“One of the key benefits of the managed service is the transparency of printing costs. Where there used to be a bit of a black hole, we now know exactly what our costs for all aspects of the print network will be on a monthly basis, plus there are no nasty surprises where servicing is concerned either!”
Alan Race
ICT Manager
New College Durham gives a lesson in managed print services
New College Durham is one of the top twelve colleges of further and high education in England. It offers full and part time educational courses and has around 20,000 enrolments. The college has recently undergone full regeneration encompassing and range of new buildings and facilities. As ICT Manager at the College Alan Race has played a major part in ensuring that students have acess to the It facilities they need to support their studies throughout the transformation and in the future. Here Alan talks about the challenges of managing a printer and copier fleet in a busy educational environment, and how moving to a managed service system has reduced costs and simplified the print.
“An enormous amount of printing and copying is carried out here at the College. When we carried out a print audit in 2003, we discovered that we were printing five million pages per year, and copying more than 11 million pages. Understandably the toner and servicing costs associated with these figures is significant, so we are always looking for ways to reduce our expenditure.
“Before we began using Kyocera we were experiencing significant problems with printer reliability and the cost of cartridges was spiralling to an unacceptable level. An approach from the Kyocera account manager, followed by a successful evaluation and costings compared with equivalent HP products, led us to select Kyocera devices. The two year warranty offered with the printers was also a positive factor in their favour. “We have now been using Kyocera ECOSYS printers for five years and have always been impressed with the reliability and low cost of printing that the machines offer, especially given the high volumes that they are asked to produce. We have a mix of approximately 80 networked workgroup printers, some of which produce up to 20,000 pages per month, plus four workgroup A4 colour printers, two A3 colour printers and three high volume mono printers. As the site has changed and new buildings have been erected, we have purchased products to suit their environment and usage requirements.
“In 2005 we had just moved into the new buildings on site and we were interested in ways of making sure that we had the latest technology and reducing the total cost of ownership of the printers. We had become aware of the benefits that a managed print service might deliver and asked Kyocera if it would be feasible to set this up with the products that we already had.”
New College Durham is one of the top twelve colleges of further and higher education in England. It offers full and part time educational courses and has around 20,000 enrolments. The college has recently undergone full regeneration encompassing a range of new buildings and facilities.
Challenge
The College was experiencing significant problems with printer reliability and the cost of cartridges was spiralling to an unacceptable level.
A move to new buildings prompted the ICT manager to evaluate the print network and look for improvements.
Solution
Kyocera and XMA proposed a managed print service that would include all toner and servicing within a single monthly figure.
Benefit
The low cost of ownership of Kyocera hardware meant that the College’s monthly payment was significantly reduced. New College Durham benefits from complete cost transparency.
