How do you know when it’s time to sell your business? Try asking yourself these questions:

1. Do my circumstances allow for the level of financial investment this company needs to keep it going?

2. Is my business model really viable? If not, is it going to be in the future and will I like it?

3. Do I have an amazing team of high performers? Am I willing and can I afford to recruit one?

4. What do I have more of: passion or exhaustion?

5. Will a sale solve my problems, and will someone buy us?

6. What happens if I don’t sell? What are my other options?

Have an honest conversation with yourself and your team. At the end of the day, selling your business is one of the most exciting parts of being a business owner – and it always opens the door for new opportunities.

INVESTOR NETWORKING & MENTORSHIP

Matching the right buyer with the right business is a painstaking process. In conjunction with CJK Associates, we support businesses looking to invest in or potentially acquire in the Edtech sector and can work with you throughout the whole process, from introduction through due diligence, to closure and transformation.

For businesses looking for VCs, investors or other methods of funding, we will get you pitch-ready and connect you to potential investors in the Edtech industry. We act as mentors throughout the process and will advise on how to plan growth strategy and allocate resources.

Get in touch to find out more.

A few weeks ago Nick caught up with Ian Koxvold, currently Head of Education, Strategy and Corporate Development at Supporting Education Group, but many people might know him better for his years of strategic consultancy work across the education sector.

They talked about the changes across the education sector and what the future might hold in terms of new solutions and new strategies including:

• Ian’s background delivering projects across businesses and educational establishments to make them more effective or efficient
• The insight he gets working for Supporting Education Group as the largest provider of services to schools in the UK
• His perspective on consolidation, and how this has increased from maybe 2-3 players to around 10 in recent years
• What’s a good strategy for acquiring, and has consolidation peaked in his opinion
• The importance of use case analysis in any business, and using it to identify upsell and product integration opportunities
• How different products serve different use cases
• Advice for startups in the edtech space
• The concept of ‘one product for everything’ v ‘best of breed’ solutions
• School support services, the role they play in the evolving landscape, and future consolidation
• The perils of complacency when it comes to servicing your customer, and the potential pitfalls of having a dominant supplier in any given area
• How to measure the impact of solutions on schools and why this is important to success; should we be more ambitious about how we use data?
• The future of the MIS sector given recent changes, and what we might expect to see next
• Three things companies should be doing now to future-proof their business

We’ve split the interview into three parts to make it easier to digest – enjoy!

P.S. We’re aware that some of the audio is a bit rough in places so we’re working on getting a transcript created to accompany this Q&A – we’ll add once completed 🙂

Last week I took the opportunity to have a virtual get together with thought leader Graham Reed to talk all things edtech.

Graham has a diverse background and knows the MIS and epayments sectors particularly well. Amongst other things, we discussed:

• What made Graham start Omega Pegasus
• What’s driving more market movement than ever to challenger cloud solutions
• Views on recent acquisitions, and Graham’s predictions for the future of MIS
• The future of the e-payments sector which Graham knows well, including potential new players and innovations
• Graham’s separate app projects, and the thinking behind creating them

Please note: We chat about the future of MIS and how challenger solutions might look to compete by working with adjacent solutions, in particular epayments systems. However, this was recorded a few days before it was announced that Montagu intended to acquire/invest in both SIMS and ParentPay so things have changed!

Lots of insightful stuff was discussed so we’ve split the interview out into separate parts below – enjoy!

Nick

Last month IRIS Software Group, one of the UK’s largest privately held software companies, announced it has acquired iSAMS, a leading, fully integrated, online school management system. I caught up with Winston Poyton, the Senior Product Director there, to talk about their education strategy and their most recent acquisition.

IRIS already has 11,000+ school customers, and their overall goal is to take the pain out of processes and let professionals working in schools focus on the work they love.

Some of the things we discuss include:

• What’s important to IRIS right now, and what are your plans in the education sector?
• What’s your strategy for IRIS and iSAMS? How does it sit with the other solutions you offer to schools?
• Who do you feel is your main threat, and what makes you different?
• How do you think the forthcoming sale of Capita ESS (SIMS) will affect the education market?
• Where do you see the future of MIS, what will make the difference, and what needs to change?

Is the sale of SIMS by Capita a good thing for the market?

“I have now spoken to a number of people inside and outside of the MIS space, and everyone is asking the same thing: do I think the sale of SIMS by Capita is a good thing for the market?

My answer on the whole is yes.

Capita, for a number of years, have been good custodians of SIMS and you can see this in the success it had for so long.  However, their market share has undoubtedly started to decline in recent years.

But SIMS can be rejuvenated with a new owner that understands how the education market works and allows SIMS to make decisions that are in the best of its customers.  I really do hope that educationalists are part of the board and the decision making process.

My understanding is that SIMS Primary is almost ready. It may not meet everyone’s needs 100% right away but it’s important it is released in order to gain feedback and improve.

SIMS Secondary is being built in a way that slowly allows schools to engage with it on a module by module basis. For example, SIMS Options is a SIMS Secondary cloud solution and Exams is due to follow, so secondary schools will be using SIMS8 with a SIMS7 core initially.

There’s lots of opportunity for SIMS under a new owner, but the MIS market is now more competitive than ever. It will be interesting to see what happens!”

Author: Nick Finnemore, Director

Capita will look to sell its education software solutions (ESS) unit for at least £500 million as the listed business services provider’s board this week prepares to approve an auction (as exclusively revealed by EducationInvestor Global this week and reported on Capita’s website)

This includes SIMS, and after the recent acquisition of Pupil Asset by Juniper Education, looks like more change is afoot in the UK MIS sector.

But what will this actually mean?

Capita SIMS has by far the largest market share across England, Wales and Northern Ireland with 75% market share across the board. This means whoever ends up acquiring SIMS are going to pick up a LOT of school and academy customers – over 21,000 in total. Tons of opportunity to use it as a platform to sell additional services and solutions.

From the SIMS users point of view, most will see the idea of new owners and fresh investment as a good thing. Many are frustrated with waiting for a cloud solution to materialise when all other suppliers are SaaS.

That frustration is often echoed by the LA MIS Support Teams based around the country who support schools and academies in using SIMS on a day-to-day basis

Ultimately, we hope the downstream effect will be greater and faster innovation so teachers and leaders can benefit from less siloed data, manage daily school life more efficiently, and improve in learner outcomes.