Bromcom Sues Again

[sefton]

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/mis-turf-war-firm-launches-4m-court-battle-with-rival/

 

Maybe they’ve decided there is more money in court actions than in maintaining a robust MIS.

[Ditto]

Wow! This will take a very long time to resolve I guess. The biggest growing market players in a legal spate - that's just plain ugly. There will be no winners, except the legal teams again!

[Ditto]

A brief statement from Arbor - https://arbor-education.com/blog-bromcom-v-arbor-legal-dispute/

[Ditto]

It seems to be a legal case based on 'What might have been!'. Perhaps my initial assessment of it take a long time to resolved is wrong - perhaps this should get kicked out of court immediately?

[Steve21]

Yet another pathetic move from a Bromcom… I’ll say it again from the last thread but if you need to sue companies and customers to win their custom maybe you need to look internally first!

 

Based on this latest attempt surely Bromcom are now admitting that they shouldn’t have sued United as well? Surely you can’t blame both the customer who picked wrong if you’re then saying the vendor lied to be picked which caused the customer to pick them… next it’ll be sueing the frameworks for allowing customers and vendors to pick arbor!

 

Steve

[dmj]

… next it’ll be sueing the frameworks for allowing customers and vendors to pick arbor!

 

 

Stop giving them ideas!

[C3PO]

Sorry- but I disagree with some of the thoughts posted here. If malpractice has been undertaken- then absolutely should those be held to account- especially if there are significant losses established.

 

The actions to win this tender was not a fair and open process and underhanded which caused competitors to lose out. I get that there has to be a competitive edge here - but c'mon - show some fair and open practices here.

[dmj]

 

The actions to win this tender was not a fair and open process and underhanded which caused competitors to lose out. I get that there has to be a competitive edge here - but c'mon - show some fair and open practices here.

 

Time and time again Bromcoms business practices have been called into question; whether it's their shoddy uptimes (where their own stats show 'no issues' ),withholding latency metrics, not adding adequate SLAs to their contractors, the shambles of a helpdesk to the point where the only way to get things resolved is on a public forum. Yes, according to the law they should not be excluded from bidding on spurious grounds, but schools don't have teams of lawyers on standby to do this properly: the result Bromcoms sues. Again.

[C3PO]

I understand what you're saying but the question remains on the ethical standards of the process.

 

If they used support services as a key metric then fair enough but it was much bigger than this.

 

It'll be interesting to see where this goes next

[dmj]

I understand what you're saying but the question remains on the ethical standards of the process.

 

If they used support services as a key metric then fair enough but it was much bigger than this.

 

It'll be interesting to see where this goes next

 

Looking at your ONLY other post , criticising a Bromcom competitor, I can see this is a shill account. I call BS.

 

 

If only Bromcom could get their s**t together and update their systems to the modern era and not rely on PR/Litigation.

I appreciate they've been around for a long time and have a lot of legacy stuff knocking about, and these things are difficult, but honestly...

[C3PO]

Sorry pal. You've got this completely wrong. This is no shill account and the whole idea of a forum is for us all to have constructive criticisms. It's more about process than anything else - that's where I'm looking at this.

And in terms of my other post - I've just joined this forum - so please don't judge.

 

As far as I'm concerned and I really don't care who the companies are - any form of malpractice someone needs to be held to account.

[dmj]

Sorry pal. You've got this completely wrong. This is no shill account and the whole idea of a forum is for us all to have constructive criticisms. It's more about process than anything else - that's where I'm looking at this.

And in terms of my other post - I've just joined this forum - so please don't judge.

 

As far as I'm concerned and I really don't care who the companies are - any form of malpractice someone needs to be held to account.

 

ok. apologies if you are who you say you are. Hopefully we can start afresh.

The tactics that Bromcom employ lead me to these conclusions.

[C3PO]

No worries - it's good to have debate. It will be really interesting to see where this case goes because at the end of the day it's all about outcomes for schools.

 

Let's watch this space..

[FN-GM]

I can’t wait for their tone deaf PR department to respond to this! Could do with a laugh.

[GrumbleDook]

(Please note … this is a personal opinion)

 

Having been involved in both sides of extremely large tendering processes, it is a minefield. Even with frameworks to use, it is a horrible process.

 

Yes, incorrect practices should be challenged and action taken, but I favour that this is done via the oversight of the frameworks involved, not direct litigation, but that is a personal preference.

 

The DfE do a lot of work to help schools and trusts manage procurement to try and avoid situations like this, as every pound spent dealing with legal matters is a pound taken away from schools.

 

For a vendor to challenge another vendor is interesting, especially considering the recent issues between ESS and SCOMIS.

 

I do think that this one is extremely misplaced though and hope some mediation is put in place.

[elsiegee40]

Sorry pal. You've got this completely wrong. This is no shill account and the whole idea of a forum is for us all to have constructive criticisms. It's more about process than anything else - that's where I'm looking at this.

And in terms of my other post - I've just joined this forum - so please don't judge.

