Bromcom, Arbor, SIMS NextGen

[Aftab_Ahmed]

Dear All

 

I had a look at NextGen and its clear that there is a lot that needs to be done in terms of development and I fear that the 2 year roadmap will push them out of the MIS market.

 

That said, I have been looking at Arbor and Bromcom and would welcome any experiences of either providers in terms of project transition, lessons learnt (ie integration with products) and after support services.

 

Also - for those of you that have seen NextGen - I would welcome your thoughts on the application.

 

Appreciate your thoughts or views

[Squelch]

Moved from SIMS to Arbor in April this year. Project management was top notch, great training too.

It’s all so much easier to use than SIMS was and all from a browser.

So far there really isn’t anything not to like.

[Cat_Jam148]

Arbor here, moved a couple of years ago.

They provide a weekly roadmap which lists the steps required to transition, all nice and easy to follow. The main job is to get your SIMS data in order as that will reduce a lot of headaches when the data is moved into the system. Using the housekeeping feature and getting rid of duplicate or inaccurate data is a must.

 

The training sessions they held were great, and the training portal really helps with the day to day operations. I've probably only had to speak to our 3rd party support half a dozen times since switching vs a few calls each month with SIMS.

 

Not having to worry about keeping the clients and the server updated is another big relief. I do not miss the days of wrestling with Solus...

[PotNoodleTech]

IMHO you'd have to be mad to look at Nextgen - its literally years behind schedule and the company have lost 30% of it's customers in the last 2 years. The company has also proven time and time again to be not on the side of the school(s), in fact the complete opposite.

[SpreadsheetJockey]

I have experienced SIMS, Bromcom and Arbor. In my opinion, Bromcom is still the superior product for secondary schools as Arbor is quite basic and/or rigid in key areas (like assessment, behaviour, timetabling, exams). However, I still support Arbor as the momentum for change seems to be strong, the support tickets are picked up quickly, and the transitional support as you switch to their database is better (at least from our experience). I sometimes find it a frustrating database to use, but I am a power user - for day to day admin and teachers I think it is fine. So essentially, depending on your priorities, both are reasonable products.

 

I have no experience with SIMS NextGen, but I have been a data manager some 15 years and it has been "in development" that entire time. I do hope I see a product fully launched in my lifetime, just as a bucket list item at this point.

[Linfit]

We moved from SIMS to Bromcom 18 months ago.

 

Transition was well-handled, we did it over a Feb half term but with a lead in going back to the pervious Sept, so we had plenty of time to prepare. Training was good. (I did it all, a bit of a marathon !)

Most of our issues were with poor data in our SIMS database, nothing to do with Bromcom as such.

 

We have found Assessment, Behaviour and Attendance to be very good, our attendance officer is very happy with it. As an ex-exams officer I like the Exams module, and the communications aspect is excellent.

The parent app MCAS is OK and they have recently made it easier to on-roll new contacts. There are some excellent automation features, and the new Options and Timetable modules look pretty good.

 

Some areas need work - the seating plans are rudimentary if you are used to classcharts or Edulink, and the student app is poor. Cover needs some work and is less functional than the SIMS version - for example it won't quickly produce a paper class register for all the classes of a supply teacher for the day. Room booking is problematic unless you have a person dedicated to running it.

 

Main issues for us have been long response times for tickets, the two major outages they have had since Xmas, one of which was over two days, and the problems they have had with reporting - they are essentially trying to re-write the entire reporting sub-system used when you build your own reports and they have had a lot of problems with poorly tested updates going back to this time last year.

 

Overall, I am glad we changed, and I still think we made the correct choice. I think a lot of the issues with support and things breaking are down to them expanding very fast and not being able to keep up, but they do need to get on top of this now.

Edited June 12, 2024 by Linfit

[andyfield]

I spoke ESS at Bett and was fortunate to speak to the product manager for SIMS Next Gen. She made it quite clear that it will be 6 years before they are in a position to replace SIMS.Net into the cloud. That's rather a long journey! During this time they will also remove things like InTouch in favour of SchoolComms resulting in not only a long journey but potentially a bumpy one! Currently looking at the market and likely to move to Bromcom given our own complexities our options are limited.

