As it’s Valentine’s Day it seems only right to tackle the issue of love and, specifically: is your company any good at it?  Many, many companies will say they ‘love their customers’ but do they really?  Or are they guilty of bad love?

Bad love is where you really absolutely genuinely love your customer . . .  based on the fact they provide you with £XX revenue per year.  Would you still love them and spend so much time on them if they didn’t provide that income?  If you were being honest, would you say it’s the money you love, not the customer?

Good love is where you absolutely genuinely love your customers and if it ends a fruitful financial relationship then great!  And even if it doesn’t then your business will still gain in brand and reputation as you build a network of contacts who regard you as helpful, professional, willing to go the extra mile and not just interested in the next order.  Yours will be the sort of business they recommend to others even if they don’t need your services themselves right now.

Love your customers for who they are, not how much they are worth to you financially.  As with all relationships, the stronger they are the happier you will be.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

How good are you at predicting the future? This image has resurfaced as the article was written 110 years ago and talks about climate issues linked to coal – amazing foresight! What it doesn’t get quite right is the timeline; it says “the effect may be considerable in a few centuries” when actually we’re at a crisis point already.

How often do businesses fall into the trap of thinking a problem is somewhere out there on the horizon when it’s really about to smack them in the face?

I work with the edtech industry and there are quite a few examples I can think of:

👉 The need to access all teaching, learning and school management technology from outside of the school came into VERY sharp focus in the face of lockdowns – lots of people were caught out.

👉 With the academisation agenda, the way schools make decisions and purchase solutions has been turned on its head which has had a major effect on some company business models that probably thought they were safe (the school MIS market in particular).

👉 Free and ‘freemium’ solutions have changed what schools are willing to pay for, you need to find ways to add extra value or risk being ditched altogether.

Here’s what can you do to future-proof your edtech business:

• Listen to your customers
• Encourage employees to speak up – find out what your workforce wants
• Challenge every assumption
• Embrace imperfection
• Iterate, don’t reinvent – be agile
• Be willing to grow
• Test out new marketing strategies
• Harness the power of tech

I’ll talk more about each of these in future blogs, but we also cover all of these in detail within our coaching programme.

How are you future-proofing your education business?

In this next #FinnemoreFireside chat we’re catching up once again with  Stephen Bilboe, CEO at WCBS. Our initial conversation was over a year ago back in March 2021 (you can watch the full interview here) and, since then, lots has changed – including the first schools going live with HUBmis.

Amongst other things, Stephen and I chatted about:

• Why rebuilding works best when it comes to UI and UX
• Taking schools on your journey with you when it comes to change
• The value of offering pilots to schools
• Recent changes in the MIS market, private equity investors, and what might happen next amongst the competitors
• How the pandemic has affected what’s important to the independent and international education sectors
• Lessons learnt from the release of HUBmis, and what’s next
• WCBS academy, accreditation, and the benefits it brings to schools

Enjoy!

Our next fireside chat is with Schools ICT Service Manager and all-round MIS expert, Keren Wild.

Schools ICT is a fully traded service of NYCC working through North Yorkshire Education Services (NYES), which means they work with all types of organisations and education settings across the UK, not just in North Yorkshire.

We’ve known Keren for many years, and it’s great to speak with colleagues from MIS support teams as it gives such a unique and insightful view of the landscape. In this Q&A, we chat about a wide range of topics including:

• The North Yorks framework and how this has given choice to the schools
• The value that Support Teams offer to Edtech companies; how support teams protect their schools and take away the pain of IT
• How technology has encouraged primary schools to make different choices, especially with the added pressure of Covid closures
• How Support Teams will evolve in the future to include wider services, multi-MIS, more competition, and becoming being a partner to MATs
• Academisation and its role in moving Primary schools to cloud-based solutions
• The role of Senior leaders in the decision change MIS, and how this can be a challenge
• How well schools’ understand data and what an MIS can do for them
• Anytime, anywhere access to MIS and how this has become even more important since Covid
• How secondary schools feel about cloud MIS options
• Usability and change, and what challenger MIS could do to make their solutions slicker
• The difference between ‘one-stop shop’ and ‘best of breed’ solutions
• The opportunities for Edtech to partner with support providers as they have insights and connections which will give Edtech companies insights to the customer

The next in our series of Q&As with edtech business leaders is with Barry Anns, Chief Executive Officer at Engage MIS and Group Head of International at Education Horizons Group.

Engage MIS has been widely adopted by independent and international schools in 60 countries across six continents.

In this interview, Nick talked to Barry about:

• What is important to Engage and where is your focus in the Edtech market?
• What do you think will be the impact of the sale of SIMS will be on schools and the market (including the international markets?)
• How is the international market different and how are you achieving success? Why would it be hard for UK based solutions to compete?
• If you were to predict the future, where would you see the MIS market shaping up to be in 5 years time?
• There are a large number of overlapping solutions HR/MIS/Learning tools; do you think will we ever see a consolidation of these solutions?

