Case Study: Connecting Seven Schools Through a Single Cloud-Based Phone System

For multi-academy trusts and school groups, managing communication across multiple sites can quickly become complex. Separate phone systems and inconsistent setups often create unnecessary administration and make it harder for schools to communicate efficiently.

When a local school trust approached us, they wanted to simplify communications across all seven schools by bringing every site onto a single, centralised cloud-based phone system that would improve reliability, create consistency across the school trust, and provide a more scalable solution for the future.

The trust includes seven individual school sites, each with its own existing phone infrastructure and varying system configurations.

Some schools were already operating legacy phone systems that were becoming outdated, while others required more significant infrastructure upgrades before transitioning to a cloud-based solution.

Managing multiple communication systems across separate sites created unnecessary complexity for the trusts administration team. The trust needed a solution that could unify communications across all schools while ensuring minimal disruption to day-to-day operations during the migration process.

We designed and delivered a phased rollout plan to transition all seven schools onto the Echo Voice cloud communications platform.

The first stage focused on building and configuring the new trust-wide platform, carefully replicating each school’s existing phone programming and auto attendant setup to ensure staff experienced a seamless transition. During this phase, five schools were migrated by re-registering their existing handsets directly onto the new cloud platform. Our engineers visited each school individually to complete the migration and verify that all systems were fully operational before handover.

The second and third phase focused on schools operating older on-premise phone systems. These legacy systems were decommissioned and replaced with new cloud-based IP handsets connected directly to the Echo Voice platform.

By carefully phasing the rollout, Echo ensured every school could transition smoothly while avoiding unnecessary disruption to staff, administration teams, and day-to-day school operations.

The trust now benefits from a fully unified cloud-based phone system operating consistently across the seven school sites.

Instead of managing separate systems, administrators now have a more streamlined and scalable communications environment that supports easier management across the entire trust.

Schools benefit from improved reliability, modern cloud-based functionality, and a system designed to grow alongside future operational needs.

Most importantly, the trust now has a communications platform that provides consistency across every site while being fully supported by a trusted IT and communications partner who understands the unique needs of the education sector.