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

[Ditto]

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?

It will have had an impact, no doubt, but I've no idea to what extent. Well, I say no idea, but I know Arbor won over 3000 schools in 2022 and 2023, so probably not too big - Bromcom by comparison were over 1000 schools.

 

Remember another of the biggest trust (AET)is also going through the process, but we won't know the outcome for well over a year according to https://schoolsweek.co.uk/software-supplier-takes-legal-action-against-second-trust/. But isn't it strange that more than one large trust has selected something other than Bromcom and gets hauled through the courts. Barring some very sinister goings-on within the market, I don't get it. Equally, one has to wonder if ever procurement Bromcom won was forensically scrutinised, would they all have deemed to be 100% clean and lead to the same product selection. To date, as far as I know, no other MIS has gone down that route, and whilst Bromcom are within their legal rights to pursue and win the legal case, it does set them apart from their competitors.

[synaesthesia]

But some of the process *is* unfair. There is no sense in not being able to use your own experiences in a tender process (i.e. they had some schools already using Arbor). They had an overall positive experience in some schools already running that service, it absolutely should count for something but some beancounter somewhere decided that they must do it entirely on a level, unbiased playing field. There isn't ANYONE able to fully do that. I understand why Bromcom did what they did, but still do not agree with it.

[localzuk]

But some of the process *is* unfair. There is no sense in not being able to use your own experiences in a tender process (i.e. they had some schools already using Arbor). They had an overall positive experience in some schools already running that service, it absolutely should count for something but some beancounter somewhere decided that they must do it entirely on a level, unbiased playing field. There isn't ANYONE able to fully do that. I understand why Bromcom did what they did, but still do not agree with it.

The problem with that thinking is it is using personal opinion and experience to procure something using taxpayers money. That's simply not allowed. You have to provide a fair playing field to all potential bidders - incumbents can't have an advantage, else everyone would still be stuck on SIMS as "we're all used to it".

[synaesthesia]

There's financial reasons too, they may have just taken onboard those schools with Arbor or have only just bought the service and at the start of a 3 year contract - that could be tens of thousands of pounds tied up and ultimately "lost", which is just as important to the tax payer.

[DrCheese]

The problem with that thinking is it is using personal opinion and experience to procure something using taxpayers money. That's simply not allowed. You have to provide a fair playing field to all potential bidders - incumbents can't have an advantage, else everyone would still be stuck on SIMS as "we're all used to it".

 

Yarp and it means tenders are issued on "vibes" rather than anything substantial.

 

"Oh our head at X college likes it, so we have to have it"

 

Has a wiff of corruption about it as well - Who's to say the people aren't getting backhanders? They likely aren't, but how could you prove that? You couldn't because you're no longer being transparent.

[synaesthesia]

IMHO it should still absolutely be allowed, even if it carries less weight. Other people's experiences are allowed to be taken into consideration, and taking out extended members of your own institution's experience is a lot of vital information to lose out on.

There should absolutely be transparency at all levels, which is why this is all public information - but if you're doing the same for something like broadband, and a certain broadband provider whos name pops up here very often is part of it and everything other than your own and everyone elses experience puts them as clear leaders for a tender... do you sign up just because "you have to show no bias" ?

Edited January 29, 2024 by synaesthesia

[DrCheese]

But how can companies work with that? It doesn't cost these companies £5.50 to bid, so they could spend a fortune doing a bid they have no hope of ever winning.

[synaesthesia]

Why wouldn't they have a hope if they have a product that ticks all the boxes at a competitive price? Weighting takes care of all this in the tender process already, I just don't understand why this is any different and why experience can't be a weighted consideration.

[Ditto]

There's financial reasons too, they may have just taken onboard those schools with Arbor or have only just bought the service and at the start of a 3 year contract - that could be tens of thousands of pounds tied up and ultimately "lost", which is just as important to the tax payer.

 

Common financial sense over process.

[Ditto]

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

Good point - but a worryingly familiar sounding story. On the upside, at least this time around, there are a number of good players in the market.

[localzuk]

IMHO it should still absolutely be allowed, even if it carries less weight. Other people's experiences are allowed to be taken into consideration, and taking out extended members of your own institution's experience is a lot of vital information to lose out on.

There should absolutely be transparency at all levels, which is why this is all public information - but if you're doing the same for something like broadband, and a certain broadband provider whos name pops up here very often is part of it and everything other than your own and everyone elses experience puts them as clear leaders for a tender... do you sign up just because "you have to show no bias" ?

That's where designing your tender process comes in. For the ISP? You'd want to make sure you asked for reliability stats - get specific. The same applies to MIS. If you have concerns about a potential bidder, design your process to highlight any of those issues. Eg. If you are worried about Bromcom bidding because of the issues you've seen from customers about performance and reliability, ask those questions of all suppliers. "How many hours in XYZ year was any part of your MIS offline, how many was it suffering any type of degraded performance" etc... Metrics, not feelings or opinions.

[Ditto]

That's where designing your tender process comes in. For the ISP? You'd want to make sure you asked for reliability stats - get specific. The same applies to MIS. If you have concerns about a potential bidder, design your process to highlight any of those issues. Eg. If you are worried about Bromcom bidding because of the issues you've seen from customers about performance and reliability, ask those questions of all suppliers. "How many hours in XYZ year was any part of your MIS offline, how many was it suffering any type of degraded performance" etc... Metrics, not feelings or opinions.

In that other Bromcom performance thread, there are lots of comments around stated up times not reflecting reality - we need to add a good dose of realism to the buying process.

