Melbourne-based start-up ParentPaperwork will soon have its online forms platform available to more than 5,000 schools in the UK via a partnership with a leading edu-tech company there, Groupcall.
Co-founded by Sir Bob Geldof in 2002, Groupcall’s product portfolio comprises of Messenger, Emerge, Xporter and Alert. Groupcall was initially created to improve general and emergency communication between a school and its parents.
Since then, Messenger has proven to successfully reduce unauthorised absences in schools, as well as improve parental engagement and lower costs. It is their communication solution which provides the technology behind the enhanced Child Rescue Alert system in the UK.
Groupcall Messenger is now the system of choice for over 5,000 primary and secondary schools within the UK and Europe. It is an on-line system that allows schools to send personalised text, voice or email messages, printed letter, via the Groupcall Xpressions app and even tweet instantly to parents, staff, students or other contacts in a variety of languages for a low annual subscription fee.
What does this partnership mean?
Now for the first time Messenger schools will also be able to distribute online forms to parents and capture data and responses using ParentPaperwork’s user-defined form templates.
ParentPaperwork’s sophisticated platform is deeply integrated into Messenger, meaning a single login gives access to all of the features of both of them within one seamless interface.
Using ParentPaperwork school staff can now create and send online forms to 50 or 5,000 parents in a matter of minutes; with analysis showing close to 60 per cent of parents return their online forms within 24 hours. Information is stored in a secure data centre and any form can be retrieved in seconds, no matter how long ago it was submitted.
ParentPaperwork’s mission is to replace paper forms in schools around the world by providing an online solution that enables schools to capture, manage and report data from across their enterprise.
CEO Fiona Boyd said this is a significant opportunity for her Saas start-up, revealing that a key element of their growth strategy is to form strong relationships with key players in a range of markets around the world. Schools in half a dozen countries are already using it.
“We’re extremely pleased to have secured this partnership with Groupcall, and bring the ParentPaperwork platform to such a large captive market of school customers.”
“It’s an exciting opportunity, the Groupcall team have been terrific to work with, and we are looking forward to a continuing close relationship as we work together to welcome thousands of UK schools to ParentPaperwork.”
