Bromcom-PR

Anyone can repeat as follows: Upload AI two content and check differences. Here Gemini by Google used. Because Bromcom is Microsoft stack and did not want it to be labelled "biased"!!! Prompt used was: "Compare the message in the attached (Edugeek) and what DfE is stated advice (WhichMIS) is in the following article": Gemini response: ... the key points from both the message and the article (DfE / WhichMIS) to compare them: Message from James Weatherill (Arbor): Schools have 12 months to switch. This implies a deadline and a push for schools to move to Arbor. Schools are not being "forced" to move to Arbor - they have free choice. This contradicts the implied deadline and suggests a choice that might not be entirely free given the discontinuation of ScholarPack and Integris. No material change to contract terms, price, functionality, and service levels are similar or improved. This argues against the need for a new procurement process, suggesting the transition is a simple upgrade. If schools want to change terms, they must follow procurement guidelines for contracts over £214,904. This acknowledges procurement rules but only for significant contract changes. Article Regarding DfE Advice: Schools are autonomous and responsible for complying with procurement regulations. Emphasizes school responsibility and freedom of choice. Procurement obligations apply below £214,904. Highlights the importance of following procurement rules even for smaller contracts. Contracts over £10,000 should be procured via a framework or with at least three quotes if under £40,000. Provides specific guidance for smaller contracts. MIS contract value is the full cost over 4 years, including all associated costs and VAT. Clarifies how to calculate contract value for procurement purposes. Whether the transition is a "material change" is key to determining if a new procurement is needed. Identifies the crucial question that is not definitively answered. A "material change" is defined as a change to the type of goods, services, or works not already provided for in the contract. Cites the Procurement Act definition. A change of MIS platform seems likely to be construed as a "material change." Offers an opinion that contradicts Arbor's claim of no material change. Schools should undertake due diligence and get professional advice. Recommends careful consideration and seeking expert guidance. Comparison and Key Differences: "Free Choice" vs. Practical Reality: Arbor emphasizes "free choice," but the discontinuation of existing systems creates a situation where schools may feel pressured to switch. The DfE article acknowledges the choice but stresses the need for due diligence and adherence to procurement rules. "No Material Change" vs. Likely Material Change: Arbor claims no material change to avoid triggering procurement processes. The DfE article, however, suggests that a change of MIS platform likely constitutes a material change, requiring a new procurement. Procurement Thresholds: Arbor mentions the £214,904 threshold, implying it's the only relevant one. The DfE article highlights the importance of procurement rules even for contracts below this threshold, especially those over £10,000. Guidance and Responsibility: Arbor offers a simplified view, suggesting the transition is straightforward. The DfE article emphasizes the complexity of procurement regulations and the school's responsibility to understand and comply with them. In essence, Arbor's message presents the transition as a simple, non-material change, while the DfE article emphasizes the need for schools to carefully consider the transition as a potential material change and adhere to all relevant procurement regulations. The article strongly advises schools to conduct due diligence and seek professional advice, which contrasts with Arbor's more straightforward approach. The discrepancy highlights the potential for schools to be misled if they rely solely on Arbor's information without seeking independent guidance.

What is DfE saying about all this??? https://www.whichmis.com/scholarpack-and-integris-customers-transitioning-to-arbor/

The battle of Scomis And the winner MIS is ... https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bromcom_edtech-mis-educationinnovation-activity-7315673662265720833-GCjm?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAMpjjgBbMtIVk0cul1rRsJMZRuDrW7CM0Q

On this thread, we suggest market information that will be interest to readers is shared to start with here is Nick Finnermore’s LinkedIn post on Scomis: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nickfinnemore_mis-missupport-schoolsupport-activity-7250499713093767169-rr7v?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

In the financial services sector, recommending a financial product in exchange for a kickback payment is unlawful under the **Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA)** and the **Retail Distribution Review (RDR)** rules enforced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). These regulations were designed to ensure advisers act in the best interest of their clients and that any potential conflicts of interest are fully transparent. Just like financial advisers, councils advising schools on MIS procurement should be held to similar standards of impartiality. In the Schools Week article referral fees is seen as influencing decisions, much like a financial adviser might be tempted to recommend a product based on the kickback they receive rather than its merits. The fact that such practices would be unlawful in financial services underscores the need for transparency and ethical governance here, too.

