“Our academy is part of Academies Enterprise Trust (AET).
AET is a national family of schools dedicated to education that inspires all the young people in our care to choose to lead a remarkable life. It is our deeply held belief that every child has something remarkable to offer, and we see it as our duty to help each and every child find this within themselves.”
The Situation
Academies Enterprise Trust were refurbishing the Academy which involved updating legacy technology within the school, including the old PSTN phone system. This had to be done promptly as the Academies line rental contract was expiring in 40 days and AET didn’t want this to continue incurring further rental charges on legacy technology.
The Solution
Following a quotation request by the Trust’s Head of Procurement Clive Hammond, Cavendish offered two solutions which would fit the school’s requirements initially and support any expansion or new feature requirements.
Following this, Cavendish supplied two GANT charts of our proposed installation process and timescales following the information that the line rental contract was due to expire in 40 days. This gave AET the option for Cavendish to install ASAP and run the new solution on their old PSTN lines until the numbers migrated to Cavendish’s VoIP network, or the alternative, delaying the installation to coincide with the numbers migrating to the VoIP network.
AET chose to proceed with a Panasonic IP Solution which provided the Academy with an extensive range of features, while utilising IP handsets for flexibility and SIP trunks to provide them future proofed inbound and outbound voice traffic. The SIP trunks were provided on a separate network to the Academies data traffic to provide resiliency in the new solution.
The Benefit
The new Panasonic solution reduces the potential engineering call-out fees for the Academy. When handsets need to be moved around, the Academy can do this as and when required without requiring telephony engineers. By migrating to SIP trunks via the resilient voice network, the Academy benefits from free calls to UK Local, National and main network Mobiles, therefore, reducing the annual telephony call spend.
The Installation
Cavendish successfully installed the Academies new telephony solution within the time frames and worked alongside the refurbishment team to ensure the installation and migration to VoIP technology went smoothly. AET and the Academy can now have faith in their new solution which will support the Academy for many years to come.
