Whilst it wasn’t one of the deciding factors for a local Byron Bay school to take on the all-in-one parent communication app, the cost savings as a result of implementing School Stream have paid off many times over, year after year.
Since introducing the communication app in March 2014, the school has now sent over 930,000 notifications to their parent community. Notifications are similar to a text message, where they appear on a parent’s phone. Unlike text messages, notifications from the School Stream app can contain PDFs, digital forms, photos, videos and any other information the school wants to notify parents about.
Notifications are free
The added cost benefit is that notifications are free. In comparison, bulk text messaging in Australia varies between $0.11 to $0.20 per text message depending on the provider. Applying the lowest text messaging cost to the 930,000 notifications sent by Byron Bay Public School brings the cost of the text service to a minimum of $102,300. The cost of using the School Stream app during this time was only a fraction of this (2.86% to be exact).
No more printed notices and permission slips
Paper may not seem costly on a day-to-day basis, but over the course of a year, or several, it really does add up. Not to mention everything that goes into printing and distributing to parents. These include paper, printer servicing, ink and toner costs as well as the staff time involved in processing the printing and ensuring the print is distributed to parents.
So how did Byron Bay Public School save over $130,000?
Taking the above into consideration, the approximate cost of distributing a printed A4 notice works out at $0.15 each.
To understand this question, we need to look at how they are using the app to communicate with parents. Download the case study from Donna Wooldridge, the School Administration Manager at Byron Bay Public School.