Schools Week - Arbor’s Kickbacks Three councils have received cash from Arbor Education, one of England’s biggest MIS providers. Councils have received thousands of pounds in “referral fees” by a tech company in return for their schools switching to its management information system (MIS). https://schoolsweek.co.uk/councils-accept-referral-fees-for-schools-mis-switch/ Councils accept ‘referral fees’ for schools’ MIS switch Conflict of interest concerns as councils reveal fees handed to them amid growing MIS tussle Lewis Alcraft, the chief executive of ParentPay Group, an organisation that runs SIMS, said referral fees were “inappropriate”. For instance, Bromcom, another provider, does not offer referrals, but does charge schools less if support units – as opposed to the company – provide helpdesk services

Thank you all for assisting in concluding a very important outcome as above. This yet again justifies the use of SQL database backup files as an inevitable process for schools to migrate from SIMS to a new MIS

You are spot on Vikpaw, the answer is no! The reason is wTimeTable developed ground up integrated with Bromcom MIS - meaning no walls, barriers and silos of data that you find in all other MIS and timetables with just a tunnel for data transfer. This is new era timetabling for cloud age for collaborative timetabling! Please see: Bromcom Cloud wTimeTable

OK, name the price and please make a case for it. Please see below for context. Why £1,000? A team with total of 100+ man years of SIMS support experience couldn’t come up with a solution. Hence did not think more money will mean better chance to solve it. Hence coming up with a token figure of £1,000. Objective: To allow schools to get their data locked away in ESS remote servers and desperate to get them out! So this is a fight for all schools and for open systems. Deja vu - history lesson time! This is a replay of 20+ years ago of similar shenanigans, when technology moved from DOS to Windows. Bromcom fought for open systems spending £200k in 2003 so to allow access to schools data by 3rd party applications. Whether for fair competition or fair procurement Bromcom always fought for schools and better education for children. Here is the 2003 story: https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2003/may/09/schools.uk

OPEN COMPETITION Reward £1,000 by Bromcom We have been working through SIMS Report Generator facility, attempting to validate this extract method for schools choosing to migrate away from SIMS, and we have discovered further significant gaps in the data export, which will have a detrimental effect on the schools. Anyone solving the following will be rewarded £1,000 for benefiting all schools in UK desperate to get their data where their database are locked away in ESS hosted SIMS databases: The reporting engine is not able to export the SIMS ‘lookup’ tables - These are the tables of referenceable data or settings that are used across the MIS. One example of this could be a list of behaviour event types including their associated unique codes/IDs and descriptions. What we can generate is a list of behaviour events that have occurred within a period and try to extrapolate a list from that, but it’s not going to give us anything that hasn’t been used yet, or tell us when the school has deactivated them and so on. The only way schools can export these is via a ‘Print’ button from the SIMS interface. This can create a PDF containing a table but there’s no way of automating this. Certain fields not available in the reporting engine – As we are creating the reports based on how we want the data to be formatted rather than how we can extract it, there are times where it’s not possible to fulfil the scope. For example, in a lot of cases, we can only export the description field for something ratherthan the code name. For example, in a list of behaviour events for a student, we would be able to say ‘Bullying – Online’ but not the code of the event which might be something like ‘BUL-ONL’. This would create significantly more work for our development team, and sometimes means that it’s not possible to import at all, or would create potential import issues in specific situations. Legacy Module data is virtually non-existent – Where the Secondary data relies upon decades old legacy modules, the reporting engine generally only has limited access to report on the information. Exams and Timetabling are a good example of this. Although some information is available such as exam results, it’s not in the format required by our current import process. Private Eye: mis-selling in MIS market … https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ali-guryel-18892715_private-eye-school-mis-school-software-activity-7209279735497900032-IhdQ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

Here is an account of an experienced MAT user that has been on a full journey SIMS, Arbor and Bromcom … https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ali-guryel-18892715_were-thrilled-to-introduce-our-latest-feature-activity-7206764625571262464-SXSe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

Another MAT switching from SIMS to Arbor and then Arbor to Bromcom. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ali-guryel-18892715_create-partnership-case-study-bromcom-activity-7171053498791366656-k0e8?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios "I can't tell you how brilliant our new MIS system is here.We have moved all in with Bromcom and it has blown me away. The system holds everything from attainment/attendance/behaviour - analysing everything"Chris Dyson Deputy CEO Create Trust For an in depth look at Create Partnership Trust's Bromcom journey, click the link below 👇https://okt.to/RKZ3q7

Please drop me a direct message and let’s see if we can help.

