With so much change going on in the UK MIS sector, I thought it was time to have a conversation with one of the big MIS support teams to understand how their business is changing too.

Last week I had a virtual get together with Director of School Business Services Ltd, Mark Tadman, to talk about how his company supports schools in their use of MIS, amongst other things. Mark and Tina started the business back in 2008 and have always been clear that the goal is to provide schools with the freedom to teach; with their managed services and budget planning software, they aim to save taxpayers money and allow schools to focus on teaching on learning.

Some of the questions we discuss include:

• In what ways has the business changed recently (especially around MIS)?
• Do you think that commercial school service teams are going to have to expand on the types of solutions supported?
• With the change in the MIS and tracker market, how does this affect your vision and strategy?
• Who do you think will be the winners in the MIS space?
• Do you feel the Capita SIMS FM agreement with Local Authorities will stay in place even if someone does buy SIMS?
• How would you make it a more competitive and innovative market?

We’ve split it into three parts to make it easier to digest. Hope you like it, and we’d welcome your comments.

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!

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!

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:

1. For many schools, the relationship they had with individuals at local support teams would have been a key part in their school development plan and dynamic. They wanted to be able to keep working with the same colleagues that they have for 20+ years and this meant they were still able to do so.
2. For other schools, they wanted a support choice and they finally had it! Geographical boundaries stopped being an issue. E.g. if you were a school in the South East who wanted to use a service in the North West as they had a good reputation it was now possible.

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: 

Arbor

• Highlight how much they want to support the education of students by taking away the administrative burden of staff (incl. teachers).  
• A very clean UI/UX and had a strong MAT offering around analytics 
• The data analytics was not only MIS information, they were also drawing on national data to enable national comparisons.  
• The message coming from the company was very much “we want to work with you” and all about partnership. Great message and one that resonated with the audience.

Bromcom

• Major on their integrated BI analytics, it looks really strong.  
• Their message was a little more corporate.  
• Very simple looking solution (which is a positive!) and had adapted their solution to provide a strong UX and UI for Primary and another UI for Secondary. That said, some of the screens were a little busy. 
• They are definitely listening to their customers, which I am not sure the industry had felt up to this point.  

Pupil Asset

• Major on their tracking solution which is very well received in lots of schools across the country, and many schools go on to switch to the full MIS as a result of their good customer experience 
• Strong reporting functionality with their ‘School On A Page’ and ‘MAT On A Page’ reports 
• They also have something innovative (which, to be honest, I feel they should focus on more) in their ‘Live School’. This gives a visual view of the school e.g. if there is a behaviour issue in the school, in a visual model of the school you can see where the incident occurred. 

Scholarpack

• This is a solution focused purely at the primary school market and this is their strong brand, providing a solution that fits the primary schools. 
• It may not be as deep in functionality as some of the other solutions out in the market, but that light MIS is what primary schools want in my experience (most primary schools don’t use half of what is included in the deeper MIS) 
• Their MAT offering was light.  However, they are bringing out more MAT functionality soon. 
• I think they have hit the Primary segment spot on. They will need to look over their shoulders a little as Bromcom and Arbor also have a Primary solution and as MATs get larger with multi phased schools.  My experience is that they look for a single offering for all phases (most large MATs have either gone to Arbor or Bromcom) so this may become an issue for them in the longer term. 

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??