Just before Bett this year, Nick caught up with Lawrence Royston, Founder of teamSOS, to talk all things edtech.

Lawrence is one of the true entrepreneurs of the Edtech market. Along with his partner Joanne, he started with GroupCall messenger, the first SMS messaging system for schools in the UK, then built Xporter, supporting Third parties to have a generic way to integrate with MIS data, before looking at how they could provide deeper insights in the data they were already transferring through GroupCall XVault. He’s also supported GDPRis and has recently started a new business in teamSOS, an incident management and compliance tool for staff in Education and NHS establishments.

We’ve split the interview into two parts to make it easier to digest. In part one Nick and Lawrence discuss:

• What it means to have an entrepreneurial mindset
• Working with partners (and family!), their symbiotic skills, and how this is a great asset in business
• The thinking behind teamSOS, where the idea came from, and the problem it solves
• The importance of listening and learning from users
• ‘Successive approximation’ and continually iterating solutions to help better meet the needs of your customers

In part two they talk about:

• What advice would Lawrence give budding edtech entrepreneurs based on his own experience?
• Getting work/life balance right
• The effect of recent market changes: how consolidation makes space for speedboats!
• The innovation bubbling away in the background within smaller businesses that lead on vision and integration
• Modernising technology (case in point: walkie talkies)
• Their approach to pricing and delivering value
• How making school staff feel cared for attracts and retains the best candidates

Enjoy!

Why are some businesses more successful than others?

Is it because they provide a better solution technically?

Is it because they were first to market?

Or is it just luck?

You could say all these statements are true, however, more often than not it is the way you look at a solution and how easy it is for a potential customer to purchase, on board, reduce their pain, and continue to enjoy the experience of working with your solution and business. It’s all about reducing friction.

We work and continue to work with several businesses across the edtech world and, in the main, the majority of companies that are not growing as quickly as they would like comes down to how hard are they making it for customers to either buy in the first place or make it hard for them to choose to stay, its all in your power to solve!

Look at your Customer Journey, look at every step, and understand when you are making it hard for the customer/user.

Ask yourself:

• Have you made it easy for the potential customer to find you and know what you stand for? Where do they receive their information?
• Have you made it easy for them to purchase? Do they know you are going to take away a problem better than your competition?
• Have you made it easy for them to onboard? Through little to no manual or human interaction.
• Have you made it easy for them to get to the value? This may include human intervention to understand best practices, however, if you can make it light touch this is great for the business and your customer.
• Do you have processes of ensuring that the customer continues to have a great experience of the solution and the business? To make the decision to be loyal easy.

If you say yes to all these questions, ask one more! Are you looking at this from your perspective or the customer’s? If you answer from yours, as we know best, you are not reducing Friction!

We’ve been privileged to speak with even more edtech and industry thought leaders this term, and the insight they provide us and our community is invaluable.

So thank you Tony Lockwood for talking to us about how companies can improve the performance of their products and develop new solutions.

Thanks to Duncan Baldwin for giving us an insight into teaching, his time at Capita SIMS, influencing government as Deputy Policy Director at ASCL and his current Headship.

We were delighted to welcome Winston Poyton back for a follow-up chat on IRIS Education, especially given how much has changed in the world of school management systems in the last 12 months alone.

It’s great to speak with colleagues from MIS support teams as it gives such a unique and insightful view of the landscape, so thank you Keren Wild for getting involved and giving us your perspective.

Sue Macgregor talked to us about Alps Education’s focus on providing the right analytical tools to schools so they have the power to help every student achieve their full potential, thank you!

And finally, thank you to Ian Koxvold of Supporting Education for talking to us about changes across the education sector, what the future might hold in terms of new solutions, and new strategies.

Sarah and I have thoroughly enjoyed making the series, and already have some great sessions ready to go in the new term with industry thought leaders Andy Kent and Jonathan Coyles – watch this space!

Have a great Christmas and see you in 2022!

——————————————————————————-

In case you missed it, here’s a round-up of all our thought leader Q&A sessions from last term.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel and get notified when new videos go live, or join our mailing list for tips on future-proofing, MIS news, growth strategies, and much more.

Continuing our series of edtech thought leader interviews, I recently caught up with independent consultant and former colleague of mine, Tony Lockwood.  Tony describes himself as having had a career of two halves: one in Education as Head of Science in a Nottinghamshire Secondary School, and one as Head of Product Management at Capita Education Software Solutions (now part of ParentPay Group).

