THE CHALLENGE
The school had 35 printers from a number of different manufacturers that were costly to maintain and difficult to manage. BMGS wanted a printing solution that was more user friendly, one that would enable them to print more colour whilst also reducing their existing printing costs.
Without knowing how much each of its departments were printing, the school couldn’t accurately charge back these costs, so they also wanted to create a cost allocation system.
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THE SOLUTION
A multi-vendor managed fleet was installed into the school with total number of printers being reduced to 25 and the number of colour printers increasing from one to six. All of the printers have USB capabilities so that teachers can use their own USBs by inserting them into the machines and printing and copying directly.
With more colour printers, the amount of previously outsourced jobs has been reduced – helping reduce costs of colour printing by 80% per page. In addition, Upstream implemented its utrack solution, facilitating the production of departmental reports. This allows the school’s finance department to charge print costs back to each department.
A tailored utrack application has also enabled the school to implement a pay-by-the-page for students to use on equipment in the school library. After purchasing printing credits, students simply provide log in details in order to utilise the printers and copiers.
“The new system is much more user-friendly and more efficient. Despite printing more colour our print costs have reduced significantly and we no longer spend time dealing with maintenance. We have one view of the print costs for the school and will continue to encourage staff and students to print responsibly to reduce our environmental impact,” said Kathryn Pearce, Director of Finance at BMGS.
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