Key areas to evaluate before selecting an UCaaS provider
Unification Capabilities & Impact
Unified Communications (UCaaS) promotes advanced collaboration tools and provides schools and districts with advanced features and functionalities, application integrations and end-to-end solutions.
Adopting a 21st century IT infrastructure that delivers quality IP voice, video and collaboration solutions over a single network is a must and proves to be extremely impactful for institutions.
- Improves administrative efficiencies and service levels while keeping communication costs affordable.
- Enables real-time campus communications
- Replaces the CAPEX with an OPEX model to increase Return on Investment (ROI).
- Promotes a long-term commitment to staff, parent and community interaction.
- Provides a virtual environment with mobile collaboration tools and increase school safety – all while delivering a reliable IT infrastructure.
In summary, with versatile architecture delivering fast and operational responses as well as reduced costs on a grand scale, UCaaS solutions are the perfect choice for educational institutions seeking to adopt modern day technology.
With Great Communication and Collaboration Comes Great Education
Transforming Operations and the Learning Experience
More than ever, schools are under pressure to improve parental involvement, teacher quality, student outcomes and school safety while creating an inclusive communications environment that encourages collaboration amongst students, faculty and parents. It’s a tall order for schools in today’s age especially with ever-shrinking budgets and dwindling government funding.
UCaaS solutions offer affordable IP communication features and functionality that extend campus networks into home and local businesses, enabling staff and students to work from any location, at any time. With an IP-based platform, faculty and students share applications across the network thereby cost-effectively enabling functionality previously unavailable or unaffordable.
In addition, schools are able to facilitate a 21st century classroom design with video infusion, targeted distance learning, mentoring, lecturing and more to help schools exceed today’s requirements for modern day mobile education.
Increasing Administrative Efficiencies and Faculty Service Levels
Improve administrative office efficiency: Integrated and unified messaging helps teachers and principals become more responsive to time sensitive inquiries with applications that receive and organize parent, student and community related communication.
Engage parental communications: Offer parents and the community access to a 24/7/365 multilingual auto attendant that ensures inclusivity and relays critical school information and resources to all.
Break classroom isolation: Simplify teacher communication and provide a convenient and non- disruptive way for teachers to stay connected in the classroom with IP phone functionality and mobile collaboration tools that power connectivity to the office, colleagues, guidance counselors and more.
Enable cost-effective mobility: Give mobile staff including campus security, IT support and teachers access to feature-rich communication that ensures they are connected in the network at all times despite location.
Powering the Learning Experience for in Class and at Home
Extend the campus to engage students and teachers: Empower progressive learning through virtual field trips for students and professional development/training for teachers with audio, web and video conferencing.
Encourage group work beyond the classroom walls: Offer students and teachers a way to work together remotely with collaboration tools that help educators support distance learning, group collaboration and mentoring services.
Minimize classroom disruption: Equip teachers in classrooms and at home with discreet and secure instant messaging applications that promote a unified approach to providing a superior learning experience for students.
Empowering Parental Engagement
Improve parent-teacher communications: Overcome the communication gap with multimedia messaging capabilities that give parents instant access to critical information like upcoming assignments, breaks, health notices, parent-teacher interviews and more.
Encourage parental support from anywhere: Give parents the ability to connect with school functions, meetings and activities like PTA/PTO meetings and parent-teacher conferences from anywhere through a convenient, cost-effective conferencing solution.
Simplify “calling in” to the office: Eliminate the busy signal parents often reach when calling in to the school office with auto-attendant, voicemail, messaging and call routing functionality that simplifies non-urgent parent communication.
Ensure Student and Faculty Safety
Enhanced 911 (E-911): When emergencies occur, protect students and faculty with on-site notification and dispatch facilities immediate response of on- site trained personnel to a 911 call in full compliance with E-911 legislation.
Initiate Auto Attendant Emergency Override: Alert callers of real-time changes to school or district operating information like closures, health alerts, emergency alerts and more.
Paging & Mobile phone integrations: Easily alert on- site and off-site security agents of emergency situations to ensure rapid response times regardless of agent location or device being used.
Initiate emergency teacher communication: Bridge teachers and staff into a conference call or enable two-way communication to obtain real-time information during emergencies and critical situations that affect the well-being of students.
Save on Communication Expenses and Capitalize on Financial Assistance
Budget-constrained schools are often challenged with meeting the growing demand of parent and staff need for more flexible communications. With a UCaaS solution, educational facilities can rest assured knowing their investment is more than just a phone system but an evolutionary step towards modern day technology.
Designed to protect existing IT infrastructure investments, UCaaS technology offers educational facilities a solution that adapts and expands, or contracts, based on a school’s unique needs without breaking budget.
In addition, UCaaS solutions are known for boasting green technology that helps educational facilities reduce their carbon footprint. With innovative IP phones, schools consume less electrical power, reduce hardware waste with longer lasting equipment, empower telecommuting to reduce carbon emissions and use less paper with fax via email functionality.
With no capital investment, affordable and predictable monthly expenses and government funding opportunities, schools can easily migrate to the cloud and enjoy state-of-the-art communication technology at an affordable cost.
Go Green with UniVoIP
Save Money and Communicate First Class with a Cloud-Based Phone Solution that delivers cost savings, innovative and environmentally friendly technology.
Does your educational institution qualify for E-Rate?
E-Rate Funding (E-Rate) is a commonly used name for the Schools and Libraries Program of the Universal Service Fund, administered by Universal Service Administrative Company under the direction of the FCC.
The E-rate program allows eligible K-12 schools and libraries in the United States to obtain affordable telecommunications and internet access.
Discounts for support depend on the level of poverty and the urban/rural status of the population served and range from 20% to 90% off of the costs of eligible services.
