Scholengroep Impact moves telephone exchange to the cloud

Scholengroep Impact comprises 40 schools with 8,000 pupils. "And there are also some boarding schools and a Pupil Guidance Centre," says Michaël Van de Straete, the group’s strategic advisor. "For the schools, we are primarily a support and advisory organisation." Van de Straete took on the tender for the contract of 160 to 170 mobile subscriptions within the consortium. These were mainly for administrative and managerial staff, but also for many of the support staff who need to be available on the move.

"The advantage of a virtual switchboard is that there are rarely any problems."

Landline services too

Where telephone services are concerned, the individual schools decide their own approach. For its head office in Bruges, Impact opted for Cloud Telephony from Orange, for 10 fixed lines. "At first there was talk of only using mobile devices, but an organisation like ours cannot do without a professional telephone reception. The colleagues who have chosen a landline telephone are mainly people who make frequent calls. Announced call forwarding, handling a second line, launching a call from an email or a browser, automatic status adjustments – these are all features that make working more pleasant and productive. Such features cannot be arranged so easily with a mobile device."

"One operator for everything. In case of problems, you only need to contact one party."

High-quality

"The advantage of a virtual switchboard is that there are rarely any problems. And if any updates are needed, Orange only has to perform them once centrally," says Van de Straete. 

Another important factor for Impact is that everything is in the hands of one operator: Orange. "In our VOIP telephone exchange we also have a VDSL internet connection from Orange. That in itself is a guarantee of quality, because if something were to go wrong, you would only have to turn to one party to solve it for you. Even though everything has been running well to date."

Customer-friendly

There is another reason why working with a single operator has proved to be a winner. "In terms of price, Orange matched the other suppliers," says Van de Straete. But they took better account of our specific needs and offered the quality and SLAs we required for both fixed and mobile communications. Moreover, we work with a customer-oriented account manager to whom we can turn with any problems, both administrative and technical."