The next in our series of Q&As with edtech business leaders is with James Weatherill, CEO of Arbor Education.
Since their inception in 2011, Arbor has established themselves in the MIS market with their cloud MIS and analytical insights.
In this interview, Nick and James discuss the driving force behind Arbor, what makes it unique, the huge role support teams play in the MIS market and predictions for the future.
We’ve split it into three parts to make it easy to digest. Enjoy!
Next in our series of Q&As with edtech thought leaders is Ali Guryel of Bromcom.
As the Chairman and Managing Director of Bromcom Computers Plc, Ali is responsible for the strategic development of the company products and markets.
Check out Nick and Ali’s virtual get together below. Here Ali talks about why he believes schools and academies need a one-stop-shop, and what differentiates Bromcom from the other MIS suppliers out there.
We’ve split the full interview into parts to make it a bit easier to digest. Enjoy!
During lockdown, Nick took the opportunity to have a virtual get together with Phil Neal to talk all things MIS.
Really interesting views on everything from the inception of SIMS, the future of the market, the role of support teams, the big questions MAT leaders should be asking and a great deal more.
We’ve split the full interview into parts to make it a bit easier to digest – enjoy!
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.
If you’re thinking of moving to one of the cloud-based MIS in the market, the concept of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) will definitely be on your mind. If not, the cloud suppliers will certainly be making a big point about it. But what’s the real effect on TCO when you make the move?
For a start, it’s worth defining exactly what TCO is so we understand what we’re dealing with. The Investopedia’s definition is:
“The total cost of ownership (TCO) is the purchase price of an asset plus the costs of operation. Assessing the total cost of ownership represents taking a bigger picture look at what the product is and what its value is over time.”
This means that, to understand the TCO of your existing non-cloud based MIS you need to add together the annual software costs, the hardware and networks costs and any training, professional services and hardware support costs. You also need to take into account the actual time it takes your staff to operate it as a client-based solutions (we’re not talking day-to-day users here, we’re talking running updates and that sort of thing).
Now you have a baseline you can start looking at how moving to a cloud-based MIS will look for you.
Let’s look at the physical environment first. Cloud-based MIS means you have zero need for a server. You just need devices that are able to access the internet using whatever browser that MIS requires. All the decent MIS providers support all the main ones so you will likely already have devices in your school. The human cost of maintaining servers is also reduced so your IT staff will be free to work on other things.
(As an aside, it’s also worth talking about the fact that, if you go completely cloud-based as a school for all systems, there is a huge energy saving to be had. You’re not running servers in special rooms with aircon so there are massive financial and economical advantages! If you want to understand how much you could save drop us a line as we can point you in the direction of a couple of great companies who can help with this).
Cloud-based MIS means you’re also moving to a SaaS model of buying your MIS. SaaS means Subscription-as-a-Service; you’re not having to pay out huge amounts at the beginning for licences, you simply sign a contract for the number of months/years you want it for. A bit like Netflix or a gym membership.
But moving to a new MIS always has a cost associated as you’re ultimately asking people to start using a brand new system they’re unfamiliar with. You’ll need to factor in training time and costs.
The thing is, your staff may not know the new cloud MIS inside out but they do know MIS! They just need to find out what’s different in the new system and get used to using it. And the big benefit about tech moving on and cloud-based systems is that they are much more intuitive and easier to use than learning legacy systems.
Overall, the TCO of moving to cloud MIS always reduces and there are lots of schools, academies and MATs out there who will testify to the cost saving.
I think what’s really overlooked is how much you gain. The flexibility of being able to access everything everywhere and the IT/admin workload you take away from staff frees them up to be able to do much, much more for you school.
Just think about it, how many systems do you know of that are not in the cloud?
What’s the role of Management Information Systems in schools these days? Something to save teachers time? That’s what is was first invented for in the 80’s but it’s not what it’s about now.
Something to give the government more insight? While government and academy chiefs want to know more about each child, teachers say data entry has become burdensome and a source of stress.
We work with MIS suppliers all the time but I wanted the opinion of a school leader, so I asked my headteacher friend what she thinks schools need from an MIS. Her response was straight to the point:
So what do you choose to achieve the above?
There are more choices available now than ever. Local MIS support units who traditionally only supported a single supplier now offer their customers a range of MIS contracts. They support the process, not the product.
MIS will continue to evolve as schools and academies evolve – it has to. There’s no point in sticking with the old way of doing things purely because “this is what we’ve always done”.
There was a time when LA teams provided pretty much all IT solutions and services to their schools and the schools bought into them without question. They tended to be the only local solution available and, historically, this is what had always been done.
But, as the way authorities and schools were funded was gradually changed (and mostly reduced), the dynamic between schools and support teams changed. Sadly some LAs decided they no longer wanted to fund support teams at all and I know there were cases where teams were disbanded altogether or acquired by a third party. Independent teams started to form out of the old authority-schools-only teams and they were happy to work with schools outside of the traditional LA boundaries. This was great news for schools for two reasons:
By and large, the evolving support team dynamic worked.
What it did do, however, is leave a big question mark over the MIS services they provide and the options open to schools. A big chunk of LA teams were SIMS support teams. This meant that, each year, they committed to Capita to provide SIMS support for all their maintained schools and, in return, their maintained schools were able to access the authority-owned SIMS licence for a certain amount of money (each support team then traded their own SIMS licence and support SLA with their own schools, Capita did not get involved in the support of these maintained schools).
When academisation started to happen it meant schools were no longer maintained, LA-led schools but individual entities in their own right. They could no longer access the LA-owned SIMS licence so had to purchase an MIS themselves. It caught many off-guard to begin with, having done the same thing the same way for so long, but it wasn’t long before MATs and academies started to use the opportunity to look at ALL the MIS available out there and modernise their systems. It’s easy enough to procure a new SaaS MIS, and many saw an opportunity for change to an easy-to-use, cloud-based solution.
