Hi,
having been a user of both SEEMIS and Phoenix Gold I can probably give you Pros and Cons for both, but I'll concentrate on SEEMIS just now...
Pros:
Used by the overwhelming majority of Local Authorities in Scotland, and tailored to Scottish Education a little better. Phoenix only have 3 or 4 Scottish Authorities left and they are slow to tailor their new offering (E1) to the Scottish market.
You join a club, you dont purchase software. You become a joint owner of SEEMIS when you join, which gives you an equal say in the direction the organisation goes in, and all profit goes back into developing the product. It also means that you get unlimited licences, unlike Phoenix.
SEEMIS covers a far broader spectrum of topics, even having its own version of Groupcall- could save an Authority £20k a year alone. Also has HGIOS stuff, EMA, Clothing Grant, Nursery enrolement, and best of all Vision- which datamines all of your establishments. Oh and you get all of these modules for free with SEEMIS, unlike Phoenix.
SQA works a lot better. The pupil is tied to the timetable and the subject choice- which means that things like Scholar passwords are sent automatically. ScotXed is a doddle to do too.
Cons:
Local Authority mentality- their training isnt slick and they dont do marketing very well
Standard letters isnt as flexible as Phoenix
Not as quick to implement/accept local changes to the system
Most of the complaints from staff are down to changes in procedure. Once they work through it and see the long term benefits they come round to the new offering. On the whole, with a complete overview of the system, SEEMIS is far better in the long run than Phoenix Gold.