3 Reasons Unified Communications Makes Sense for Schools

Enterprises are increasingly adopting unified communications as contracts with traditional carriers come up for renewal. Benefits such as cost savings, a wide array of features, and the ability to capture a variety of tools in one application are all reasons that they are replacing legacy phone systems.

The benefits enterprises are enjoying are applicable in other settings. Schools, in particular, often need the same conveniences that innovations like those found in unified communications offer. With flat or tightening budgets, investing in unified communications can free up money that used to be spent supporting an analog phone system.

There are three key reasons why unified communications is a good choice for schools:

Cost Savings: Unified communications offers a subscription-based pay model, and you only pay for the number of users accessing the system. It’s easy to scale up or down, so, in the summer months, you’ll experience a reduced invoice. There are no hardware or maintenance costs, because that’s all handled by the provider. You’ll see a consistent monthly invoice with no surprises.

Cost savings also come in the form of the underlying infrastructure. Legacy phone systems generally utilize T1/PRI circuits, which increases costs as the number of calls and users rises. With unified communications, you’re using session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking, which uses an internet line and provides unlimited capacity.

Convenience: When you upgrade to unified communications, you’ll also upgrade several other tools that will improve your school’s effectiveness. From paging and intercom to parent alerts, it’s all available through a single application. When school is letting out early due to inclement weather, it takes just a few seconds to send an instant message to parents they can receive alerts via text, email, and phone call all at once.

As teachers are becoming even more collaborative in their roles coordinating curriculums, unified communications supports better communication and streamlines decision-making. Teachers and administrators can set a status — as well as see everyone else’s — to communicate availability with just a glance.

Innovation: Unlike a legacy phone system that offers a static set of features, your unified communications solution will not only provide upgrades as part of your subscription, but it will also be easy and convenient to access new features as they debut. This means your educators will continue to receive new tools and conveniences that make their jobs easier.

Before you settle on a unified communications provider, it’s a good idea to test your network to be sure that performance and speed requirements for the new solution can be met. You should also carefully consider service level agreements (SLAs), paying particular attention to uptime rates and what the agreement lists as the result of downtime that exceeds their agreement conditions.

At One Connect, we assist you in choosing the right solution and provider for your school. When special considerations come up, such as implementing a solution across multiple campuses and locations, we can make it a smooth transition. Contact us to get started.