And change is exactly what they have done. According to their websites, Bromcom is in over 50 MATs and Arbor work with 73 MATs and groups. On the primary front, Scholarpack have 27 MATs listed on their site and Pupil Asset work with 20% of the largest MATs in England.
So where does this leave the SIMS support teams? MATs and academies often still want to buy into local support (they still want to work with the colleagues they’ve built such great relationships with) but they want a choice of MIS.
At the end of the day, the progressive support teams understand that it doesn’t really matter which MIS a school or academy uses and they offer multi-MIS support.
As they will tell you, they “support the process not the product!”. Their priority has always been helping their schools achieve their goals, and it’s something they plan to continue to do in the future – irrespective of the systems they use.
P.S. All the cloud-based MIS suppliers above welcome local teams getting involved with the support for their solutions and have created support partnership programmes. They’re all exhibiting at Bett London in Jan 2020 next month if you’d like to chat with them, or we can put you in touch with them if you’d prefer – just drop us a line.
Sarah & Nick
Last Tuesday I was fortunate enough to be invited to the SNUG MIS day (thank you to John and Dave from OSMIS for inviting me) which gave me the ability to directly compare MIS cloud-based solutions for the UK Edtech market. I have to say a lot of the solutions have moved on and are now direct competitors to SIMS, and it certainly appeared to be the feeling within the room of support team colleagues.
I have always highlighted to Capita the need to bring out their SIMS8 Primary solution ASAP or the competitor solutions would catch-up and overtake what SIMS is offering schools/MATs (both during my time with SIMS and now as an independent consultant). This has now become a reality!!
More and more customers are starting to realise this and have either decided to move or are challenging the status quo. You can see with Josh Perry’s analysis that SIMS are losing customers, especially in the Primary market. This trend is only going to increase over the next 2-3 years in my opinion.
The different MIS solutions major on different things to support schools, but what all of them are offering is a fully integrated solution where the e-payment (Scholarpack is an exception here) and communication solutions are just part and parcel of the MIS, they are not bolt-ons or third party solutions. In my view, here’s how they differ:
Now for my request from the different MIS providers (and this includes SIMS): a lot of what I saw was very similar functionality to SIMS7 but it was either implemented better or the UI/UX was a lot stronger. However, all the presentations continued to refer to SIMS as the standard. I feel everyone should look to be further on than this. They are already comparative to SIMS – I think schools and academies need them all to think about what the true next generation of MIS is!
I’d like to see more on workflows, reducing the need for manual intervention. I’d also like to see more on Data Analysis and the use of AI/machine learning to provide true insights as to what is occurring in the school/MAT.
It’s one thing answering the questions where MATs and schools know they need an answer. But how do you answer the questions they don’t yet know they need to ask??
UK schools spend around £85 billion EVERY YEAR! The education market is a dynamic, innovative sector that loves new technology and ideas which have a genuine impact on young people’s lives. So why are schools so difficult to sell to? How many of these frustrations have you felt:
My guess is you may have felt most of the above as almost everyone selling into education does!
The truth of it is, selling to schools is VERY different to business and consumer selling. Schools are under enormous pressure to perform from the government and parents alike while, at the same time, managing a complex and usually dwindling budget.
Add to that the fact that they are being sold to by everyone and receive literally hundreds of pieces of sales literature (emails, letters, brochures, phone calls) every week. Your message will really need to resonate to cut through all the noise.
To successfully sell to schools you need to have the following:
There are more tips in my blog 3 mistakes nearly everyone makes when selling to schools. It’s not easy cracking the education market but it’s a genuinely innovative and rewarding market when you do ?
So you’ve created a product, be it a piece of technology, clever software or an invaluable service, and you’re pretty sure it’s something schools need and would love to buy. But when you start contacting schools to tell them about your fabulous product by post, phone and email you get no response. Where are you going wrong?
Selling to schools is VERY different to business and consumer selling. Schools are under enormous pressure to perform from the government and parents alike while, at the same time, managing a complex and usually dwindling budget. Here are the top 3 mistakes nearly everyone makes when selling to schools:
1. Schools are buildings – they don’t buy.
Companies tend to try and sell to schools generically as if it is the actual school that’s going to buy. But schools are buildings, bricks and mortar, it’s the people inside who will have a need for your product. Have you thought about who it is you need to target? Will your product support teaching and learning and, if so, do you know which teachers to try and contact? Is your product designed to save time and money in the office and, if so, do you know who the business manager is? Thinking about your end user will help you reach the right person.
2. Decisions take time because there are lots of people involved
Salespeople often wonder why a school hasn’t purchased because they don’t take into account the decision-making process for schools; they almost always forecast the sale to close way too soon (if at all!). In schools, it’s not unusual for the vast majority of purchasing decisions to go to a Governors meeting for discussion and approval and this may only happen once a month. In addition, if a purchase is over a certain threshold then they usually need to speak to other suppliers and get quotes to be absolutely sure they’re getting best value. This means the sales cycle can be quite long and is very competitive – you need to make sure your product offers real value! In the case of really large purchases a full competitive tender will be required which can take months so you need to forecast carefully.
3. Never underestimate the power of peer-to-peer recommendations
Teachers, school leaders and support staff respect the opinions of their peers within the education industry. If you can build a relationship with a team at a school and prove the value of your product or service then the introductions they can make for you could be priceless. However, it works both ways so not making good on a promise or delivering something of low quality could lead to a dent in your reputation. Either way, never underestimate the power of peer-to-peer recommendations, education networks are vital when selling to schools.
These are my top 3 common mistakes but there are many, many more! What’s your biggest challenge when selling to schools?