[synaesthesia]

6 years?

We're more likely to see Half Life 3!

[PotNoodleTech]

6 years?

We're more likely to see Half Life 3!

 

They literally said 6 years, 6 years ago lol

[Aprice]

I spoke ESS at Bett and was fortunate to speak to the product manager for SIMS Next Gen. She made it quite clear that it will be 6 years before they are in a position to replace SIMS.Net into the cloud. That's rather a long journey! During this time they will also remove things like InTouch in favour of SchoolComms resulting in not only a long journey but potentially a bumpy one! Currently looking at the market and likely to move to Bromcom given our own complexities our options are limited.

 

Doubt there's going to be enough market share left in 6 years to warrant the effort.

[supportman]

Moved from Sims to Bromcom just after the pandemic when it became clear that cloud was the way to go.

 

Good migration (took a day) and excellent training from someone who was used to questions about Sims. No real issues in the first week, teachers simply adapted and it was easy due to it being a simple web system.

 

Overall system is good and progress has been rapid over recent years further extending their lead over Sims.

 

Best bits are the integrated cashless payment system, parent app, reporting into excel and power bi.

 

Things that need improvement include the Room and equipment booking features, iPad support for apps, timetabling and a few other bits.

 

Feature requests and support have been very slow in recent years, but I think that is because of the growing pains and too many schools joining.

 

Recent speed has seen some good improvements and also reliability has been good since they started scaling servers properly. The road was a little bumpy before that.

 

I simply don't understand why anyone is still using Sims or hoping they can migrate to Next Gen, its really just stuck with their technical debt.

[Bumhug360]

I simply don't understand why anyone is still using Sims or hoping they can migrate to Next Gen, its really just stuck with their technical debt.

 

People don't like change and teachers especially are mostly against changing an MIS as SIMS for them works, they know how to use it and don't have to find time to train to learn something new. Trust I am at Arbor was forced on everyone at a trust level and a year on most people are happy with the change and its a huge improvement, yet a year a go it was a waste of time and shouldn't be done. We are struggling to get one high school to switch from projectors to screens because teachers say the projectors are better, oh and the projectors need to be touch screen as well! We are now at a stage where a projector capable of touch costs more than a screen, when they found that out it pushed them even further away from using screens as it was seen as going for a cheaper inferior product!

[sefton]

I always find it odd when new posters popup showering praise on any product, it could be genuine but it does look suspicious.

[SteveM555]

SIMS to Bromcom in 2022, migration went OK, there were some issues which were ironed out in the data cleansing and problems with some modules that I believe has been sorted now. We opted for the 'one-stop shop' and having catering / payments / parent app etc. all included and not an extra service to look after is a bonus. The parent app (MCAS) has improved since moving, self-service sign-up for parents the biggest time saver for IT.

 

It's had issues with performance that seem to appear at random intervals, hopefully this has now been addressed and sorted. There's still a few annoying niggles, like contact matching/having duplicate contacts imported with new Y6 intake etc. all of this is on the 'Bromcom Ideas' portal reported by multiple Schools but still hasn't been actioned.

 

Overall happy with Bromcom and a much improvement over SIMS/Solus.

[synaesthesia]

I always find it odd when new posters popup showering praise on any product, it could be genuine but it does look suspicious.

 

I'm almost certain that exactly wording was used in another SIMS/Bromcom/Arbor thread recently. I strongly suspect it's spam and have reported it as such.

[RichardED]

It is (or was genuine). Shame it was taken down as everything I said is true.

[RichardED]

No, I am not spam and I have not posted anything on any other thread. I guess I will have to repost and see if my genuine experience of Sims, to Arbor to Bromcom is believed!

[RichardED]

My post is genuine and so is my praise for Bromcom.

[synaesthesia]

Wonder if this is Corinium Trust?

[mthomas08]

Another SIMs to Bromcom here.

 

I did have a list of what all 3 main systems offered and Bromcom came just ahead.

 

The big negative of Bromcom, in the first 6 months we generally had performance issues and reliability problems. The last 6 months have greatly improved.

