Tag: SIMS

Capita? As in SIMS Capita?

Here’s one of several articles about Capita’s profit warning announced today:

Capita shares plunge 35% after outsourcing giant announces shock profit warning and rights issue
New chief executive Jonathan Lewis, who took up the role on 1 December, said “significant change” was needed to get Capita back on track. He said an “immediate priority” was to strengthen the group’s balance sheet, with plans to raise as much as £700m in a rights issue, as well as slashing costs after finding “significant scope” for savings and aims to sell off unprofitable businesses.

Some have the shares dropping by as much as 45%, but this headline caught my eye:

Capita collapse could create bigger headache than Carillion’s demise
A potential collapse of Capita could create an even more of a headache for the public sector than Carillion since it is the biggest supplier of local government services in the UK, according to Tussell data. “If Capita were to fail the ensuing political fallout would make Carillion look like a tea party,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

Too big to fail, surely?

Update 24/07/2021

Maybe I should have added a link to this story a little earlier. Better late then never.

Capita sells education platform ESS for up to £400m
Outsourcing giant Capita has agreed to sell its education platform division to private equity house Montagu for up to £400 million. The company first revealed plans to sell its Education Software Solutions (ESS) arm to reduce its debts but initially struggled to gain a suitable price tag. But on Monday a deal was struck with Tiger UK, a newly former company advised by Montagu. The firm’s Sims (School Information Management System) platform is used in 21,000 schools across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Data Manager priorities?

A half day in the Life of a Data Manager
“What I wanted to ask was if you were in my situation, where should I concentrate my precious few spare hours here and there in order to get to grips with SIMs, what more it can do for me/the school, and what more my role as a Data Manager should include in your experience?”​

The responses so far seem to boil down to moving away from us analysing the data to encouraging teachers and leaders to analyse the data for themselves, by providing better tools and training. Teach a guy to fish, and all that.