Does Your K-12 School Need a Managed Print Services Assessment?

Knowledge is power, and in no industry is this truer than in education.

In our work with K-12 schools across the region, we find that a lack of visibility and control into costs is often a barrier to becoming more efficient and effective. Unlike rent, utilities, and costs of goods needed—things that organizations forecast and budget for—one area that many organizations don’t have their arms around is their single-function printer fleet.

From security to convenience, there are several reasons that desktop printers continue to be relied upon in K-12 education. However, if not managed, they can be a source of unnecessary cost, waste, and even strain on your IT department. Do you know how many printers you have? How many different makes and models? How much money you spend on toner every month? Do you have an action plan for when a device fails?

If it’s been a while since you took a close look at your environment, you may not know the answers to these questions. That’s where our managed print services assessment comes in.

What to Expect from a Managed Print Services Assessment

Here’s a summary of the process we follow to better understand your environment and get to know your staff and users’ technology needs:

1.  Assessment of Your Print Environment

Through our assessment, we will work with you to get a general snapshot of your print environment across your schools/district and general information on the size and usage of your current fleet.

2.  Access to Current Costs

We will review your most recent invoices on any equipment leases, parts and supplies (e.g., toner cartridges), maintenance kits, and repairs to understand your current costs. We use that information to develop an estimate of the cost reduction possible through our MPS program.

3.  End-User Interviews

As part of our focus on the total customer experience, we will meet directly with your staff and other end-users. These interviews enable us to develop recommendations that incorporate their workflows, challenges, and technology needs and avoid disrupting their daily work.

4.  Print Audit & Discovery

During the discovery process, we work to gain a more detailed understanding of your output environment and develop recommendations for improvement. We achieve this through a physical walk-though at your school and/or at each of your district’s locations, as applicable.

• We’ll locate all networked and non-networked print devices and visually map each device on a floor plan. We also use FM Audit to collect data on all networked devices such as toner levels, meter count, and the current status of the device.
• The print audit will also help us understand the physical requirements of your locations and spacing of your existing fleet.
• We will also gather information related to processes, workflow challenges, and how information moves through your building(s).

5.  Analysis of Findings

Next, we perform an analysis of all findings, lining them up with your stated objectives to identify opportunities to reduce print and copy volumes, lower your total cost of ownership, and right size and standardize your fleet with devices built for the demands of the K-12 environment, and develop a value-added solution tailored to your school/district’s needs.

6.  Proposed Recommendations

Following this analysis, we will provide you with proposed print management solutions and recommendations for improvement to support the goals of your school or district. These recommendations will include but will not be limited to opportunities for…

• Reducing print and copy volumes and cost
• Consolidating and standardizing devices
• Right-sizing your fleet
• Implementing software enhancements
• Providing policy and process guidance

Prosource’s recommendations and proposed solution will also be tailored to additional requirements discussed with you, such as…

• Factoring in print volumes to minimize and/or avoid underutilized devices
• Wherever possible, enabling print devices shared via a network connection and eliminating local devices
• Implementing secure print
• Limiting the use of color printing to areas and users for which there is a demonstrated need

Key to our recommendation is a strategic roadmap to achieve your goals and objectives while enabling definitive and measurable outcomes. If you decide to partner with Prosource for your school’s print management needs, this process will continue through our quarterly business reviews.

The Benefits of Managed Print Services for Your District

What will you gain by starting this process with Prosource? Simply put, we help districts reduce the burden of managing your entire print environment and put that responsibility on us.

Partnering together to bring visibility into your current spend, utilization, and departmental workflows allows us to create and execute the right plan for managing your devices across the district and achieve the following:

• Identify all aspects of your printer fleet
  • Cost and usage
  • Number of devices
  • Number of different makes/models
  • Areas of redundancy
• Create and execute a business plan for your printer fleet
  • Standardized models
    • Reduce the number of consumables required
    • Simplify IT requirements
  • Budget for expenditures
  • Create business rules for where and why a single function printer is required
  • Reduce your carbon footprint
  • Decrease the time IT spends managing print devices

If you haven’t taken a close look at your print environment, you likely have opportunities to streamline your fleet, reduce costs and waste, and decrease the burden on your IT department. An assessment uncovers these areas of opportunity and provides you with the data you need to make more informed decisions for your district.

If you're looking for a technology partner that understands the demands of your industry, don’t settle for standard—partner with Prosource instead. Contact our team of education specialists to schedule an assessment and get your strategic plan tailored to your budgetary and print technology needs.

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