If your private or small school is still holding off providing a mobile app for parents to access information via their smart phones, you may be losing both the mind share and revenue of an increasing segment of your parent population.

According to the latest 2014 study by Nielsen, U.S. adults now officially spend more time connecting to the internet via their smart phones than their PCs. A typical U.S. adult spends 34 hours and 17 minutes a month on the Internet on a smart phone compared to 27 hours and 3 minutes on a PC, according to Nielsen. That translates to 1 hour and 8 minutes per day on smart phones and 54 minutes per day on PCs.

Administrators, Managing Directors, Principals and Teachers: You don’t have the luxury of time any more. Parents are now demanding mobile school notification systems that are robust enough to offer single point access to all critical student data as well as providing school announcements , calendars, and homework information.

The days of multiple sheets of paper being sent home (and usually misplaced) are gone. Competitive schools know this, and a growing number are using mobile solutions to eliminate paper as well as those hard-to-navigate portals. The good news is that price competition has made school mobile apps a buyer’s market, with many high quality road tested products. It’s time for schools to get smart and begin offering truly unified mobile platforms that reach out and engage parents on their turf — their smart phones.