Sometimes, innovation starts with the smallest things.
For my Secret Santa gift last year, I received a “beverage warmer”. You could use it for tea, coffee – whatever you like to keep warm. But just think about it for a moment: someone had to notice a problem and think, “there must be a better way”. That way of thinking is what Bromcom is all about.
Innovation is in our DNA. If we ever lose innovation, we will no longer be Bromcom.
This year, Bromcom turns forty, and those forty years matter because they began in a very different world. This was the early PC era. Many small to medium-sized businesses didn’t have computers as we understand them today. At best, they had standalone PCs. Networks were new, expensive, and unreliable by today’s standards, and multi-user computers were very expensive – think HP, DEC, and IBM.
The 1988 Education Reform Act came in two years later, moving responsibility from councils directly to schools. Suddenly, schools needed administration systems, but the tools just weren’t there.
At the time, the choices were single-user machines or networks. Available school admin software ran on DOS. Networks were costly, complex to manage, and fragile – not a good match for schools. Mini-computers certainly weren’t suitable for education, and in any case DOS programs did not run on them.
So, we didn’t follow the industry. We rethought it.
Instead of one computer for one person, we created a multi-user system – effectively a microcomputer for every user inside a single desk-side tower unit. At the time, this was unheard of. The big players didn’t have a comparable offer. Bromcom did.
And it was perfect match for schools’ needs:
- It was cheaper
- It was faster
- It was easier to use (it had a totally menu-driven front end)
That decision is what brought Bromcom into education – and we loved it.
Once the mass purchase was complete across the country, we asked schools the most important question of all: “What is your next pain point that we can try to help you with?”
The answer was consistent: registration and attendance, to help schools deal with truancy. In fact, widespread truancy was making headlines, and the Government in 1992 launched a new grant of £10m for schools to find ‘innovative ways’ to fight truancy!
Back then, it was all paper – or optical marksheets that were slow and cumbersome. So once again, we thought differently. We came up with the concept of a hand-held device that could take registration and upload it via wireless means.
In the early 1990s, there were no tablets; Bromcom had to develop them from the ground up. There was no Wi-Fi; Bromcom had to develop its own wireless network from the ground up.
So we built our own handheld devices, created wireless networks inside schools, and developed the software. It felt like magic at the time and was perfect timing for the Government’s launch of funds to fight truancy.
Many schools and teachers still remember those days. We were featured on Tomorrow’s World. We won awards. Eventually, we received the Queen’s Award for Innovation. National and local news covered it as schools adopted our solutions and made headlines for reducing truancy.
Then came the year 2000 and a new challenge: communicating with parents. We used everything available. Even pagers. If a child was absent, parents would receive a message. That was innovation then.
And when the Internet arrived – slow and unreliable as it was in schools – we still pushed forward. We launched MyChildAtSchool.com, one of the first true parent portals in education. It wasn’t easy. But we made it work. And that platform became what you now know as MyChildAtSchool.
Later in the 2000s, we identified a challenge bigger than any before: developing a school MIS in the cloud. School MIS had always been Windows-based and running on local servers in schools. Bromcom foresaw the significant financial savings schools could secure through reduced total cost of ownership and the increased accessibility and flexibility if an MIS was cloud-based. So we developed a cloud-based MIS from the ground up, making it simpler, cheaper, and more accessible, and launched Bromcom MIS in 2010 as the UK’s first multi-phase and most comprehensive cloud MIS. We added Integrated Finance in 2018, followed by Bromcom Vision and HR.
And now, we come to the present and to AI. AI is not a gimmick. It is not going away. Those who dismiss it will fall behind.
We’ve already started this journey, and later this year we’ll launch a new, AI-powered version of Quick Reports, delivering insight in ways we simply couldn’t before. But this isn’t just about products. It’s about how we think, how we work, and how we continue to lead.
As we approach forty years of Bromcom, one thing remains unchanged: innovation is our DNA. It always has been. And it always will be.
