]

Chances that Bromcom invest their legal gains in more lawyers vs investing in site reliability engineers to re-architect their platform to cope with demand ?

[PotNoodleTech]

To play devil's advocate, maybe schools and trusts need to get better at procurement and tendering? A company can't sue if there is nothing to sue about.

 

Your absolutely right - but high end multinational contract negotiation at a lawyer/solicitor trained level is not a skillset that most schools can ever hope to have available in their staff.

 

So really what your saying is most schools are not capable of going out to tender in a way they can fully protect themselves from litigation, and really only the LAs/Big academys etc can stand a chance?

[dmj]

Chances that Bromcom invest their legal gains in more lawyers vs investing in site reliability engineers to re-architect their platform to cope with demand ?

 

I take it back:

https://careers.bromcom.com/o/senior-azure-devops-engineer

 

Not applying though ! sounds an awful company.

[gszech]

I take it back:

https://careers.bromcom.com/o/senior-azure-devops-engineer

 

Not applying though ! sounds an awful company.

 

There is no need to re-architect their platform to cope with demand. They got this covered: after years of poor performance schools will simply move from Bromcom to other platforms. This will offload the servers and solve the slow performance issue for other schools. Problem solved

 

Revenue is also not an issue - just sue a few more trusts and collect millions of £££ from tax payers money.

[dmj]

There is no need to re-architect their platform to cope with demand. They got this covered: after years of poor performance schools will simply move from Bromcom to other platforms. This will offload the servers and solve the slow performance issue for other schools. Problem solved

[ATTACH=CONFIG]70707[/ATTACH]

 

Revenue is also not an issue - just sue a few more trusts and collect millions of £££ from tax payers money.

 

Looking at the job spec I think they do have it in mind with docker/k8s as requirement, but having worked on Azure kubernetes before I'd much rather do it in GCP, or AWS.

[Banjo]

Your absolutely right - but high end multinational contract negotiation at a lawyer/solicitor trained level is not a skillset that most schools can ever hope to have available in their staff.

 

So really what your saying is most schools are not capable of going out to tender in a way they can fully protect themselves from litigation, and really only the LAs/Big academys etc can stand a chance?

 

Take a maintained Nursery school for example, they might only have 1 qualified teacher (the HT) and the rest of the staff will be HLTAs etc and a very stretched budget. They still need an MIS, but your asking an overworked HT whose primary role is education and not business, to navigate the pitfalls of a procurement process.

 

Sometimes flying under the radar is the best policy.

[supportman]

Chances that Bromcom invest their legal gains in more lawyers vs investing in site reliability engineers to re-architect their platform to cope with demand ?

 

Ali Guryel, executive chairman of Bromcom, said he was “delighted that Bromcom is clearly vindicated”.

 

He said it had made the “very difficult decision” to take legal action to “drive the changes needed” in the MIS market.

 

“For a long time some 80% of schools have been locked in legacy non-cloud technology due to procurement gaps and the lack of a level playing field in the marketplace.”

 

“We are confident our success in this legal action will lead to better outcomes for schools and their pupils as well as better suppliers in the future.”

 

The company pledged to give half of recovered damages, after costs, to “education charities and awareness campaigns for best practice”.

 

United Learning loses High Court battle over £2m MIS deal (schoolsweek.co.uk)

[loxford01]

"Company accounts show Bromcom’s turnover rose by 60 per cent from £9.8 million in 2021 to £15.9 million in 2022, with a net profit of £1.5 million"

 

Bromcom are doing great in their turnover though, I wonder why?

 

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/academy-trust-got-1m-indemnity-to-challenge-edtech-firm/

[gszech]

The article says that Arbor ‘continue to fully support’ United Learning. I wonder if in 3 years time when the contract expires, do they need to go through the same process again of comparing Arbor / Bromcom or just renew Arbor ?

 

Schools had SIMS for years and never had to compare other platforms when they renewed the contract.

[Ditto]

In 2020, Bromcom's market share of schools was 3%, just behind Arbor's at 4%. In 2023, Arbor reached 22% compared to just 9% for Bromcom. That tells me one thing:

i) Arbor as a product is in many schools opinion a better value proposition than Bromcom's.

So fundamentally, whilst UL's process was deemed not compliant with procurement regulations, it's selection of product was entirely reasonable. Something I know the judgement ruling reflected.

As a consequence, as the article mentions, £2 million that could have gone on kids education, didn't.

I've no evidence, but I do wonder if the different growths rate reflect this - for example are more schools going down the framework route or if under the appropriate threshold just not including Bromcom in their tender.