 

As far as I'm concerned and I really don't care who the companies are - any form of malpractice someone needs to be held to account.

 

Given that the account called out was only created yesterday and immediately posted where they did, rather than doing the usual through introductions thread etc, there is every reason for suspicion by the more experienced members. I am sure the moderators will be investigating.

[synaesthesia]

"Our tender process has been a lengthy and lawful one, taking into consideration all of the major players."

"But you haven't included Bromcom, can you explain this decision?"

"We have to take into account all factors, including the likelihood of falling foul of litigation whether true or false, and this is deemed an unacceptably high risk with this company"

"Fair enough, crack on!"

 

As said before, decent enough product, company ethics border upon American.

[dmj]

decent enough product

 

I'm not sure even that is true TBH, given the number of issues reported on Edugeek compared to Arbor, who have a larger market share.

[DrCheese]

It does honestly feel like we're just replacing one awful company (SIMS/ESS) with another (Bromcom) - The same terrible attitude to schools/customers just with a different name/logo.

[vikpaw]

To me this was the interesting part :

 

Ministers handed United Learning £1 million to challenge Bromcom in a bid to protect the wider academy sector, claiming the company had “a history of litigiousness”, trust correspondence with the government said.

 

I’m not a fan of the litigation (repeated) approach because it’s clearly not having an effect other than scaring people going into tenders. They win some, they lose some. Focus on the wins…?

 

If you’re financially stable (purportedly better than the rest), have a chunk of market share and are gaining customers. Put all the effort and legal funds into making the existing customer base happy. Fix issues and give better support.

 

I’m a firm believer that a happy customer will do a way better job promoting a product than any marketing team, ever!

 

Just a humble thought.

[Cat_Jam148]

Another day, another reason I'm thankful we went with *NAME REDACTED FOR FEAR OF LITIGATION* as our MIS.

[SpreadsheetJockey]

I'm not sure even that is true TBH, given the number of issues reported on Edugeek compared to Arbor, who have a larger market share.

 

Speaking as a data person who has to use the product everyday, and as someone who has experienced CMIS, SIMS, Bromcom and Arbor in various places, I can assure you that both products are equally good and bad in their own ways. However, both are better than SIMS just for being modern systems. Arbor is more developed for Primary and is working on it's secondary product apace, although it is significantly behind in areas like assessment (to the extent that we are back to mailmerges in Word...). Bromcom is better for secondary, with a lot more scope for customisation in assessment, behaviour etc. however it has some optimisation problems and can be very slow, and the helpdesk can be very hit and miss, with responses ranging from 10 minutes after you put the ticket in, to months later with no response.

 

To be more positive though, both are better than SIMS in overall experience, and easy to use for the average teacher. It is the back office staff who will be affected most in both good and bad ways. I would still move to either system (or any other) rather than stay on SIMS which is well-worn with good documentation (usually) but so very outdated at this point.

[PotNoodleTech]

They appear to be going after the "most despised and hated MIS manufacturer" market - to be fair they're making good inroads the last couple of years!!

[Ditto]

Bromcom's companies house last full accounts (until end of 2023) submitted last summer to companies house gives some insight as to the cost of litigations. The state under 'Other income' they recieved £1,155,964 related to damages and interest received by the company following a successful legal claim. They go on to say their legal and professional costs amounted to £1,051,299 leaving a surplus £104,665. So that's arguable a return of just under 10%. The other approximately £million is in the legal and professional purses. They split that amount in 2 and half went to "education charities and awareness campaigns for the best practices in public procurement, fair competition, and open systems.". There is more but you can see the details at Full Accounts

 

It's very clear that the owners of Bromcom are passionate about public procurement practices being adhered to. On reflection, maybe we are hard judging the companies rightful legal battles, but the loss of so much money from education sector is what stings. Pursuing their goals via litigation on these figures looks very inefficient and somewhat risky - imagine if they lost the case?

 

*** EDIT - the 'Full Accounts link appears broken, I'll try to resolve. ***

Edited February 3, 2025 by Ditto

[TheCookieMonster]

For sure it's unpalatable, but that doesn't make it always wrong. We're in a place where schools are getting treated like businesses to "make education better" while extracting money from the public purse for higher salaries for operators. This approach naturally has benefits and it has its drawbacks. Operating with litigious companies is the latter, as is the scrutiny over eye-watering 6-figure salaries for the big players like United, Harris etc..

 

Questions for people highly critical though:

- how bad does something need to be before you'd believe legal action was credible i.e. what is your red line?

- Or is it just NEVER ok?

- Are you happy for schools/MATs/LAs to sue providers?

 

What should a company like Bromcom do instead? There doesn't seem to be much else. They tried to go through the CMA with the SIMS migration fiasco and the CMA just dropped it because they're too busy. There's clearly a lack of proper guidance and time/money/attention for mediation to control these things properly.

 

Just from a financial perspective too, and from the same source.. median salary in MATs now is 144k. There's 1200 MATs. That's an annual salary bill of £173 million. If we're worried about losing money from the education sector, there are bigger fish.