ASUS a partner in education: Longman Schools

Overview The information age affects every aspect of how we live and work. This includes collection of data, and managing this information. Companies that are successful at leveraging information technology in this respect have become more adaptive and responsive than they have ever been, delivering the products and services their customers want, efficiently and effectively. One example of how a major education group has successfully utilised ASUS BU400 notebooks in its organization demonstrates how ASUS laptop computers – featuring award-winning design, industry-leading reliability, performance and mobility – can be a powerful instrument in the education industry. Longman Schools is one of the world’s largest educational publishing group with a 286-year history in the UK. Owned by the Pearson Group, Longman Schools is now in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and seven major cities in China with more than 70 learning centres, bringing the highest quality English language education to China. Underlining this is a very sophisticated, pervasive use of IT at all levels, from administration, marketing, lesson delivery and execution through channels including online learning, micro-blogging, course evaluation, etc.

Challenges

“For Longman Schools, the months from April to October is an important phase of business development for the Group,” says Lee, Marketing Director at Longman Schools. A wide range of online and offline marketing activities are staged during this period to engage potential customers, allowing more children the opportunity to experience the Longman English courses. “Through these activities, such as microblogging, quizzes and direct feedback gathering, parents and children learn more about what we can offer, and at the same time we gather much more information about how best to address the needs of our students,” Lee explains.

With the aid of ASUS BU400 ultrabooks with Intel wi-fi, functions such as customer service and consultation has also been shifted online, with the benefit that customer service personnel can work from home, and after office hours. “The performance of the BU400 with which we equip our staff is very good. Our consultants could be in direct online communication with five to six customers at any given time, switching between multiple windows. The ASUS BU400 is powerful enough that this switching about is instantaneous, and the customer service experience conducted over video communication is very smooth and efficient,” Lee says.

The BU400 has also proven its worth in offline marketing events. At Longman Schools events, sometimes the crowd attracted is much larger than anticipated, and the staff are under much greater pressure for the event to be conducted smoothly without hitches. In this respect, Lee is especially impressed with the BU400’s start-up time: “The BU400 takes just 2 seconds to start up, and the speed of the laptop, when used in making Powerpoint presentations, or activities which include multimedia online interaction, is highly impressive, beyond the capability of other notebooks we have used in the past,” recalls Lee.

In addition, the long battery life of the BU400 – from 8 hours on a single battery, to 12 hours if used with a secondary extended battery – has proven very important in cases where marketing events are held in locations where a power point cannot be found nearby. “This is enough to meet my work day’s needs, and is very practical for my colleagues in the sales, marketing and customer service departments,” Lee adds.

Outcome With its power and reliability, the BU400 has been able to support the Longman Schools’ diverse marketing, customer service and information management activities. Not only is Longman Schools then able to engage a greater volume of potential customers at any time, it is also able to listen to them more, crafting programmes and services that are better addressed to their needs.

The Product ASUS BU400 is a powerful ultrabook with award-winning design, rigorously tested for long term durability and reliability against such commonplace hazards as drops and spills, surpassing even MIL-STD 810G military standard for ruggedness. To protect vital data, the hard drive is toughened with anti-shock features, while TPM functionality keeps sensitive information from unauthorised access. The ASUSPRO BU400 weighs just 1.64kg with proprietary True-comfort keyboard and precision touchpad, and features the latest third-generation Intel Core processors and dedicated Nvidia graphics.