Building on a good reputation

South Cheshire College now has a modern printing strategy that pays for itself - thanks to IT provider XMA

There is no doubt South Cheshire College has a reputation to protect. A few years ago, the Further Education College was awarded the highest inspection marks ever.

Consequently, director of Curriculum support, Nigel Peet, was keen to find even more ways to improve the College’s services. And there was one key area where he knew there was a weakness – the College’s printing strategy.

Nigel explains: “Someone brought a CD to me and said, ‘I think you need to watch this.’ It was an example of a printing management solution with network printers where students could manage their own printing accounts.

“At the time we were using an antiquated system, running a range of laser printers which required a lot of technical time to keep them operating smoothly. We wanted something new.”

South Cheshire chose to work with IT provider XMA, one of the suppliers listed on one of its purchasing consortiums. By a happy coincidence, Nigel soon discovered XMA was a leading reseller of this type of system with an excellent reputation in the education market.
 
The solution implemented was one that combined Safecom software with HP multifunction printers – one for each of South Cheshire’s six open areas. Under the system, the 3,000 full-time and 6,000 part-time students at the College are automatically registered and awarded 300 credits for printing. Then, once those credits are spent, students must pay to replace them.

As a pull-printing solution, the system also requires the student to authorise the print job at a printer. If, after 24 hours this is not done, the document sent to print is automatically deleted. The usual wastage associated with unwanted print-outs is therefore eliminated.

What’s more, students can also use the same system, and the same ID card, to access photocopying.

A system that pays for itself

Perhaps one of the most exciting elements of the new solution is that it now pays for itself. Nigel explains: “Previously, students had to supply their own paper and would put it in the printer each time they wanted to print a document.

“The quality of the paper was poor because people were carrying it around with them all day and we were forever suffering from printer paper jams which our technical people had to deal with.”

“Now, the system makes a small profit because the total cost of printing is covered by the students and our technical staff are not spending hours sorting out problems.”

He also believes the solution is more efficient because students think more carefully about whether they really need to print documents.

Freedom for technical staff

According to Nigel, the old system was the number one problem highlighted by technical staff who spent a lot of time keeping the old printers running.

He says: “At a stroke we’ve eliminated the problem. Before, we had 20 or 30 call outs a day to the printers. That has reduced to virtually none.

“Our technical people love it because they can get on with something much more interesting and worthwhile.”

Help with implementation

However, it was not just the solution itself that impressed South Cheshire. Nigel says: “The good thing about this solution is that it has not been problematic. Everything is done automatically – and works. That is due to the role XMA’s Solutions team has played.”

“Members of the XMA Print Solutions team came to the college initially and did a great deal of consultancy for us. They even setup the system so we could find out more about how it worked. That was a real benefit."

According to Nigel, XMA’s ability to liaise with other suppliers and offer South Cheshire a single point of contact was also a bonus. He says: “They have really made the different aspects of the solution work together – and work with our existing systems. We now hope to build on this solution later this year and, hopefully, it will go from strength to strength with XMA’s help.”