One of the best ways to help educators focus on student needs is to help them save time, work within tight budget constraints and prevent administrative headaches. We know this first-hand from school districts we’ve worked with. They’ve not only spent way too much money performing costly repairs on outdated printers and copiers, but their increased downtime and efforts to manage supplies ended up frustrating everyone involved.
Let’s take a look at how a Managed Print solution can help your school district alleviate many of the problems associated with printers and copiers.
1. Cost Savings
A Managed Print solution typically involves replacing outdated and repair-prone printers and copiers with newer machines. While it may seem counterintuitive that installing new equipment results in cost savings, it almost always does over time.
Some factors that influence these savings include improved energy efficiency. Some districts experience such great energy savings that they’re able to receive energy rebates. Supplies are automatically ordered based on remote meter readings and usage reports and overhead costs associated with storage are minimized. This results in staff being assured they won’t run out of supplies or experience related downtime that reduces productivity.
2. Reduced Maintenance
We have yet to meet an IT professional who prefers to spend their limited time handling printer related maintenance. At best, schools who self-maintain their own equipment live in the tyranny of the urgent and can only handle break-fix issues. A gap is formed with routine maintenance and software updates that may never happen due to the lack of time and priority. We are able to help partner with the IT staff at various schools to remove printer maintenance from their laundry list of items which allows them to focus their energy towards bigger ticket priorities. In doing this, the end user greatly benefits from minimizing downtime and removes a potential road block in their daily productivity.
3. Consistency
A single school district can have multiple campuses, each with its own fleet of printers and copiers that were acquired over time. There are often major inconsistencies among these devices — different brands, ages, instructions and so on.
Not only is knowing how to operate each of them a challenge, but the print configurations, parts and technical knowledge needed to repair each of them will be different.
Managed Print Service experts will perform a thorough assessment of your existing fleet with a goal of bringing greater consistency, eliminating unnecessary devices, improving user experiences and minimizing the burden placed on your IT staff.
4. Support of Green Initiatives
In addition to the energy savings experienced with an updated printer fleet, many school districts also end up using less paper because of printing protocols that are programmed into the machines. For example, double-sided printing and scale-to-fit settings can be configured to minimize waste. Additionally, newer machines use much less toner than older models without compromising print quality.
Managed Print also helps organizations go green with recycling initiatives for unwanted equipment and old toner cartridges, helping to eliminate waste in landfills. Since most schools are able to reduce their fleets, there’s a smaller carbon footprint overall.
We are passionate about working with schools because of the mission of what they represent. Education is such a key foundational component in the development of us as individuals and we love to play a small role in helping to equip students, staff, faculty and administrators with the print/copy resources they need to do their daily work.
Let us be your experts in Managed Print so you can focus on the important role you play. Contact us to perform a customized managed print needs analysis for your school by simply clicking the link below.
