We’ve been privileged to speak with even more edtech and industry thought leaders throughout 2023 as part of our #FinnemoreFireside chats, and the insight they continue to provide to us and our community is invaluable.

Thanks to Catherine Tallis of HFL Education, a long-standing provider of MIS support to schools, for discussing how support teams must adapt as the MIS market continues to evolve.

Thanks to Derek Hills from Ark for sharing your views on where you see AI fitting into technology budgets and the broader education landscape, and what the future of MIS might be.

It’s great to speak with thought leaders from government so thank you to Edtech NED, legislator, schools and education expert Jim Knight for your thoughts on the disconnect between the education and labour market, and the need for a school system which truly meets the needs of learners, communities and employers.

Thank you to Chris Kirk of CJK Associates Ltd for your insight into MAT’s needs in terms of vision, strategy, operating models and governance, and what this means for suppliers – both now and in the future.

Our chat with Lyndon Stickley and Sam Curtis of iplicit is essential listening for everyone with an interest in finance as they discuss the importance of change in the education sector and the need for flexibility and adaptability in finance and management systems

Thank you to Ollie Burnett from the school support team in Coventry for talking to us about all the valuable ways they support their schools, including helping them procure and migrate to their new MIS as a group earlier this year.

Finally, we were delighted to speak with Izzi Dorrian and Ed Butcher, founders of the brilliant Habitude workflow platform, for an insightful discussion on the evolving landscape of MATs, the importance of infrastructure, and the need for a clear vision.

As always, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed making the series and are looking forward to a fantastic 2024!

Have a great Christmas break

Best wishes from Sarah & Nick

——————————————————————————-

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.

On the back of a LOT of requests from schools, academies, partners and MATS, this September we were pleased to independently host a series of MIS Discovery Sessions.

Who were the Sessions for?

What did the Discovery Sessions cover?

Bromcom MIS Discovery Session

Arbor MIS Discovery Session

IRIS Ed:gen MIS Discovery Session

Our next fireside chat this year is with education thought leader, Sue Macgregor of Alps Education.

Sue brings a wealth of sector experience to our chat, having had a long and varied career in teaching and leadership, before moving to Alps Education to lead the Education and Product Development teams.

At Alps Education, their focus is on providing the right analytical tools to schools so they have the power to help every student achieve their full potential. Their platforms provide KS4 and KS5 performance insights that help teachers and leaders to celebrate strengths, action any gaps and drive-up student achievement.  

It’s a great fireside chat, and Sue provides loads of insight into:

• Her background in education, the trials and tribulations of Ofsted (and the pride in obtaining ‘Outstanding’ rating), her move into the world of edtech, and why she works at Alps Education
• Her role at Alps Education leading teams including many other former education leaders, and the context and experience that brings
• How tech has to work for the people who use it – not everyone loves data so it must fit in with what they need. Data can’t solve your problems but it can flag potential issues.
• The value and importance of asking the question “So what?”
• The ways assessment policy has changed, and how schools can work without baseline data (as a result of covid lockdowns)
• Given what we’ve all learned through the pandemic and homeschooling, how assessment policy might look in the future; it’s a wasted opportunity to simply return to what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years.
• How Alps methodology is different, and their mantra of “what’s next?” and allowing students to move forward
• What edtech companies should be thinking of when developing new solutions for educators and leaders, both now and in the future.
• The importance of being transparent, and empowering school leaders, teachers and staff
• Future plans for Alps Education, and developments and innovations the education community can expect to see in the coming months and years.

We’ve split the interview into three shorter parts for you to watch and listen to – enjoy!

“It saves you time.”

This is something that is often said about MIS, but what does it mean? More importantly, how effective do schools feel their MIS actually is at saving them time?

A recent survey¹ of 2,146 schools asked, amongst other things, how effective they felt their MIS is at saving them time. The overall results are outlined in the pie chart below:

As you can see, the majority of respondents (just over a third at 38.85%) went for the middle ground and said it was ‘Somewhat effective’. That said, a combined total of 43% did say they felt it was either Very or Extremely effective which is good news for suppliers as it indicates users must be feeling some time-saving benefits from their solutions.

We can also break this down further by MIS; the chart below shows survey results for the ‘Big 5’ (who, between them, they make up 96% of school market share²):

But what does the idea of ‘saving time’ actually mean when it comes to systems and users? There are a number of ways of defining it, here are just a few:

1. The MIS literally takes a basic, manual process and uses software to make it easier. A good example of this would be the school census; it has to be done in a certain timeframe, it’s very data-heavy, and the role of MIS in this is to make it as automated as possible, therefore saving time.