Let’s see if we can help here: Bromcom is a Technical Partner with ESS (originally with Capita) since 2003 when Bromcom forced upon Capita via OFT to give Voluntary Assurance. This provides Bromcom use of APIs and DLL. Hence in this case DLLs are useful for proper decryption. Hence we can confirm ESS reference to “ one of the competitors” is not Bromcom. Further more under ESS Technical Agreement, ESS provides Bromcom a licensed copy of SIMS SQL database and full application. This means Bromcom is already possession of SIMS SQL data base. Therefore ESS claiming that when schools handover a copy of backup of their SIMS SQL causes Bromcom being provided with ESS IP is false. In fact Bromcom instructing schools to use Microsoft Studio to strip out everything out of SIMS SQL backup copy other than the data. Hence distancing schools from handing over to Bromcom anything other than data which is totally schools’ property. Schools as data owner and controller, have all the right to handover their data for off boarding and as incumbent vendor ESS must cooperate and respect this. APIs: However the APIs refer to in context of migration are useless for following reasons: Scope of data items: Very limited Method: APIs designed for 3rd party bolt-ons and not for migration. Hence data items brought single entity rather than bulk. Hence incredibly inefficient even for electronic means. Technology: Dates back to Windows on- premise legacy and not lend themselves for cloud working Could not agree more. This is very sad specially in EdTech space where children education should be focus. However it is for these reasons that well over 50% of market (when you add Wales and Northern Ireland) is on non-cloud MİS in UK. At least Northern Ireland with 1,100 schools now has made the jump into cloud with Bromcom. Bromcom sees a very quick decision is very critical and hence whilst Bromcom has engaged fully with CMA, it is imperative that ESS threatening schools with a false statement at least in Bromcom case is halt and an Injunction through Hugh Coirt is the only swift route. As in the past Bromcom does not take legal actions lightly and always sees it va ery last resort. We believe, one should view any legal action in wider picture and longer term benefit for the education market when over 5 years market value of over £1 billion is considered. Bromcom: “… any legal action against SIMS schools, Bromcom will cover approved legal costs for these schools” We have full commitment to standby schools if any legal action is taken by ESS - please see : https://bromcom.com/news/support-for-sims-schools https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chrisjameskirk_mis-migrations-setting-the-story-straight-activity-7162469784255717376-pIoi?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios We hope the above helps.

🎄✨ As sponsor of Edugeek’s MIS Forum, wishing you a Merry Christmas from the Bromcom family! 🎅🎁 As the year comes to a close, we want to take a moment to express our gratitude for your continued support. May this festive season bring you joy, warmth, and moments of togetherness with your loved ones. Thank you for being a part of our journey. We look forward to another year of growth and success together