Nowadays, Tony advises MATs and schools on getting more out of their Management Information and other Admin software systems, as well as subscribing to additional systems or changing suppliers. As an independent product consultant, he also provides help for EdTech companies to improve the performance of their products and develop new solutions.

In part 1 we discuss:

• the key changes Tony has noticed in the last 3 years
• the consolidation of businesses with Private Equity to provide a larger value proposition
• how, even though MATs came into the market some time ago, solutions are very much still fixed on schools
• MIS as a platform, and the future of MIS

In part 2 we cover:

• What’s next for the MIS market, and the challenges that SIMS has and that even though they have a loyal customer base
• The challenger MIS and which suppliers Tony expects to do well.
• What makes a good tech company and what we can learn from Spotify, where a lot of companies see themselves as tech companies but they should see themselves as service providers.
• The fact that educators and suppliers need to be more curious to deliver better value

Continuing our series of edtech thought leader interviews, I recently caught up with Martin Hall, Senior Product Manager for MIS at RM.

Having spoken with almost all other major MIS suppliers in England, I’ve been wanting to speak with RM on their plans for the Integris solution for a while. RM Integris is the second-largest MIS supplier in England in terms of market share, and RM also offers an ecosystem of other school management solutions which work alongside their MIS, including their own finance solution.

In part 1 of this fireside chat, we discuss:

• How RM has changed over the years, having started as a couple of people building servers in their garage to becoming a global education company
• The 3 key pillars of business for RM, and their plans to invest in their Integris MIS and finance solutions
• How customers expectations have changed, and how RM works with them to allow them to focus on students’ progress – the most important thing
• Where RM are currently with their Integris MIS: how it works with RM Unify, what’s their partner strategy, plans for growth into new system areas (such as HR, compliance, safeguarding, etc.) and also into new phases and markets
• Their approach to future development

In part 2 we cover:

• RM’s focus on the MIS market and current competitor solutions
• What makes RM Integris different
• How the market might change in the future given recent consolidation and acquisitions
• How support has changed, especially as businesses such as SBS and Strictly Education have been acquired by one owner
• The role of LAs v the new role of Trusts: how MATs act and work differently, using data centrally and intelligently

Finally, in part 3 I ask:

• Where does Martin see the MIS market going in 5-years time?
• Can and should data be used to inform policy?
• How does RM work in partnership with schools and academies?
• How can edtech suppliers get better at delivering disruptive, and is this a good thing?

One of the biggest changes to happen to the world of school MIS was the introduction of academies, starting back in the 2000s under the then Labour government, and becoming widespread following the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition Academies Act in 2010. The concept of schools becoming their own entities as academies and leaving Local Authority control had an effect on their MIS and support choices (which we’ve touched on in a previous blog), but it also created a whole new set of stakeholders: the Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) central team.

MAT central teams need certain things from an MIS which have not really been required before. It’s always been possible to aggregate data through feeds (this happens between schools and LA teams all the time) but MAT leaders need something completely different. They need a complete view of students and staff across the trust to enable collaboration, streamline communication and effectively target resources.

As a result, MIS suppliers have started to build MAT-focused functionality into their solutions and now offer a range of resources and dashboards aimed at making the lives of the MAT central teams easier.

It’s now been more than 10 years since the first MAT was formed so we wanted to explore how well MIS suppliers were meeting the specific needs of MATs.

A recent survey¹ asked 92 MAT central teams to rate how satisfied they were with their MIS from 1-10, where 1 is “Extremely dissatisfied” and 10 is “Extremely satisfied”. Their scores are outlined below; you can see that satisfaction is generally pretty good with the majority scoring their MIS a 7, and only a few MATs giving a score of 4 or less.

Chart: MAT Satisfaction rating of their MIS from 1-10, where 1 is “Extremely dissatisfied” and 10 is “Extremely satisfied”.

The survey asked respondents to briefly explain why they gave that rating, and the running theme amongst those who gave a perfect 10 was ease of use.

The survey delves into more detail. When asked about how satisfied they were with their MIS’ ability to provide actionable information, which is so crucial to trust central teams, they appear to be largely happy in this area. The biggest group (37.6%) responded saying were satisfied with what their MIS provides. It’s worth noting though that around 19% said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and a further 26% combined stated they were Dissatisfied or Extremely Satisfied. Would this be a reason for an academy trust to look for alternate solutions in the future? Maybe.

Question: How satisfied are you with the extent to which the MIS provides actionable information?

However, when asked how satisfied they are with the Trust-specific functionality their MIS offers, the results tell a different story. The majority of respondents said that they were Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied (28.26%), followed very closely by those saying they were Extremely Dissatisfied (27.17%):

Question: How satisfied are you with the Trust-specific functionality your MIS offers?

