Controlling printing costs

Christchurch’s Hagley College provides a mature learning environment for 1,600 students.

USING TECHNOLOGY to empower individuals to make environmentally and economically sensible printing decisions sounds like a dream, but that’s exactly what a distinctive New Zealand secondary school has achieved with a bit of help from Ricoh.

Christchurch’s Hagley College provides a mature learning environment for 1,600 students and has seen students thriving, with 42% eventually graduating from a New Zealand university.

Such a large and dynamic organisation needs to be supported by an equally robust network of computers, along with printing and copying equipment.

So, when the school’s ICT managers, Sue Grigor and Mark Tull, decided to undertake a review of their printing and copying solutions they had plenty to think about.

Managing printing and copying costs across the college had become very difficult, because each of the college’s 15 departments had their own printing and copying budgets, and were individually purchasing copiers, printers, ink and paper.

Often departments would buy low cost inkjet printers, with little thought given to the high cost of the cartridges required to run them.

Tull had tried to get ‘cost per print’ information from suppliers, but the information was not forthcoming.

Getting all staff and students to think environmentally was another desire. Up until the review, inefficiencies were easy to spot – for instance many of the staff and students had been printing single sided. They did not differentiate between desktop printers and more cost effective multifunctional devices (MFDs) and, as is typical with most organisations, unwanted print-outs gathered on machines each day.

As part of an extensive market review process Grigor and Tull contacted a Ricoh consultant who recommended a selection of Ricoh MFDs and printers paired together with Equitrac Print & Copy Control software.

The benefits of the new system were immediate. Accurate allocation of printing and copying costs to each user was achieved, with each student having their own account they can buy credit for, and staff usage now accurately allocated back to their department.

Significantly, when selecting print, a pop-up box on the users PC/Mac tells them how much the job will cost. This ‘cost preview’ functionality has encouraged use of MFDs over desktop printers. Previously staff were mostly printing single sided, now with Equitrac, they print double sided as they are aware of the paper usage and cost.

Departmental cost management has also been simplified, with Equitrac generating activity reports by department and individual users, and breaking it out into spend on black and white and colour.

“Before we had no idea what the college was spending on copying and printing, now that we do, budgeting has become much more accurate,” says Grigor.

Keeping machines in working order has become much more straightforward. The status of all the college’s MFDs and printers can now be monitored from the comfort of Grigor’s desk. If a printer drawer is left open or a print job is holding up the queue she knows why things aren’t working and can quickly take action.

Grigor and Tull chose Ricoh products as the company allowed them to visit other customers and see the products in action. Grigor adds “our previous good experience with Ricoh gave us confidence in the company, their technical support people and their service response times”.

Copiers, such as the one in the school’s library, now offer a preview of how much a print job will cost.

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