Seeking justice in a procurement case: Public procurement is a serious matter and no less than in education. If bidders are intimidated with prejudices and reputational damage, this would undermine to secure the very key rights and principles of fair, transparent and equal treatment of bidders in procurement processes, the contracting authorities taking for granted that no one will dare to challenge the decisions. Commercial disputes in vast majority of cases stay private unless leaked to press by parties who see advancing their causes or market interests. One should question who would be in this case and whether holding a kangaroo court in social media and building prejudices are serving justice and supporting the sector or such parties. Clearly it is very important that suppliers of schools can have confidence that the competitions that they participate in are conducted fairly given the investment everybody makes in these competitive processes and the sector in cloud does not fall in the trap of previous era where all attempts failed to correct viz a viz Becta Report 2010 (Reference 1). Finally the CCC case referred to in the news article shows that Bromcom was proven to be correct in both of its actions and consequently today many CCC schools enjoy cloud based products and benefitting cost and functionality because of this action. As to Bromcom’s position - here is a short version and a longer one: A short version: The last thing that Bromcom want to do is be in court proceedings with MATs but we pursued these court proceedings as a very last resort where we thought the way the process was conducted by UL was highly unsatisfactory and UL have delayed in disclosing key documents of the competition through which the fairness of the process could be verified. We think that it is very important that suppliers of schools can have confidence that the competitions that they participate in are conducted fairly given the investment everybody makes in these competitive processes. A longer version: The MIS market suffered from the failures of procurement processes over the past 15 to 20 years which was confirmed in a Becta Report 2010 (Reference 1). This held back the market as well as schools, and hence 75% of schools today are still non-cloud, costing £ billions with a lack of functionality - all disadvantaging the education of children. In 2020, as the veteran of the sector, Bromcom wishes nothing less than to make sure procurement processes are not misguided and the sector does not fall into a similar pattern with MATs. Despite United Learning’s (UL) tender being based on OJEU, the tender structure and processes fell well short of fundamental standards such as an approach to due diligence, unequal treatment of the bidders, moderation process in scoring, miscalculations/errors etc.. Due Diligence: Despite the preferred bidder having only abbreviated and indeed unaudited accounts available, UL relied on simple credit agency ratings for the Selection Question to pass the preferred bidder. The Government Procurement guidance on due diligence expects the contracting authority to classify the contract under Gold, Silver and Bronze, which for the size of the contract and critical nature of MIS, would fall under Gold or at least Silver categorisation (Reference 2). Accordingly a simple credit rating score is insufficient and therefore the contracting authority needs to carry out tests on eight key metrics. An independent consultancy has an assessment of the financials for the key MIS providers in this market and published their findings (Reference 3). The fact that the preferred bidder, at the time of shortlisting (in November-December 2019), only had abbreviated unaudited accounts meant that this was paramount. It is self-evident how each MIS supplier stood during the period over which UL conducted their tender, and these figures remain the most up to date available as far as we are aware. Unequal treatment of the bidders and back drop: UL already had over 10 schools in the MAT using the preferred bidder’s solution and those schools were excluded from the procurement. Furthermore, UL had four schools within their MAT in the process of procuring/rolling out the MIS from the preferred bidder overlapping the period of the formal. These four schools who switched over during May 2019 and January 2020, had not sought quotes from any other provider, with the selected supplier ending up as the preferred bidder for the formal UL procurement. Basic DfE guidance is to seek a quote from three different suppliers (Reference 4). Hence having procurement and deployment going on with one of the bidders during the process clouds what should be formal relationships, especially where the supplier is one of the bidders and goes on to be selected as the preferred bidder. Miscalculations/errors in evaluation scores: Arithmetic errors in the total cost of ownership calculations surfaced. During the de-briefing session, Bromcom was assured that the figures had been carefully checked and would, given our concern, be subject to a “double, double check”. Despite this assurance, Bromcom subsequently found arithmetic errors in the total cost of ownership calculations. The original result between the final two bidders had a difference of 1.6%. UL accepted these errors and reduced the difference down to 1.2%. Bromcom believes there are more errors and UL’s resistance to allow Bromcom to have access to the total cost of ownership calculations to verify the correctness, justifies Bromcom’s deep concerns in this respect. Conclusion: Bromcom has not taken this action lightly. However we believe fair, transparent and equal treatment of bidders are essential for the healthy future of the sector as it is going through seismic change. We hope UL’s case will help to bring transparency and to make sure the past experience of the MIS sector does not repeat itself with MATs. References: 1.https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/15716/1/school%20management%20information%20systems%20and%20value%20for%20money%202010.pdf 2. https://main-abbolt-acca.content.pugpig.com/2020/09/04/14sept_pub_tendering_uk/content.html 3. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/phil-sanders_educationtechnology-education-schoolmanagementsoftware-activity-6686696103171112961-2mY2 4. The Academies’ Financial Handbook (for Academies, Free Schools and MATs) and Schools Financial Value Standard (SFVS) (for LA Maintained schools)

Hi @matt40k, Where we are finding PowerBI winning over Excel hand down is in deployment across MATs (large or small). Many large MATs found Excel based Analytics very difficult to manage. Despite instant export facility into Excel, ensuring integrity across the MATs was a huge challenge. With Power BI, as @elJukes has pointed above "as our MIS which has a Power BI viewer embedded into it so we can publish reports to staff through the MIS. The report refreshes itself once every hour" - PowerBI is controlled centrally and hence securing a single point of truth across the MAT. Other benefits are well known - data visualisation, drill down and ease of use etc...

Presently the MIS Alliance activity is not user facing (school or LAs). It is working with industry stake holders to address concerns they have and in near future their mission will include publicising cloud benefits and cloud on boarding / off boarding protocol and ease of switch etc... The Alliance members are all UK's fast growing cloud vendors, committed moving schools to cloud platform so to save substantial costs and bring benefits of Internet era. They all disclosed themselves to any stakeholder that so far Alliance dealt with. The intention has been to have an announcement when the mission switches to user facing matters which foresee later this year. This thread has not about the Alliance but about DfE Circular about upgrading to cloud and compliance to procurement regulations. As an EduGeek old timer @vikpaw should know better to keep the thread on the subject rather than witch hunting or shooting the messenger.