The other gripe I have is how we send out MCAS accounts - we previously used EduLink One and I can't stress how simple and customizable everything was.

 

They do update it regularly and have made big improvements to the parts I use (MCAS etc).

 

I think leaving SIMs and going to say Arbor or Bromcom has generally been positive here on the forum and certainly worth taking the leap. Now things have really settled for us, I find it much better.

[mthomas08]

People don't like change and teachers especially are mostly against changing an MIS as SIMS for them works, they know how to use it and don't have to find time to train to learn something new. Trust I am at Arbor was forced on everyone at a trust level and a year on most people are happy with the change and its a huge improvement, yet a year a go it was a waste of time and shouldn't be done. We are struggling to get one high school to switch from projectors to screens because teachers say the projectors are better, oh and the projectors need to be touch screen as well! We are now at a stage where a projector capable of touch costs more than a screen, when they found that out it pushed them even further away from using screens as it was seen as going for a cheaper inferior product!

 

This. This literally us. People hate change and learning a new platform is hard work. You login sims and do what you need to do BAM job done.

Luckily enough most of SLT were on board for the change. The consistent comments being made: when it breaks - it breaks and how it feels outdated and lack of cloud options.

 

The only person that had serious concerns was the DHT dealing with timetables. So I explained that we can get another bit of software that helps with the transition and we can NovaT for a bit - after all we still had to cancel the SIMs contract which takes time + we paid for the annual sub.

[RichardED]

Yes it is!

[LeMarchand]

3x KS1/2 schools, all fairly early adopters of Arbor. Onboarding was fairly easy and improved each time. Best thing: MIS queries to me have dropped to 0.

 

I think the easy transition was helped by the heads pushing it and its advantages. It's not perfect, but loads better than SIMS. I think I've had to look at SIMS maybe twice in the intervening 3 or 4 years - and one of those was to help a citizenship claim for an old pupil who had been "lost" in the system. Most people say Bromcom is better for power users/secondary, though I haven't heard of Arbor suing if they feel they haven't had a fair crack at the whip.

[synaesthesia]

Yes it is!

 

In which case, please don't take it to heart - it's likely the Bromcom case study which is what made your post sound overly familiar. People will often have their concerns and own opinions over how or why someone would swap between providers that many times in a short space, but without being in your situation it's all conjecture. And yes, that includes me as I would have my own concerns about the process. The big BUT here, is your own experience with the transition to Bromcom regardless of what it was from, and that is useful information to others.

Personally, as I've made clear before, Bromcom clearly has ongoing performance issues which appear to be improving, and a questionable ethic as a company but the product appears to be solid. Compared to SIMS, it's frankly godlike.

[AlistairB1983]

3x KS1/2 schools, all fairly early adopters of Arbor. Onboarding was fairly easy and improved each time. Best thing: MIS queries to me have dropped to 0.

I think the easy transition was helped by the heads pushing it and its advantages. It's not perfect, but loads better than SIMS. I think I've had to look at SIMS maybe twice in the intervening 3 or 4 years - and one of those was to help a citizenship claim for an old pupil who had been "lost" in the system. Most people say Bromcom is better for power users/secondary, though I haven't heard of Arbor suing if they feel they haven't had a fair crack at the whip.

I've been at both an early secondary adopter for Arbor (there were literally like 10 of us at the point I joined) and in my current secondary have also just moved to Arbor.

 

Would second the easy onboarding (although I managed to miss the go-live date due to some very fortunately timed paternity leave!) and although I'm still dealing with some enquiries, most of these are because we're in an 'in-between' stage, where with only 1 term left a lot of the stuff imported from SIMS I've left as it is, but all will be 'tidied up' ready for the next academic year in September.

 

With regards to Arbor being 'primary' focussed, I would agree that this was very much the case when I first joined (2018), but over the last 6 years their resources and features for secondary schools has increased year on year.

 

But ultimately I think irrespective of whether it's Bromcom, Arbor or indeed virtually any other MIS - as long as it's not SIMS you've taken an absolutely massive step forwards in terms of improving the quality of life of all your MIS users. SIMS is an archaic piece of software which needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. And luckily, with the way they're currently running it, that shouldn't take that long to happen!