West Hatch High School is a large secondary school situated in Chigwell, Essex holding great standing within the community. The school is thriving, diverse, and offers a tangible sense of community and calmness for its staff and pupils alike. The school dedicates itself to the advancement and success of all pupils, both academically and personally, and strives to open doors for all to reach the highest potential of their capabilities.
THE CHALLENGE
A common motivation for a phone system upgrade is the need for a modern and future-proof communications solution. For West Hatch High School, their outdated, on-premise Lync 2010 phone system was affordable and allowed them to communicate sufficiently for the majority of the school’s needs. However, when the manufacturer announced their system was going end of life, and the suggested upgrade path proved to be too prohibitive from a cost point of view, they needed to find an affordable alternative.
Information Systems Manager, Matt Petts, was in search of a system that provided all of the features that were needed for the school to continue functioning at an affordable cost, without any difficulty in management.
THE SOLUTION
As an innovative and forward-thinking establishment, technology and communication play an increasingly important role in the ongoing development of West Hatch’s students and staff. They also ensure that school operations run smoothly and clear dialogue with parents is maintained
After evaluating Microsoft Teams and Gamma Horizon, Matt landed on 3CX as the ideal solution: rich features and functionality at a much more affordable cost. Without increasing their phone bill, West Hatch was able to access even more features than their end-of-life PBX, so it’s safe to say that 3CX is this year’s teacher’s pet!
For the 145 staff and 1,300 students at the school, it was crucial that the phone system upgrade would not interfere with the school’s communications and network systems. Luckily, they were in good hands with 3CX partner JJ Network Services, who were selected to carry out the deployment of West Hatch High School’s new phone system.
They were able to carry out the deployment in a matter of hours with no disruption. In addition to the school’s new 64SC 3CX license, the installation included 69 Yealink IP phones, 13 Yealink headsets, and 30 SIP channels.
“After using our previous phone system for eight years, we have selected 3CX for the long term stability offered. 3CX is easy to set up and maintain on-premise. It is feature-rich and enables us to achieve things that we could not achieve with our old system.” Matt Petts, Information Systems Manager, West Hatch High School.
A TEXTBOOK 3CX DEPLOYMENT
3CX has modernized West Hatch High School’s phone system and introduced new features, including call queues, call forwarding, and reports, making it even easier to reach staff and parents out of hours.
The school is also able to make use of a range of unified communication (UC) features for the enrichment and streamlining of its operations. What’s more, they have noted increased mobility thanks to the 3CX app for iOS and Android.