Associating one Power BI PRO account is acceptable as well. There are many ways to do to achieve the same thing. Please drop me a PM for further any help. Happy to discuss the above - just drop me a PM to look at the details.

Power BI is all about Data Visualisation. It will rely on you to choose right data domain and comparisons to have meaningful and useful output. Do you have a mock up of what you want to produce? Share here then we can comment if we already have the same or similar then you can take it and adapt it. Just to be clear, this assumes you have licensed Bromcom Analytics (ARB/BI) module.

Or its like painting school blackboards with a coat of white emulsion and tell teachers they have 'white boards'! RemoteApp is nothing but coat of emulsion. You still have 'thick client' that is extremely inefficient and costly for cloud deployment. "Same old Software as a Service" (So-SaaS): In technical terms this is called "Same old Software as a Service" (So-SaaS). It is up 50 fold more expensive than WebApp in terms of memory and associated CPU, power supply, space and ventilation etc... and very bad for green environment policies. One way or the other, you pay very dearly for this either through your own infrastructure or to MS Azure or others. Recently Harris Federation has chosen to drop all legacy WinApp MIS and they are switching to WebApp based MIS saving tons of servers hosted in their own data centre that service their 36 Academies.

Chrome based devices are designed for modern thin client deployment. It will not run legacy thick client applications. You need a browser based MIS. Have you tried any browser MIS?

DfE/Becta Report 2010 as it's title suggests is guidance on compliance for LAs and schools on the procurement law. It was produced with legal /procurement law input from one of most prominent law firms in the UK The passage of 6 years does not make it any less relevant for schools, academies MATs and LAs. In fact in the recent 12 months, it is becoming clear that MATs (and individual academies) are taking compliance to procurement law more seriously than LAs (individual schools). The UK is the only Western country where 90% of its schools are still on legacy technology rather than cloud. Root reasons for this are explained in the DfE/Becta Report 2010 and also OFT Report March 2014. The wasted cost using legacy systems rather than cloud systems runs into £millions and the £millions are spent on servers in schools and/or vastly ineffiency caused in "hosting" legacy MIS software as Same old Software as a Service" - SoSaaS - see links below: Cloudwashing of client-server SaaS NIST and the cloudwashing of client-server SaaS – diginomica After all public purse is accountable and our focus should be applying funds available for best use at all times. MIS Market - reset/re-boot: Over the past 20 years numerous reports written by DFE/Becta, GCHQ, OFT etc.. On the importance of school MIS in education system and the severe stagnation. With David Cameron announcement and cloud era now established, it is high time to allow the market to make most of this lifetime new opportunity this brings and the market to experience a hard reset/reboot. So let's keep this as an adult discussion without insinuations of scaremongering or self-promotion. The topic is a very heart searching and deeper discussions as the title states: " David Cameron: Local councils running schools will become 'a thing of the past'" and subject matter is the likely impact on each and every stake holder of this forum.

Redline / "No... it isn't." This is not subjective or opinion based. It is neither rules laid by DfE/Becta. The report is based on procurement law acting like a "messenger" - it is no good killing the messenger! Fair and transparent procurement: This does not necessarily mean OJEU tender. So long as a fair and transparent procurement process is followed. In the recent months a good number of MATs have reviewed their legacy MIS systems and they all switched to cloud technology - eg ARK MAT, Harris Federation and Minerva Trust. Also many individual school and academies - results are still pending and hence can not name them. "the BECTA report is not a mandate" Becta report being a mandate is not the question. Compliance to procurement law is.

Quote Originally Posted by Banjo View Post (http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/166810-advanced-learning-query-2.html) Interesting scenarios. However at all times, one needs to overlay with key advice given in the DfE/Becta Report of 2010 which clearly singles out, re: move from legacy Windows -based application to "cloud": http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...n_mis_2010.pdf Page 4 - para 1.18 "Generational changes in the nature of the products, for example, the upgrade from a DOS-based product to a Windows- based product, or from a local area network (LAN) based product to a “cloud” based product, would if challenged be likely to be regarded as sufficiently material to require the change to be competitively procured by the contracting authority (Paragraphs 6.8 to 6.12). " Accordingly, if LAs are still in existence, for legal compliance - LAs and schools/academies will need to hold a fair and transparent procurement process. Therefore for LAs, schools and academies, "upgrade" from legacy Windows to Cloud is a redline and not an option!