IPcelerate.com

Customer: Saint Peter’s Preparatory School

About the Customer

Saint Peter’s Preparatory School is an independent college preparatory school for young men, located in Jersey City, NJ. Founded in 1872, Saint Peter’s is the only Jesuit High School in New Jersey, and one of only 50 in the United States. The school educates over 900 students from over 100 different communities in the New York/New Jersey area, and has over 70 faculty members and 6 buildings on campus.

Initial Expectations from VoIP

Saint Peter’s transitioned to VoIP several years ago in order to save money and gain flexibility for their telephony environment. They also wanted to bring the infrastructure in-house and have more expansion options going forward. The school deployed IPcelerate’s IPsession server at the same time they transitioned all 6 buildings to VoIP, and have been very satisfied with their new telephony experience.

Addressing Primary Business Challenges

Emergency management and school closure notifications were top priorities for Saint Peter’s. With the deployment of VoIP, 911 calls would go unrecognized until local police answered the call. The school needed to know about these calls when they happened in order to provide immediate assistance as needed. IPsession’s 911 Alert solution solved this need. In addition, Saint Peter’s wanted a way to communicate emergency messaging to specific people and throughout the campus, as well as alert staff and students of school closures and snow delays. IPcelerate’s Paging and Dial-Out solutions were able to solve these business challenges, as well as integrate with IP Speakers for whole campus communication.

IPcelerate Solutions

Emergency management is now effectively managed through IPcelerate’s IPsession many inherent solutions, including 911 Alert, Dial-Out and Paging. When a 911 call is made from any IP phone on campus, an automatic alert is sent to designated staff with the location of the phone. This allows staff to respond immediately to the situation. When someone wants to send out a page, they can do so from any IP phone, sending that page throughout the entire campus via IP speakers, as well as to all IP phones. This process allows for quick and easy communication of important messages.

Saint Peter’s now uses Dial-Out to notify staff and students of school closures and snow delays. In the past, the school utilized a phone chain in an attempt to reach all staff members before they began their drive to the campus. Students had to call a weather hotline to find out if school was open and running on time. Today, the principal records a message and initiates an automatic dial-out program to all 120 staff members, notifying them of schedule changes, closures and other emergency messages. The school plans on extending the Dial-Out program this year to include all students as well. Dial-Out is also being used by the campus minister to leave reminder messages for students to turn in permission forms for upcoming retreats.

New Telephony Experience

VoIP and IPcelerate’s IP solutions have created a more flexible and robust telephony environment for Saint Peter’s Prep. Communication has improved, emergency management has been streamlined and the school is enjoying a significant cost savings over their old telephony architecture.

Next Steps/Higher Expectations

Next steps for Saint Peter’s is to implement IPcelerate’s Intercom feature, which would allow employees to quickly communicate with one another by opening up a one-way voice stream from one IP phone to another. Employees can set up their preferences so an intercom would not disturb them or interrupt an active phone call. The school is also interested in exploring their options with the Conference Calling solution.