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?

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!

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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.

A few weeks ago Nick caught up with Ian Koxvold, currently Head of Education, Strategy and Corporate Development at Supporting Education Group, but many people might know him better for his years of strategic consultancy work across the education sector.

They talked about the changes across the education sector and what the future might hold in terms of new solutions and new strategies including:

• Ian’s background delivering projects across businesses and educational establishments to make them more effective or efficient
• The insight he gets working for Supporting Education Group as the largest provider of services to schools in the UK
• His perspective on consolidation, and how this has increased from maybe 2-3 players to around 10 in recent years
• What’s a good strategy for acquiring, and has consolidation peaked in his opinion
• The importance of use case analysis in any business, and using it to identify upsell and product integration opportunities
• How different products serve different use cases
• Advice for startups in the edtech space
• The concept of ‘one product for everything’ v ‘best of breed’ solutions
• School support services, the role they play in the evolving landscape, and future consolidation
• The perils of complacency when it comes to servicing your customer, and the potential pitfalls of having a dominant supplier in any given area
• How to measure the impact of solutions on schools and why this is important to success; should we be more ambitious about how we use data?
• The future of the MIS sector given recent changes, and what we might expect to see next
• Three things companies should be doing now to future-proof their business

We’ve split the interview into three parts to make it easier to digest – enjoy!

P.S. We’re aware that some of the audio is a bit rough in places so we’re working on getting a transcript created to accompany this Q&A – we’ll add once completed 🙂

The next in our series of Business Leader Q&A sessions is with Stephen Bilboe, Sales & Marketing Director at WCBS.

Founded in 1984, WCBS specialises in providing integrated management systems to Independent & International schools across three main areas: Admissions, MIS & Finance.  They’ve recently invested heavily in delivering next generation, cloud native systems that use the latest technology to achieve a much better user experience for Independent and International Schools.  This culminated in the launch of HUBmis in October 2020.

Stephen and I chatted about WCBS and the many changes happening in the MIS sector, including:

• Your focus is very much within the Independent and international schools market, do you see yourself ever moving into the maintained market?
• What makes you different from other Independent MIS solutions?
  Have you found the Covid situation has impacted your business, do you see yourselves working differently going forward?
• As an MIS business, what is going to be important to you over the next 2-3 years to continue to grow?
• What’s next for WCBS?

Is the sale of SIMS by Capita a good thing for the market?

“I have now spoken to a number of people inside and outside of the MIS space, and everyone is asking the same thing: do I think the sale of SIMS by Capita is a good thing for the market?

My answer on the whole is yes.

Capita, for a number of years, have been good custodians of SIMS and you can see this in the success it had for so long.  However, their market share has undoubtedly started to decline in recent years.

But SIMS can be rejuvenated with a new owner that understands how the education market works and allows SIMS to make decisions that are in the best of its customers.  I really do hope that educationalists are part of the board and the decision making process.

My understanding is that SIMS Primary is almost ready. It may not meet everyone’s needs 100% right away but it’s important it is released in order to gain feedback and improve.

SIMS Secondary is being built in a way that slowly allows schools to engage with it on a module by module basis. For example, SIMS Options is a SIMS Secondary cloud solution and Exams is due to follow, so secondary schools will be using SIMS8 with a SIMS7 core initially.

There’s lots of opportunity for SIMS under a new owner, but the MIS market is now more competitive than ever. It will be interesting to see what happens!”

Author: Nick Finnemore, Director

What a great 2019!!

I’m now 13 months into working for myself and running my own business and it’s great. Not only do I get to work with all sorts of inspiring people around the world, I also get to wear many hats and that variety makes me love my work.

Our Finnemore Consulting business focuses on helping business grow in the education sector. Sarah and I work with Exec teams on product strategy, biz dev, sales, product marketing, channel partnering, acquisition and client management. I’ve worked directly with foreign governments and we also get to work with educators, MATs and Support Teams directly who we’ve known for years – a definite bonus!

