The ‘United Schools Federation’ (USF) is a federation of five schools based in Torbay and South Devon. Their schools work closely together to ensure that the quality of care and education across the partnership is of the highest standard. They share resources and expertise, in addition to a broad and balanced education and aim to provide a wealth of additional opportunities for children through an extensive range of clubs, sporting activities, outdoor activities and residential visits.
The Challenge
With locations scattered over many miles and a desire to share services throughout the Federation, communication is essential. With the faculty striving to provide a uniform experience to all parents on all sites the Federation needed to be able to effectively move telephone calls between sites with a solution that was easy to use and easy to manage whilst still being cost-effective.
Cobalt has allowed our federation of primary schools to communicate and work dynamically.
The cloud-based systems which have been procured for us are easily adaptable to the changes we often need to make. The ability to control, handle and log calls on the System Dashboard is extremely useful, and easy to set up and manage ourselves. Once the systems are set up, reliability is excellent. The support service provided by Cobalt is also second to none. Thank you!Jim Smith: Senior Administrator
The Solution
Through our relationship with SCOMIS and SWGfL, a new solution was installed which allowed calls to move between sites via the schools existing internet connections. This not only saved money but also meant that key staff could see who was on the phone elsewhere in the Federation and, be able to transfer calls between staff as if they were sat next to each other. The whole system can be managed through a single page making it easy to move staff, and their phones, around as required.
A Little Extra
As the Federation expands it makes it easy to add extra users to any of the sites without having to worry about hardware limitations. The Schools also benefit from access to more advanced features like call recording for many of their users.