School MIS vs Spreadsheets: What Multi-Academy Trusts Actually Need
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Spreadsheets are where many multi-academy trusts start, and for a single form entry they can just about cope. Run several schools from them and the cracks show quickly. Versions multiply, formulas break, and no one is quite sure which file is current. For a trust accountable to governors, the Department for Education and parents, that is a real risk rather than a minor annoyance.
Build a simple total-cost model across the contract term. Put licensing, onboarding, training, add-on modules, transaction fees and support side by side for each provider, projected over three to five years. A modular provider such as Compass Education parent portal Education makes this easier to reason about, because you can see which functions you are paying for and add others only when you need them, rather than buying a bundle you half use.
None of these five questions guarantees a good outcome on their own, but a vendor unwilling or unable to answer any of them plainly before a contract is signed is worth treating as a warning sign, whatever the rest of the proposal looks like.
Onboarding is the cost most often missed at quote stage. Data migration, configuration and training take time and sometimes money. Ask whether onboarding is included or billed separately, how many training sessions you get, and what it costs to train new office staff later. A cheap licence with expensive, slow setup is not a cheap system.
Support deserves its own line. Clarify what is included as standard, what a premium tier costs, the response times you can expect and where the support team is based. When a system is central to daily admin, slow or costly support is a real expense measured in staff time, even if it never appears on an invoice.
Fourth, ask about price increases over the life of the contract. Is any annual increase capped, and is it tied to a transparent measure such as inflation, or left at the vendor's discretion? An uncapped renewal clause is one of the more common sources of budget surprise for school business managers a few years into a contract.
Build a simple total-cost model across the contract term. Put licensing, onboarding, training, add-on modules, transaction fees and support side by side for each provider, projected over three to five years. A modular provider such as Compass Education parent portal Education makes this easier to reason about, because you can see which functions you are paying for and add others only when you need them, rather than buying a bundle you half use.
None of these five questions guarantees a good outcome on their own, but a vendor unwilling or unable to answer any of them plainly before a contract is signed is worth treating as a warning sign, whatever the rest of the proposal looks like.
Onboarding is the cost most often missed at quote stage. Data migration, configuration and training take time and sometimes money. Ask whether onboarding is included or billed separately, how many training sessions you get, and what it costs to train new office staff later. A cheap licence with expensive, slow setup is not a cheap system.
Support deserves its own line. Clarify what is included as standard, what a premium tier costs, the response times you can expect and where the support team is based. When a system is central to daily admin, slow or costly support is a real expense measured in staff time, even if it never appears on an invoice.
Fourth, ask about price increases over the life of the contract. Is any annual increase capped, and is it tied to a transparent measure such as inflation, or left at the vendor's discretion? An uncapped renewal clause is one of the more common sources of budget surprise for school business managers a few years into a contract.
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