The fact that over a quarter of all respondents said they were Extremely Dissatisfied with trust-focused functionality should set off alarm bells with MIS suppliers. Trust-focused functionality always forms a key part of the requirements when MATs go to tender for an MIS, and it feels like there’s still work to do in this area.

In a previous thought leader session Nick recorded with Rowena Hackwood, CEO at Astrea Academy Trust, they discussed this topic in more detail. Rowena’s challenge for all suppliers, not just MIS, is for them to move towards creating solutions that work for a new customer base who need a different point of view:

“Increasingly in the sector, there is a move towards stronger and more sustainable groups of schools, which isn’t a national strategy for every school to be in a MAT, but it is a national strategy for every school to be part of a more sustainable group, as it were. And it’s absolutely critical that, in your thinking, you have that in mind.

The kind of MAT dashboards that I want to be able to share with trustees align academic attainment and attendance data on the one hand, with HR, finance, governance, performance, on the other hand, and I don’t have any means at a MAT level to really draw all of those different elements in together. So my challenge, I think, to you is to move away from a school by school understanding of the English school system towards one where a huge chunk of the customer base needs a different point of view.”

Rowena Hackwood, CEO at Astrea Academy Trust

Ultimately, most of the MIS have the ability to offer reporting and insight in one way or another, using tools such as Power BI; it’s more a question of how easy and integrated these systems are, and the extent to which they provide the data the central teams need. It’s the central management issue that MATs would really like to see supported by their MIS providers, and the better they are able to help with this, the more MATs will want to work with suppliers as long-term partners across the trust.

What do you see as the main differences between what academies need vs what MAT central teams need? Do you think there’s a need for an MIS which has been built with MAT central teams in mind as the primary user (similar to IMP in creating a finance system)?

¹The data was collected by The Key from a survey that went out to all multi academy trusts (with two or more schools) in England, by email. These surveys were split by trusts that had just one MIS across the group of schools, and trusts that used multiple MIS suppliers. It was not sent to trusts in the independent sector. The survey was completed by central team staff such as CEOs, COOs, CFOs and others involved in MIS operations, between 29 March and 27 April 2021.

Schools are choosing to move MIS more than they ever have before. There are plenty of options out there ranging from client-based to cloud, multi-phase to age-specific, and outcome-focused to all-in-one solutions.

The reasons schools choose to move in the first place are varied. Many convert to academies and sometimes they join a trust where a different MIS is in use so they switch as part of the joining process. Other times, they’ll use their change of status to academy as an opportunity to look at the MIS options available to them now that they are no longer under LA control.

Maintained schools are switching MIS too. For many, the traditional model of them being able to buy into an LA-purchased and supported MIS is disappearing as councils no longer retain budget or mandate solutions. For some, they never participated in the LA arrangement, choosing to do their own thing and looking at the market on a regular basis anyway.

But what it is that schools look for in a new MIS? What’s most important to them?

A recent survey¹ of 2,146 schools across England asked them to prioritise what they felt was the most important factor in terms of price, support, functionality, integration, partnership and reputation when looking for a new supplier. The results are outlined below:

Functionality was identified as the most important factor at just over 57%, with price coming second and integration a close third, within a couple of percentage of each other.

It makes sense that functionality would come out as the most important factor amongst schools. Ultimately there are certain functions an MIS has to perform to be fit for purpose, such as census which they all do, but there are a huge amount of processes and insights provided by your MIS which schools rely on every day.

The fact that the amount of respondents who said that price was the most important factor to them is fairly similar to the number of respondents who said that integration with other products was the most important factor to them tells an interesting story.

Without a doubt, schools are looking for best value when it comes to MIS, but this doesn’t necessarily mean cheapest. Equally, there is a drive to consolidate systems for sure, but schools don’t want this to at the expense of losing something else they might be using which is incredibly valuable to them; they want to be able to use the best of what’s available to them on the market so integration across solutions is important to them.

(It’s interesting as a similar survey was conducted amongst MAT leaders and, in that survey, functionality scored a much higher percentage; they seemed to be even less sensitive to price and gave more weight to how the product worked – presumably as there are specific MIS needs in trusts. We’ll cover this in another blog).

So, given that the majority of schools cite functionality as the main thing they’re looking for in a new MIS, the next question is: how happy are they with their existing MIS and how likely are they to move?

