Case Study – In Brief
Budmouth Collegs

Budmouth CollegeCompany: Budmouth College
Sector: Education
Location: Weymouth, Dorset
Products/Services: Managed Print Service (MPS)

Background

Budmouth College is an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted school and innovative college which, through high expectations and valued relationships, engages its community of learners in lifelong learning by providing opportunities for successful academic and personal development.

Collate Business Systems were tasked with the objective of improving cost and efficiencies within their document environment. Working in collaboration and partnership with Budmouth, the project commenced with Collate establishing the current print, copy and scan environment and planning and implementing a fully future proofed and more efficient solution.

David Bone (Director of HR and Finance) said: “It was important for the school to source a partner that had the ability and knowledge to provide the discovery/recommendation and solution the school required but most importantly, post installation Collate were there with extensive training and support for our staff.”

The Challenge

Budmouth College needed to overcome many challenges in order to achieve their goals.

Many business processes were time consuming. Each month, a Repro Department member would calculate how much every department had spent – then using paper processes; this information was passed internally to the Accounts Department who would then bill departments directly.

This worker also took monthly manual meter reading totals for each department within the college, emailed them to Collate – a repetitive and time consuming process needing simplification.

The absence of tools to accurately measure print and copy output levels resulted in a lack of print accountability. The college was unable to monitor and manage print and copy costs by department or employee.

The existence of different makes of print and copy machines added to the difficulties, leading to a lack of user interface continuity.

Lastly, monthly departmental stock reordering and maintenance processes were manual and long winded.

The Solution

After a full print audit, carried out by Collate, a series of recommendations were made.

A Papercut system was introduced, to record and control print, copy and account billing. Supplied and installed in partnership with the IT Department, to control and accurately bill departments for their print and copy usage, the Repro Department’s time was freed up, allowing them to concentrate on their day jobs.

The software solution deployed utilises a scanning solution, which automatically picks up user email addresses from the Active Directory, eliminating the need for additional directories on each device.

The college was acquainted with Printmib which simplified the monitoring of consumable stock levels. Printmib, a remote monitoring service, proactively monitors the college’s printing and copying devices in real-time, meaning when toner levels go below 25%, the college will be automatically sent a replacement – making manual meter readings a thing of the past. Additionally, it resolves potential faults before they occur, ensuring an engineer is dispatched before the college even place a call to request one.

Collate supplied and installed a multifunction device range, suiting the various departments and provided a 5 year reliable solution for the hardware. With a single, ‘universal’ print driver, installation was simple and ongoing maintenance and updates uniformed.

David continued: “The solution from Collate offered powerful reporting tools allowing department heads to interrogate the printing done on each account, take action and limit certain users if desired – a school necessity.”

With the solutions now in place, not only are the college now aware of any print or copier wastage, students are provided with a daily print quota. This can be topped up if necessary, allowing excess personal printing and copying if they desire. The devices default print and copy setting was set to greyscale, removing the concern of colour print costs, whilst giving the staff access to colour if required, and accurately recording this to their account.

Collate have also committed to ongoing analysis of printer use and to provide further recommendations regarding efficiencies moving forward, to assist with better working processes.

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