Maiden Erlegh Trust MIS Procurement

The Maiden Erlegh Trust encompasses 6 schools with 2 additional schools opening, one in September 2022 and another in September 2023. All schools are in and around Reading in Berkshire. It is the desire of the Trust to move to a single, off-site/cloud-hosted MIS platform across all of its schools, and this is the purpose of this procurement. The Trust also recognises the importance of having the MIS as the 'Single Version of the Truth' in respect of pupil and staff records as the source of all identities across all systems within the Trust which, in conjunction with an automatic identity management tool should ensure seamless, automatic update processes wherever possible. In this way, as far as is practicable, the Trust wishes to avoid: • Duplication of the effort currently involved in replicating key data fields across a variety of applications; • Manual data transfer processes which require human intervention; • Data transfers which involve scheduled 'batch' processes as these lead to latency in updates; • The kinds of issues created by accidental mis-typing or shortening of names etc. that often lead to multiple different data entries for the same individual.   The Trust has decided to seek a partnership with the successful bidder, which will be tasked with all the necessary activities and processes involved in: • Designing, Programme/Project Managing and Implementing a single MIS across all its school sites; • Migrating the data held in current systems; • Comprehensive acceptance testing; • Training users in the system's use; and • Supporting and maintaining the solution for five years to a co-terminous end date. Given the Trust is procuring a full managed service it will provide a draft Contract during the ITT stage. Each bidder will have the opportunity, separately, to seek clarifications on it. The Trust will properly consider the suggestions made by bidders and ensure that all bidders are treated on a 'level playing field' basis with regards to any proposed changes to the contract with the aim of arriving at a position that the Trust and bidders can accept. The Trust recognises this is a slightly different approach to procuring just MIS software, but wishes to reassure bidders this is not about imposing unreasonable demands, but is about a proper partnership agreement with an agreed managed service and consistent service level agreement for the Trust and all of its schools, under which both parties articulate and accept their individual responsibilities.