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

I have now been working with a number of companies across the Edtech market for over 18 years. The one thing that always inspires me is the innovative, engaging companies that want to get it right.

However, there are a number of companies that just do not understand the Education market.  And so, while they may have a great solution, they are not really working on their Product Strategy and how they need to adapt to a market where relationships and advocates are essential to strong growth and success.

The Education market is unique in many ways to other private sector markets and as an Edtech company you need to be able to talk the right language and work in a slightly different way. If I was a MAT or a school there should be 3 key things I would be looking for in a company, never mind the solution they are selling to me.

Relationship

Does this company want to work in partnership?  This means not going missing, once you have sold to a school or MAT.

A School is an exceedingly busy place with lots of challenging priorities for peoples time. The person in the office could be putting a plaster on a knee one minute and then dealing with the police on a bullying incident the next. But ultimately the children come first, not embedding a solution. A school needs support throughout this process and then ongoing support with new functionality and getting the most out of a solution.

Just because a school is paying for a solution doesn’t mean they are using it, eventually a school will stop paying and never go back. As a company stay in touch, help out!!

Also there are companies that can add support which are local to schools, engage with them to help make the most of a solution.

What the solution does now

Many schools don’t have the time to do an audit on their solutions, but I suggest they should. Remember, a solution is there to support a need.

Schools should look at their own processes and ask the question:

• Can this be done better via a technical solution or by a different solution?
• Are my incumbent solutions really meeting our needs anymore?
• Are our needs the same as a bigger school down the road? if not consider looking at lighter solutions or a reduction in cost due to the amount of the solution you are using.
• For the need that the solution meets, is the cost acceptable, is there an alternative?

Needs change along with your ambitions, so should companies to meet your needs.

The Future

Technology and challenges in schools are changing at a rapid pace. As a school or MAT you need to be comfortable that the Edtech partners you have are able to rise to this challenge.

To this end, I would be asking the companies you are working with for a view on their vision. Where they see the Edtech market moving towards, and how they are going to meet these future challenges for schools and MATs.

Gain an understanding of are they nimble or slow, will they let you down in the future? Will they listen to you and help find solutions to your needs in the future?

I am sure there are many other things a school or MAT is looking for in a company, when they are dealing with them, let me have your thoughts?

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.

“When are you going to stop for breath?”

One of the most embarrassing but defining moments of my work life.

I was rubbish at selling – despite being at least 4 years into my career as a salesperson. I was at a meeting with two ladies showing them our product (just as I’d been taught in training), telling them all the benefits (just as my manager had said) and generally following the script.

When they asked me at the end when I was going to stop for breath I realised I was doing it all wrong.

I didn’t know what they wanted or what was important to them. I hadn’t listened to that at all.

They didn’t go on to buy. But I learnt the art of shutting the hell up.

Working with a company recently, the Marketing Manager said to me “We tried an awareness raising campaign, it didn’t work”.  I asked her exactly what it was they had tried; she told me they had crafted an email full of useful tips on how to get the best out of their product and had sent it out to their customer base but had seen virtually no increase in usage at all.  I asked what else she had done, and she told me that was it.  Just the one email.

This made me think of a learning programme called Super-Memo.  It was developed by a Polish researcher called Piotr Wozniak and is based on the premise that the more often you are reminded of a word, number or fact, the longer you will remember it.  An example would be to imagine you’ve just got a new mobile with a new number which you’ve had to learn.  Without regularly saying that number over time it will become increasingly difficult to remember.  In order to remember something the ideal points at which to refresh your memory are after one day, ten days, thirty days and then sixty days.

So why not do the same with your marketing?  A single e-shot is unlikely to be successful and, in many cases, may not even be opened.  But a sustained awareness campaign sent over the course of several weeks will start to make your company and your products feel more familiar and therefore more memorable for the customer.   Which means when your customer needs the type of product or service you offer, you company will be the one that springs to mind.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Jurassic Park, 1993

Sound business advice there. Just because you can build it, it doesn’t mean you should.

So why do so many tech companies go all Jurassic Park on us and stuff their solutions with things their users really don’t want or need?

I see it happen a lot in my industry – the Edtech sector – ultimately to the detriment of the company and their clients. If you want to avoid this pitfall keep these 3 things in mind with everything you develop:

1. Keep it simple to begin with and create a product which deals with a specific Big Problem
2. Keep focus but keep iterating, all the while solving bigger, related problems
3. Constantly refer back to the vision of the Big Problem that will be solved. If it doesn’t help don’t do it!