Education · Plymouth
Modern communications for a Plymouth secondary school
Lipson Co-operative Academy is a secondary school in the heart of Plymouth, catering for over 1,000 students. We replaced a costly legacy setup with a 3CX system built around softphones, a mobile app and voicemail-to-email.
The challenge
What Lipson Co-operative Academy needed
The school had reviewed its telephony year on year, but the cost of a replacement system had always been prohibitive. With newer, more cost-effective technology available, a working group of key stakeholders formed in May 2018 to define what they needed.
Their wishlist was clear: standardised handsets rather than a mix of hardware, softphones so any member of staff can use a phone from their PC, a mobile app to connect mobile devices to the main system, an auto-attendant, voicemail-to-email, and software that made the most of their existing hardware and connectivity.
What we did
Our approach
A 3CX system built around their staff
We delivered a new 3CX phone system with 70 physical phones for a faculty of 200. Many staff access the system through a PC app, and voicemail-to-email is used throughout the school. The system was deployed in the school's own virtualised server environment and connected to SIP trunks, which cut costs and improved efficiency.
Taking pressure off reception
An automated answering system relieves pressure on main reception at peak times and lets absences be reported automatically, making things easier for both parents and staff.
The result
Where it left them
The 3CX system has proved intuitive — after only a short introduction, the school's own team were using a range of features to improve how they communicate. As with our other school installs, extensions can be added one user at a time, so growth stays easy to budget for.
What we used
Services in this project
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