[DrCheese]

Why wouldn't they have a hope if they have a product that ticks all the boxes at a competitive price? Weighting takes care of all this in the tender process already, I just don't understand why this is any different and why experience can't be a weighted consideration.

 

Because you are weighting "feelings" in a non transparent way and something the other vendor can't hope to meet, as you'd have no experience of them within your current organisation.

[localzuk]

In that other Bromcom performance thread, there are lots of comments around stated up times not reflecting reality - we need to add a good dose of realism to the buying process.

Yes, which is why you'd want evidence as part of the process. You'd need to be specific in what you were looking for. Not go by their public facing status page. Eg. ask for things like "number of hours where the system was in a degraded state for more than a single customer" rather than "number of hours the system was in a degraded state" (as the latter, they could go by their own definition that they only consider it degraded if all customers were affected etc...).

[synaesthesia]

Understood, unfortunately have been there and done that (with broadband, hence why I used that as an example). Promises didn't live up to reality and as a result 3 years of some of the worst reliability ensued. Transparency screwed the pooch on that occasion

[dmj]

Yes, which is why you'd want evidence as part of the process. You'd need to be specific in what you were looking for. Not go by their public facing status page. Eg. ask for things like "number of hours where the system was in a degraded state for more than a single customer" rather than "number of hours the system was in a degraded state" (as the latter, they could go by their own definition that they only consider it degraded if all customers were affected etc...).

 

I'd also want to know how they are measuring system statuses, I'm not convinced they are at all given they only seem to know if there is a problem by the number of helpdesk tickets

[ABR82]

The trouble is that what you refer to as feelings are often very real and valid considerations, just very difficult to quantify in financial terms or put in language that is perhaps legally watertight enough.

 

In reality, the fact that our staff already knew how to use SIMS and needed retraining when we moved was a real consideration, and yes, it gives the encumbent an advantage (in that case, SIMS). Retraining/reskilling, in some cases changing staff responsibilities because a staff member didn't wish to learn to use new software, all of this has real financial, morale, time and productivity costs. We had to weigh that against the advantages that could be gained from moving MIS. That did not stop us from moving, but it did perhaps delay our move a year or two as we'd made the decision that we needed to look elsewhere pre-covid, but postponed the move until things settled down as the practicalities and costs involved made it non-viable. SIMS trying to force us into a 3 year lock in tipped the calculation in favour of change.

 

There is much that is informal which is of great value in decision making processes - if a friend at school x down the road (which is not in our MAT nor do we have any official relationship with them) has been happily using some software for years of course I'm talking to him about his experience. Is it good? does the product get developed? is support responsive? are they pleasant to deal with? Knowing that if stuck I can give someone I know a quick ring, or even pop over and have a look at how they're using it and ask what they'd do rather than having to go through the full corporate support rigmarole is a very useful thing, even if officially there is no link with that person or school. If I were choosing between two similarly priced and capable products, having access to a bunch of staff within my organisation/trust already familiar and proficient with one is probably the single best reason to choose it rather than a competitor, and wilfully ignoring that would be utterly stupid.

 

I'd value the actual real experience of people I know and trust elsewhere far more than I trust the claims of competing sales and marketing teams and their quoted uptimes. I would suggest that the publically quoted figures on these for most companies might not tally with the experience or perception of their users/customers. Ultimately, we don't want to know that software x is technically always available, our users have to actually work with it every day, so what does it feel like for an actual user - technically available but frustratingly slow or often kicking you out/crashing is no good.

 

We have some schools in our MAT who are still on SIMS because they weren't in a position to move when we did. When they come to make that choice, unless our experience is bad, they'd be stupid not to go to the same MIS ourselves and another school in the trust are on. The only scenario for them to justify choosing a competitor is if we were dissatisfied/unhappy with our MIS or they were absolutely certain that an alternative MIS was miles ahead and offered vastly better capabilities, otherwise you'd just follow suit so you can help/support/share best practise with one another.

 

Nobody asks us to put our exam boards out to tender and to justify why we've chosen to spend thousands with AQA (for example). Many MAT chains get everyone to follow the same boards so they can share resources/training. Usually it begins with the Head of Dept knowing that specification, or liking the course content better. Does it matter if they're all equivalent qualifications and they're all ofqual approved? It doesn't now. Perhaps WJEC missing a trick? they could just be suing anyone who hasn't chosen their board? asking where their tender process is - in a MAT chain it's a hell of a lot of money each year. Why no calls for transparency here? To be honest I do often wonder why on earth we have to deal with Pearson!

 

Essentially there ought to be a list of pre-approved MIS suppliers, and any school/chain picking bromcom, arbor or sims is making a reasonable decision and doesn't need to prove it's thinking - it will work, and it is a known, established entity. I might think SIMS is a decade out of date, but it does work, and is a valid choice. If on the other hand I was going to move everyone to "NewMIS", in which my uncle and sister hold 25% of the shares, then it would be very fair to ask me to justify my choice.

[Damon]

Essentially there ought to be a list of pre-approved MIS suppliers, and any school/chain picking bromcom, arbor or sims is making a reasonable decision and doesn't need to prove it's thinking - it will work, and it is a known, established entity. I might think SIMS is a decade out of date, but it does work, and is a valid choice. If on the other hand I was going to move everyone to "NewMIS", in which my uncle and sister hold 25% of the shares, then it would be very fair to ask me to justify my choice.

 

Check out G-Cloud as that's pretty much what you're talking about.

[ABR82]

it is, but for larger chains there still has to be a tender process.

[Damon]

That's true, but I believe it's much more straightforward than going it alone.