Unified Communications Featured Article

Unify's IT Solutions to Improve Administration in Higher Education

By Lavanya Rathnam
TMCnet Contributing Writer

The busiest time for colleges is during admissions season when the administration has to go through thousands of applications to identify the right candidate. During this time, administrative employees also have to take hundreds of calls every day to clarify questions about the college, course and admission process. This busy trend is likely to continue in the future, as more international students are likely to be enrolled in higher education courses within and outside their country. In fact, UN Chronicle estimates that more than a quarter of a billion students will be in higher educational institutions by 2025.

To cater to this growing demand for higher education courses, many universities are looking to embrace technology-based solutions. One such company that has been proactive in providing the right technology solutions for companies is Unify. It has worked with different universities to customize solutions needed to address the problem faced by each university.

For example, the University of Greenwich in the U.K. handles more than 50,000 calls during its 12-week admission process. Its existing capacity could handle only 180 calls simultaneously, and this was way too low compared to what it experiences during its peak season. As a solution to this problem, Unify strengthened the existing telephony infrastructure of the company and in the process, helped to improve first call resolution. Unify's OpenScape Contact Center was the flexible and scalable solution the University of Greenwich needed to increase its capacity during the admission season, and it had the flexibility to scale back during other times of the year.

Other than the admissions process, universities are also increasingly turning to technology for their other problems. A case in point is the need for universities to offer BYOD to students, so they have a greater degree of flexibility in terms of the device they use for learning. To implement BYOD, an integrated communications and security solution is also offered by Unify.

In short, Unify's technology-based solutions can go a long way in making life easy for higher education administrators.