Good software shouldn't be invisible. It should be useful, powerful and, occasionally, the sort of thing you find yourself talking about unprompted.
That belief sits at the heart of everything we're building at iSAMS.
Over the next six months, we're going to do something unusual for a school MIS software provider. Rather than waiting until everything is finished and packaged neatly into a launch announcement, we're inviting you behind the scenes.
This is not a launch campaign. It is a product-transparency programme that gives schools a clear, credible view of where iSAMS is heading and how they can help shape it. Whether you're already using iSAMS or researching the future of school management systems, we want to show you not only what we're building, but why we're building it.
iSAMS is used in 93+ countries, which means a fair chunk of my life gets spent shuffling through departure lounges. Copenhagen remains my favourite.
Living in Denmark, SAS is my airline of choice, and if I'm honest, that loyalty has less to do with the flying than with the app behind it. Being something of a geek, I take disproportionate pleasure in the detail it tells me I never knew I wanted: the last aircraft I flew, where it's sitting now, where it's headed next. It's one of the best pieces of software I use all year.
I am far from alone in this particular affliction. My team talk about good software with a regularity that borders on the unhealthy, usually at moments when we're meant to be discussing something else entirely. Underneath the running joke sits a conviction we all genuinely share: software has no obligation to be forgettable in order to be good. It can be useful, powerful, and genuinely enjoyable to use. Everything about how iSAMS is evolving rests on that belief.
This is the first chapter in a series the team and I will be writing together over the coming months, charting where iSAMS as a whole is headed rather than focusing on any single feature or module. The teacher experience is where the story began, but it certainly doesn't end there. The parent and student experience is getting the same attention, and the main iSAMS platform itself, the part most of you use every day, is due a significant overhaul of both its interface and the workflows underneath it.
I'm an ex-teacher, and it matters here too. I spent years wrestling with clunky systems to know exactly what we're trying to put right.
Schools rely on their management information systems every day. Decisions about teaching, operations, communication and planning all depend on software that works reliably and efficiently.
That's why we believe schools deserve visibility into the thinking behind the products they depend on. Too often, software providers only talk about change once it has already happened. We're taking a different approach.
The next iSAMS isn't a single feature, module or redesign project. It's a whole-platform evolution designed around a simple principle: school software should be powerful enough to support complex schools, useful enough to save time, and intuitive enough that people genuinely enjoy using it.
Over the coming months, we'll explore:
Each chapter will take you deeper into the iSAMS roadmap and explain not only what's changing, but why.
Here's the argument I'd rather make myself than have someone else make for me.
A cleaner, more modern iSAMS does not mean a simpler one.
The depth and customisability that define iSAMS, the very reasons schools with genuinely complex needs have stayed loyal to it, are not up for negotiation. We are not sanding the edges off a powerful system simply to make it look better on a landing page. We are trying, with considerably more difficulty, to make that power feel obvious, findable and pleasant to work with, rather than something you have to already be fluent in before you can unlock it.
That's a harder job than building something simple from scratch. Which is exactly why it deserves to be done properly, and written about properly, rather than squeezed into one tidy launch announcement.
We've always believed the best school software is built with schools, not just for them.
Many of the improvements already underway have been shaped by customers who have shared their time, expertise and honest feedback. The first beta experiences are arriving soon, and more opportunities for schools to influence the roadmap will follow. The new teacher experience has already benefited from the input of dedicated members of the iSAMS community, while groups of customers are currently helping to shape the future of search functionality.
That search work matters especially to us because we know how much trust Query Builder has earned over the years. The ambition is simple: lose nothing, gain everything.
That's why this series matters.
Over the next six months, we'll be transparent about our thinking, open about our priorities, and honest about the challenges involved in evolving a school management information system used by schools around the world.
We'll show you what's coming. We'll explain why it matters. Most importantly, we'll invite you into the conversation.
Because the next iSAMS won't be shaped by us alone.
It's being shaped by the schools that use it every day.
Follow the series to see what's coming next.