As part of the Pledge 1% movement, the Zumzum Foundation donates its time and services to Broadstones School, which is a special nurturing school based in Stockport, UK. With the help of the Zumzum Foundation, Broadstones School Ltd saved £30,000 by avoiding the hassle of spending money on expensive systems and hiring new staff.
Broadstones School Ltd is a special nurturing school for young people with social-emotional mental health problems, complex difficulties who struggle with confidence. The school was founded in 2015 to help students to find their interests and develop practical skills in music, construction, health, social care, hair and beauty. Broadstones School Ltd focuses on the individual education of up to 20 registered pupils.
Challenges
The school proprietor Mr. Gibbins stated that they needed a secure IT system; however, they did not have the budget or the time to learn and manage a system independently. The organisation had identified the need for an effective IT system was the biggest priority for their team since staff needed to travel and work from different sites.
“If we look at the market, the mainstream schools have IT systems, but they’ve got 1500-2000 pupils in the system. That would be hugely complicated for us. Also, we couldn’t afford it financially. So we were in a really difficult place until Zumzum took us out of massive challenges and showed us how to achieve everything we needed.”
The Solution
Zumzum introduced and successfully implemented Google Workspace for Education and Chromebooks for the Broadstones School Ltd. The Broadstones’ team felt extremely fortunate to have adopted Google Workspace for Education before the lockdown and restrictions of the global Covid pandemic in 2019. Zumzum assisted Broadstones in completely transforming how they operate the business and adapted the staff to remote working methods. Staff continue to benefit from the ease of working from anywhere, on any device, even after the pandemic has ended. All the Google Workspace for Education tools for email and communication are utilised to ensure the organisation stays connected with staff and pupils.
“Thanks to Google Meet, we could keep in contact with staff and pupil welfare during COVID. We now have morning and evening briefings with all staff, which was really difficult before because they’re on different sites. So it’s really improved the efficiency of the business.”
“Zumzum has really moved us forward. They were excellent, with very good communication. They answered all questions and queries very quickly. We are very grateful that we received the free software and services from the Zumzum Foundation.”
Business Gains
Broadstones School Ltd was able to avoid the expected costs of a new IT system that would have cost up to £30,000. As Zumzum manages the Google Workspace for Education system for Broadstones, the organisation was also able to avoid the costs of hiring and training IT staff. Taking advantage of the full suite of communication, collaboration, and learning tools, staff, faculty, and students were able to move to a near real-time collaboration. Students’ attendance increased since they could attend classes from anywhere and from any device. Overall, the organisation achieved the major goal of improving collaboration by working from any location.
“Our staff said how good it was since we implemented the Google Workspace for Education tools. And it’s almost like opening your eyes to a whole new way of working. Having migrated to Google, we just couldn’t go to the old way of working now. I wish everyone else used it too.”
“I am very impressed by the speed of the service; nothing was a problem for Zumzum. 100% it helped us to save money. I can’t say enough how much it changed the business. We were looking to invest in IT systems, and we needed someone to manage it, which would have also increased our staff costs. Some of the systems we were considering would have cost us with the systems, which were up to £30,000. We could not have afforded that. We will always be grateful for the donation from the Zumzum Foundation that helped us save up to £30,000.“
Zumzum Foundation
Zumzum Foundation is part of the Pledge 1% movement and is Zumzum’s way of giving back to the community. We donate free software and services to help charities more easily achieve their mission. For more information, visit this website.
