As school and trust leaders, we are all no doubt feeling the constant strain and pressure of our finite budgets. In this economic climate, it is becoming ever more important that we spend these precious funds on resources and services that give us the best value for money, meet our specific needs, and ensure we are saving where we can. As a result, effective procurement is now more critical than ever.
Over the last few years, our trust has been on a journey to assess and review our outgoings to ensure our third-party services are working as efficiently as possible and staff can get on with doing the job at hand – educating our pupils.
Our Management Information Service (MIS) was a key part of this process as it is a central cog in any trust’s machine – it provides vital intelligence into what is happening across the trust and, hopefully, makes the day-to-day job of those who use it easier. We wanted a system that would be financially sound, high quality, intuitive for staff and provide long-term savings due to operational transformation. When it became time to tender at the end of our current contract and because our trust had grown, I was apprehensive. It was the first time I was using a Department for Education (DfE) framework in this way, and I had reservations about whether it could find the right resource, best value, and best price for our trust compared to going direct. In hindsight, I need not have worried.
To start the process, I first looked internally. Consolidating our third-party costs was important but we also wanted to ensure we had the best services for our schools, as getting the balance right between cost saving and the best product can be tricky. This internal assessment provided an excellent opportunity for us to explore our current set-up. We discussed as a team what we were currently doing, why we were doing it that way, and if there was an opportunity to be innovative and do something different and better.
We also knew that we needed a system that provided a central point that we could all access across the trust, but equally gave autonomy to our schools to use as they wish. It needed to be flexible to adapt to the unique needs of our primary and secondary schools.
These valuable conversations helped to guide our procurement process as we had a clear idea of what we were looking for. For example, we decided our safeguarding service was fully embedded and working excellently for us, whereas we wanted our new MIS to help communicate more easily with parents, helping to set our brief. It also showed us that we wanted a MIS provider that is always evolving so that we could grow with them as the trust expands.
Another element which we found to be invaluable through the procurement process was to talk to existing customers from different providers – both the contacts they provided and our own connections – to paint a true picture of the benefits and challenges of different MIS providers.
We had a positive experience through the Department for Education’s G-Cloud 12 framework and have since appointed Arbor, whose system provided everything we needed. Throughout this process, Arbor worked transparently with us, which was refreshing. The framework ensured we were legally compliant, saved us time compared to conducting competitive tenders, covered much of the due diligence for us and in the end, offered us the best price too.
For others about to enter the MIS procurement process, here are my top tips to procure the best MIS for your trust:
Explore extra systems which are needed to support your current MIS and identify any savings that could be made by migrating to a new service.
Consider systems that are so deeply embedded and work so well, that you would not choose to use one that was baked into a new MIS.
Review all the systems your trust uses that rely on MIS and ensure that they will work with your new provider.
Review your workflows in the light of a new MIS and ensure it enables flexibility.
Speak to a variety of MIS providers – do your research before entering the procurement process by speaking to different providers so you can understand what is available to you.
Consider the direction of travel of different MIS. Do they have a history of being constantly improved and developed?
Speak to existing customers - both reference sites and those whom MIS providers would rather hide from you!
Consider a framework to ensure that contracts are awarded fairly and compliantly, giving you peace of mind that you've found the right MIS for your trust.
The CST Blog welcomes perspectives from a diverse range of guest contributors. The opinions expressed in blogs are the views of the author(s), and should not be read as CST guidance or CST’s position.