The survey asked respondents to rate how satisfied they were with their MIS, on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being extremely dissatisfied and 10 being extremely satisfied. The results are below, and the vast majority of suppliers got an average score of 6 or above:

It also asked how likely respondents are to move in the next 12 months, as outlined in the pie chart below:

Around 64% in total said they were either ‘unlikely’ or ‘very unlikely’ to move MIS in the next 12 months, so it seems almost two-thirds of schools are either happy with what they’ve got, or don’t see moving MIS as a priority in the next 12 months.

That said, 311 respondents, which is just over 14%, said they were either ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ to move in the next 12 months – if this is a reflection across the whole market then we can expect lots of movement from one MIS to another in the next year or so.

Ultimately, if schools are citing functionality as the main thing they look for in a new MIS, how confident are MIS suppliers that their functionality is truly meeting the needs of schools? Aside from the basics, what makes one stand apart from the other?  We’ll be exploring this, amongst other things, in more detail in subsequent posts and would love to hear your views; what do you think users are you looking for in their MIS?

¹The data was collected by The Key from a survey that went out to all primary, secondary, special schools and pupil referral units in England, by email. It was not sent to independent schools. The survey was completed by Headteachers, Deputy and Assistant Heads, and School Business Managers / Leaders between 29 March and 27 April 2021.

As part of the survey, respondents were asked which MIS they use. The results are outlined below:

The next in our series of EdTech Thought Leader Q&A sessions is with Mark House, Product Manager at RM Education.

Mark was a teacher for over 20 years and has been working at RM as a Product Manager in the Education market now for 5 years. Our discussion includes:

• Whether education technology in the UK and globally needs to be more innovative; what’s stopping it?
• RM’s work on innovation in assessment that will save teachers time, but also take away the issue with unconscious bias.
• Any advice Mark would give on looking at new technology, and seeing how this fits with delivering an innovative solution.
• Where Mark sees the next big thing in Edtech?

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

Sarah and I have a big interest in what it means to be a Digital Nomad. We love travelling and, as we are consultants, we want to be available for our clients as much as we can . . . and the one approach to enable both of these in our life is to be a Digital Nomad. 

We were fortunate to be asked to talk at Bett Asia 2020 (unfortunately Coronavirus put an end to that and the show was postponed to June 2020) but we’d arranged meetings in Kuala Lumpur so we thought we would make the most of the experience and tag on a 2 week holiday where we also see what it is like to work as part of the touring about. 

So, with bags packed we planned to go to Kuala Lumpur then onto Koh Lanta and then finishing off in Ao Nang before returning to the UK…. so here we go

The first test obviously is that you need an extra hand bag for the laptop and charger ect…which is fine, but adds a little more weight to the journey and a little anxiety about losing the laptop!! 

Kuala Lumpur

Meetings aside, neither of us were as effective at our usual running-the-business work in KL.  The jet lag kicked in so little work was done.

Koh Lanta

What a place! The hotel (Costa Lanta) is built with Digital Nomads in mind and served great mango lassies. I should have pitched up with tie dye fabric trousers!!  

It is so relaxing and we stayed in one of their bamboo huts, right on the beach just to get that full Thai experience. The services that they offer for Digital Nomads are top and you can do any work that you need to do, along with the ability to fully relax. To be honest,  Koh Lanta is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Both Sarah and I feel that we have relaxed and are fully refreshed. Regarding the work, to be honest it has been easy, most of the work we have done has been via phone (emails mainly).

Ao Nang

Back on the Thailand mainland and into a larger town in Krabi, working from Ao Nang has been a dream.  Tons of wifi everywhere, a great hotel with large rooms and aircon so talking with clients has been easy. The time has meant most of our hangouts, etc. have been late afternoon/early evening which has worked brilliantly and allowed us to do things during the day.

So, is being a digital nomad realistic? There are pros and cons:

Pros

• There’s the ability to be available to clients even when away which means you can maintain continuity with any project and avoid being a bottleneck.
• You get to be anywhere you like and experience any lifestyle you choose!
• Accommodation is making it easier for people to get online quickly
• The time difference ensures that you have time out and don’t fixate on work.

Cons

• You have to take a laptop with you at least (maybe more kit too – depending on the type of work you do) so you need to keep it secure
• You rarely get face-to-face time with your clients which is so important in our industry and a massive part of our consultancy work
• The time difference can make it hard to hit the right time for everyone to catch up if on hangouts… face to face is easier to communicate complex issues 
• There are lots of distractions (e.g. the beach!) so you have to be disciplined

It can be done – but it really depends on your work. You still need to set expectations with your clients about your availability and you need to set expectations with yourself and be sure not to overload yourself. 

Ultimately the more you plan and communicate, the better!