 

It's just a shame this whole debacle occurred. My ideal would be Arbor and Bromcom compete on their products with neither totally dominating. A market with 3 or more strong competitors is genuinely best for the consumers.

[supportman]

In 2020, Bromcom's market share of schools was 3%, just behind Arbor's at 4%. In 2023, Arbor reached 22% compared to just 9% for Bromcom. That tells me one thing:

i) Arbor as a product is in many schools opinion a better value proposition than Bromcom's.

So fundamentally, whilst UL's process was deemed not compliant with procurement regulations, it's selection of product was entirely reasonable. Something I know the judgement ruling reflected.

As a consequence, as the article mentions, £2 million that could have gone on kids education, didn't.

I've no evidence, but I do wonder if the different growths rate reflect this - for example are more schools going down the framework route or if under the appropriate threshold just not including Bromcom in their tender.

 

It's just a shame this whole debacle occurred. My ideal would be Arbor and Bromcom compete on their products with neither totally dominating. A market with 3 or more strong competitors is genuinely best for the consumers.

I think its actually because Arbor pick up more primary and Bromcom more secondary schools but they are both good products.

 

Certainly when we quoted both companies the prices were not massively different so it came down to which MIS was best.

[localzuk]

Take a maintained Nursery school for example, they might only have 1 qualified teacher (the HT) and the rest of the staff will be HLTAs etc and a very stretched budget. They still need an MIS, but your asking an overworked HT whose primary role is education and not business, to navigate the pitfalls of a procurement process.

Sometimes flying under the radar is the best policy.

 

At that size, a nursery would not need to be tendering anything.

 

Realistically, the tender limit is sufficiently high that full tender level processes will only need to be done with larger Trusts. Smaller Trusts? They should be using a framework deal like GCloud. That's the very purpose of them.

[Ditto]

I think its actually because Arbor pick up more primary and Bromcom more secondary schools but they are both good products.

 

Certainly when we quoted both companies the prices were not massively different so it came down to which MIS was best.

 

For clarity, the equivalent figures for market share by pupils is as follows and should remove the bias of school size due to phase of school.

 

In 2020, Bromcom's market share of pupils was 4%, matching Arbor's also at 4%. In 2023, Arbor reached 20% compared to just 12% for Bromcom.

(Acknowledgement to @bringmoredata for this.)

 

Potentially, it makes my point even more clearly.

 

Arbor are doing something to achieve greater market share than Bromcom and if the products are equally good, then the question is, what is it?

 

Reading the https://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/233791-bromcom-sso-issue-slowness.html thread, perhaps whilst the products are functionally similar, one has to question production level delivery. This sort of thing doesn't show up in demo's, but slowly the wider market becomes aware. Personally I don't think that is the difference, but I'm not sure what is. For me, for a number of reasons, the brand image of each is very different, and that maybe leads to unconscious bias. For those running outside of a tender, perhaps it is conscious bias.

[Ditto]

At that size, a nursery would not need to be tendering anything.

 

Realistically, the tender limit is sufficiently high that full tender level processes will only need to be done with larger Trusts. Smaller Trusts? They should be using a framework deal like GCloud. That's the very purpose of them.

 

Maybe slightly off topic, presumably dealing direct with suppliers is OK too for those below tender threshold?

I used to negotiate directly with Advanced's Progresso for a growing Free School and got exceptionally good deals - perhaps too good a deal as the product has been dropped since .

I learnt they moved to Arbor, but don't via which route.

[localzuk]

Arbor are doing something to achieve greater market share than Bromcom and if the products are equally good, then the question is, what is it?.

Devil's advocate... But with the court case(s) that Bromcom have pursued, could some of this not be down to unfair procurement? The court ruling regarding UL choosing Arbor vs Bromcom covers 60,000 pupils and 90 schools. That skews the figures somewhat doesn't it?

[DrCheese]

I'll be honest, when I originally read about Bromcom suing my first reaction was "What an awful company"

But when I read into it some more, I completely understood why they did it & they had no choice but to take action - UL's procurement was unfair, Bromcom could never compete if UL was giving Arbor a built-in advantage that Bromcom didn't have.

 

If they were just doing it because they lost fair and square, then I think those criticising would have a point, but they didn't

[dmj]

 

Arbor are doing something to achieve greater market share than Bromcom and if the products are equally good, then the question is, what is it?

 

Bromcom has been around for a long time. It's far easier to build a platform as a service from scratch than to retrofitinto a cloud platform. It's simply a lot harder for bromcom to build a reliable service. Arbor is only around 10yrs old and many of the design principals; test driven deployment, devops , ci/cd, monitoring were built into it from the ground up. Looking at other posts, and their job listings, I get the distinct feeling that bromcom are only starting to realise they need to do this