Bromcom have won their second Welsh Authority, adding the secondary schools in Ceredigion to their portfolio. This means they now have an authority in both the north and the south of Wales.
Bromcom won their first Welsh authority back in July 2024, when Wrexham awarded them the contract for all their schools and now they have added Ceredigion to their successes. These Welsh contracts sit alongside their country-wide contract to provide the MIS for all schools in Northern Ireland. All three of these contracts were previously held by ESS SIMS and total around 1250 schools.
The Welsh authority wins, in particular, signal a major change in thinking within Wales, which has been a SIMS stronghold for many years. Many of the main MIS providers have been keeping a close watch on the Welsh schools’ market, but no other providers have managed to secure authority-wide contracts there as yet.
Some, such as IRIS Ed:gen, for example, have even begun offering their MIS with Welsh language capabilities, but Bromcom are the only provider so far to have successfully piloted and then rolled out their MIS to schools in Wales, managing to move into the previously held ‘SIMS territory’.
With around 1,500 schools and almost 500,000 pupils, Wales represents a significant and strategic target for MIS vendors and probably offers the last remaining large-scale contract opportunities in the UK due to the fact that the local authorities in Wales still largely oversee procurement decisions for the schools.
Notably, Bromcom has now emerged as the only MIS provider, outside of ESS SIMS, that can boast a ‘field-tested and proven’ compliance with the Welsh Common Basic Data Set (CBDS), ensuring that their MIS is statutory-ready for the Welsh education system and giving them a critical advantage in a market that has long been resistant to change. Being able to point to their significant roll-out and usage across two Welsh Local Authorities gives them a distinct ‘head-start’ on other MIS providers attempting to break into this market.
These two local authority contracts certainly represent a significant change in the MIS market in Wales. Could this be the beginning of the end for ESS SIMS in Wales? Only time will tell, but it is apparent that there is now an appetite for change here and we expect to see other Welsh LAs looking at the MIS offerings in the year to come.
It will interesting to see how the other MIS providers react to this news. They will surely see this as evidence that the Welsh market is ripe for change and some will see this as an opportunity to target the Welsh schools and local authorities with their MIS solutions. However, anyone trying to succeed in this market will need to be able to demonstrate their compliance with the Welsh CBDS and other statutory requirements if they are to gain traction here.