2. The MIS brings an automated element to improve a process and create a more complete view. A good example of this is the ability to record and manage behaviour within MIS; it’s something that all schools have (and use things such as paper report cards in secondary) but, once they start to utilise their MIS for this, the increased shared knowledge means teachers have the info at their fingertips and don’t need to waste time searching for it.

3. The MIS completely replaces the way something has always been done to make it easier and slicker. For example, communicating with parents used to be via letters and reports. MIS’ offer the ability to email, text and direct message via apps, plus parent portals. Another good example is the handling of money; everything from school dinner management to online trip payments can now be done online, completely replacing the original processes and saving time.

4. The MIS provides insight that would otherwise have been time-consuming to find out. A good example of this is analytics and dashboards which draw on data from a number of sources to help leaders ask questions, and also provide answers.

5. The MIS suggests courses of action based on data. This is something we have yet to see in use in a big way, but the idea is that your MIS can make some suggestions to you using machine learning based on a combination of what it has seen work in the past, plus your usual actions. Think about when you shop online at Amazon, the site makes suggestions for other products based on your purchases and what other customers go on to buy. A school-based example could be that various intervention suggestions are made when behaviour incidents are recorded, and these could be based on past actions combined with, say, the MATs own intervention policy. The time savings here could be enormous – as well as getting a strategy in place sooner to help the child.

So there are definitely ways MIS solutions can save time, it’s really a matter of understanding how.

As an MIS supplier, saying you “save schools time” isn’t a meaningful statement anymore that sets you apart from the competition. It’s a given that a solution will do that; your unique value proposition should focus on how it will do it, why it’s important, and what benefits the school will get as a result.

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:

²Market share statistics are sourced from two excellent, independent blogs: Graham Reed’s Omega Pegasus and Josh Perry’s Bring More Data 

Over the summer holidays, Nick caught up with Scholarpack CEO, Richard Harley, for the next in our series of Q&As with edtech business leaders.

Scholarpack is the only MIS created specifically for primary schools. In this interview, Nick and Rich discuss why creating a unique MIS to meet the specific needs of primary schools has worked so well, and how the MIS educations sector might change in the future.

We’ve split it into three parts to make it easy to digest.  Enjoy!

Throughout many years of working with different companies, it is amazing how many people say the product sells itself. Yet the truth in many cases is:

• The solution has cost far more than it had to because they didn’t truly understand their market needs, so compensated by building everything a customer wants.
• They had no control on costs and this means no control on profit
• The price normally was too low, as no understanding of the competition or value was understood
• The product was not used to its full potential, so customers didn’t understand the true benefit
• The business doesn’t understand the value of the solution, so direction of where the business is going is organic, with no true vision.

Getting the Product culture right

This is where Product Managers are able to add value to a company. They drive the commercial success of a product and lead the cross functional teams to deliver a solution that meets the needs of customers and drives the greatest growth for the business. It is an important organisational role that:

• Sets the Vision and Strategy for the business solutions,
• Communicates the roadmap
• Defines the feature definition for a product or product line.
• (The position may also include marketing, forecasting, and profit and loss (P&L) responsibilities. In many ways, the role of a product manager is similar in concept to a CEO of a solution)

Product managers provide the deep product expertise needed to lead the organisation and make strategic product decisions which is why they analyse market and competitive conditions. They lay out a product vision that is differentiated and delivers unique value based on customer needs. The role spans many activities from strategic to tactical and provides important cross-functional leadership most notably between engineering, marketing, sales, and support teams.

The Product Manager needs to lead cross-functional teams from a product’s conception all the way through to its launch. Therefore, they are the person responsible for defining the Why? When and What? of the product that the engineering team builds – and it’s ultimate success.

According to McKinsey, if a software company grows at only 20%, it has a 92% chance of ceasing to exist within a few years.

This means that software companies – particularly SaaS companies – must look at every advantage possible to stay alive in an ever-competitive market.

Remember it is the small margins that can be the deciding factor as to how successful you are.

Customer analytics can be just one way that gives you that competitive edge.

Whether it is measuring retention, product usage, or on-boarding, SaaS businesses must have comprehensive data collection and usage analytics. This enables them to make agile decisions as to the priorities and direction of their overall solution.

When starting a project, make sure that usage analytics are part of the initial NFRs (Non-Functional Requirements).  Think about: what information do you want to understand and act upon.

Ask your stakeholders what information would they find useful to support their business area so they can offer the best service they possibly can.

Ensure the Architect and development lead build in these analytics from the beginning – you want the feedback at every opportunity.