In addition, we’re proud to be part of the CJK Associates team. We support their work with investors and trade-buyers to help them find acquisitions, and with owners of small education companies who are looking to sell. With so much market movement going on in the Edtech sector it’s an exciting area of work.

In amongst all this I work with the excellent Tarigo in delivering Product Management and Leadership training across all sectors. It’s my area of expertise and it’s great to use this knowledge with new companies, from grads to experienced product leaders.

2020 looks like an exciting year ahead and I look forward to wearing more hats as the year goes on. If anyone’s going to #BettLondon or #BettAsia and would like to catch up, drop us a line.

I have worked with many CEOs who say the trouble with strategizing is that is all that happens.  They want action!

People can procrastinate around the strategy.  In many cases, boards are reluctant to spend money if there are potential questions unanswered. As Donald Rumsfeld said “known unknowns”.

However, as with a lot of situations in business, how do you know what is the right amount of information to make a decision?  You’re never going to know everything at the beginning and, like the rest of the product process, you will continue to iterate the strategy as you have more information and realign.

So why is it important to have a strategy?

A product strategy is essential to product execution and achieving the product’s business goals.

A strategy lays out a plan on how that goal will be achieved. Without a product strategy, product execution is often haphazard. You risk moving from one crisis to the next – or from one deal to the next, as you will be redirected by the different priorities of your internal stakeholders.

If you do not own the strategy, communicate it and get buy-in from all your stakeholders, everyone else will set a strategy in their heads. It will become hard to own the direction of your solution(s). This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be listening to all stakeholders, but you need to own the strategy and direction of your solution.

Remember you are the CEO of your Products!!

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.

As EdTech companies grow and the nature of technology evolves into the world of SaaS and apps, there’s often confusion around where Product Management should sit in the organisation.

Traditional consumer organisations have had a tendency to consider Product Management in the same arena as Marketing.  However, the danger here is when Marketing is actually ‘Marketing Communications’ (sadly often the case in EdTech) – it means that no-one is involved in defining and delivering the products.

In a lot of Tech companies, the Product Management function tends to be viewed in the technical arena, lumped in with the Development Directorate.  The problem here is that the Product Managers can get tied up in functionality and requirements. They can spend so much time building products that there is no-one engaging the customers to understand their problems; no-one looking ahead and strategising as to what the business needs to do in the future to continue to be successful

To drive the maximum success from a Product Management team, you need to understand exactly what their role is.

A successful Product Management Directorate looks at the needs of the entire business and the entire market.  It’s broadly comprised of three main focuses:

• Product strategy
• Product marketing
• Technical product management

The Product Management Directorate will focus the product management team on the business of building solutions for needs now and into the future.  The team will:

• engage and communicate with existing and potential customers
• articulate and quantify market problems
• create business cases and market requirements documents
• define standard procedures for product delivery and launch
• support the creation of collateral and sales enablement tools
• train the sales teams on the product

Within the EdTech market the truth is: if you want better products in the future, and for the product management team to be held accountable at organisational level, then it must be represented at Board level in its own right.

Perfectionism is just Procrastination in disguise . . . and Procrastination will kill a product release stone dead.

You see this happen all the time in software, and unfortunately Edtech is no exception!   Companies aim to only release a 100% perfect product because they fall into one of these traps:

1. They honestly believe they can create an amazing solution through ‘thinking things up’ in their office/bedroom/ivory tower.

What they really need to do is get their solution out into the real world to see if it really meets the customers’ needs.

2.  They’re scared of messing up so spend a lot of time strategizing to try and ensure they don’t fail at all.

The truth is the only way anyone can create an amazing solution is by putting it in front of your customers, getting feedback and learning from it.

The problem is that all this Perfectionism is bad for business.  Waiting and waiting to release what you believe to be the perfect solution simply allows your competitors to gain feedback, make improvements and win your market.  All you need is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to take to market and an open mind – the customers will tell you exactly what you need to do to create a perfect solution!

Photo by Braydon Anderson on Unsplash