DMurray

It is unimaginable that the above could happen in any commercial world and MATs appear to have seen the light. Even IBM couldn’t get away with market trends when customers started voting with their feet. So far all appears too little too late with Capita. From LAs point of view it sounds as if no one cares and from what @BrownShoes describes and such strategic and critically important part of schools / LAs management eco system is disowned for any action / decision left to its own fate. How sad can it get! Surely this will put your support centre at risks if individual schools abandon the ship and switch to cloud with other suppliers. @BrownShoes - hasn’t school MIS and switching to cloud made it to your LA’s agenda yet?

LAs vs MATs: In this forum some criticise LAs saying “ LA's arent the best at managing change and there is little motivation for them to embrace it and many actively discourage it or suggest it isn't possible !“ Yet the same LAs in early 1990s, rolled out original MIS “systems” across their own LA. This included ground up hardware infrastructure and DOS based MIS. It was probably largest undertaken in schools ever or at least in Europe. At that time generally only BBC micro existed in school. 1990 vs 2020 30 years on what has changed. Technology moved from DOS to Windows, browser and cloud. Schools should be more independent, allowed to take initiatives and innovation. LAs downsized and their remit reduced as budgets shrunken. Yet, in terms of MIS and switching to cloud they are still holding back entire school population under their control. MATs: Many consider them as LAs “with a different name”. This is evidently very misleading. MATs clearly appear to have different DNA altogether and with a distinct difference in fundamental level in the governance. Why MATs are motivated to switch schools to cloud through aggregate procurement are as follows: 1. They can see overall end to end total cost ownership savings and MAT are directly accountable all of this budget 2. More modern / future proof technology in schools 3. Public service accountability (caring in general about schools) So what is key the difference for LAs? 1. LAs can see overall end to end total cost ownership savings and in any case LAs are not accountable all of the end to cost. 2. LAs Agenda does not include responsibilities for more modern / future proof technology in schools. 3. I have been told by an LA senior officer that LAs on statutory books no longer have responsibility or accountability for schools public service (caring in general about schools) Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Back to the future: LAs now clearly see after budget cuts and downsizing that happening around them within LA and feeling isolated as trading services, in the recent years their very existence is under threat. Reform in thinking is inevitable for the 30 year old “School MIS-Finance sector” and this has to be in a scale like Perestroika within LA Education / IT Support Department. Even if Support Units manage to weather the downsizing, schools academy conversions, the new threat of schools defecting as they switch to cloud is even more lethal! The LA Support Units which get ahead of the game will survive. Clearly they need to take leadership, embrace cloud, evaluate options and then seek a mandate for an aggregate switch to cloud solution - this is the most effective way forward for LAs.

Consider how Nokia lovers fast voted with their feet and picked up smart phones. If MIS wasn’t a sticky application, schools would have switched to cloud by now. Clearly it looks as if MATs jumped ahead and soon LAs will follow and switch to cloud. If large MATs can switch so can LAs.

As a matter of interest, have you ever needed to access your old SIMS database? How long ago did you switch to Bromcom?

Check out: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/206486-changing-mis-our-experience.html May be @CyBeRkId2002 will be tempted to share his experience.

There is no bug free software. The expectations is vendor sticking to its SLAs fixing it and overall customer perception of services.

I appeared to have caused a stir and not intended. All I wanted to hear if anyone received in the school the DfE circular referred to int the FoI and what people thought of it. In our school no one seems to know about it. A supplier (not the one named in this thread) pointed out to me.

Has anyone seen this FoI to DfE? Upgrading Capita SIMS7 to a Cloud-based version https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/upgrading_capita_sims7_to_a_clou

Yes, we have a licence. We will also use CRM side for account managing schools enquiries for sales and general relationship management. I heard that it may more like Sharepoint than a proper polished application.

Hi Support Centre, Do you use MS CRM Dynamics for ticketing? How well does it work? Pros and cons? Will much appreciate feedback. Thanks in advance.

What MIS do you have? Some MAT having switched to modern cloud MIS appeared to expand their SCR details within MIS. I heard Ark Trust going that way and have their MIS hold all data as single point of truth.

Indeed this was checked - all ok.

We have one user account that is getting locked out every 40-50 minutes, even if the user is already logged in and working. All of a sudden, Outlook will prompt them for their password or it will prompt them when they try to connect to our RDC. The password is not expired, We've had them reset it and I've rebooted the server but nothing has worked.

Please help! Constantly keep getting locked out of RDP and emails!