Become a Partner

Integrate your product with SIMS

We believe that Partners are key to our future success. Whether you are a service provider, systems integrator, independent education software vendor, reseller or other type of technology provider, we want you to provide solutions to enhance our customers' SIMS system.

Our Partner scheme has been designed specifically to accommodate smaller companies as well as providing benefits for larger ones. We provide you with the assistance to help your products integrate with SIMS easily.

Schools have the ability to produce reports from SIMS and provide this data to third parties as long as data protection laws (and potentially school or LA policies) are adhered to by all parties. This does not require a third party to partner with Capita.

However, potential Capita partners may require more advance methods to allow  access to data, identify changed data or write data back to SIMS. The partner management document provides the information to help you evaluate the type of Technical Partner you may want to be and what to do next. Click here to view.

There are different types of Partners, you may want to be a:

Premier Partner

For those partners who want to fully integrate their products and have a full commercial arrangement with us. A Premier Partner will want access to SIMS through our Business Objects and also have a commercial arrangement for the reselling or endorsement of their solution.

Commercial Partner

Partnering with SIMS offers a greater business value, including increasing your revenue opportunities; lowering your cost of doing business; speeding your time to market; and building your market recognition.

A Commercial Partner has a contractual arrangement whereby Capita endorse their product, and Capita act as a Value Added Reseller or have a mutual marketing agreement.

All Commercial Partners go through a rigorous evaluation process.

Technical Partner

Whether you're a solution provider or a systems integrator, this level of partnership allows you to find out how to integrate your products with SIMS without having to enter any sales agreements.

A Technical Partner will typically want  access to SIMS through our Business Objects or Learning Gateway Web Parts, but without any commercial arrangement. This access will be through a standard licence agreement. We have now introduced a new category of Technical Partner. This is specifically for the small start-up companies or organisations who want a Technical Partnership but without a large investment at the outset.

Third Party User

For those organisations who want to read basic data from the SIMS database without becoming a SIMS SQL Technical or Enterprise Partner. A Third Party User will want access to SIMS through our standard, configurable data export – the Third Party Software Development Kit. Third Party Users will have neither Technical nor Commercial status.

Interfacing guidance notes - We provide open interfaces to our software for third party developers. For further information, click here.

Partner benefits

Our primary objective in this programme is to deliver best value to our schools and local authority customers through our Partners. We focus on four key areas:

• Access to Capita Children’s Services SIMS products
• Not-for-resale SIMS software is delivered to Partners early in the product development cycle from product beta versions through to release software.
• Technical readiness
• Tools, training and consultancy, which enable Partners to build upon our Microsoft SQL technologies.
• Technical support
• Email and web based support, Partner zone.
• Business development
• Promote your business to schools based on your product’s SIMS accreditation.

For more information about becoming a SIMS Partner download here the Partner Management document or alternatively please email our Partner Manager, David Grashoff - david.grashoff@capita.co.uk

Related downloads:

• Download the Partner Management Document
• Download the Interfacing Guidance Notes