Efficiency is key for Heathfield St Mary's School

Customers in the education sector often need specific expertise from suppliers when it comes to ordering copier fleet. Schools in particular, have specific time frames that they work to, need comprehensive software that their staff can use and also need a fast turnaround on hardware and software installation with minimal disruption.

Heathfield St Mary’s School is an all-girls' all boarding independent school, for 11-18 year olds. The school has approximately 225 pupils and 110 full time equivalent staff, so efficiency was key when choosing what machines and supplier to use.
The school needed machines that could provide high volume print solutions without compromising the quality or performance of the machine. The school had previously been using OCE machines before the contract expired in 2005.

John Bueno, Bursar of Heathfield St Marys had used Kyocera machines before at the previous school at he worked at. He had been impressed with the output of the devices and had no hesitation in recommending them when the existing machines were due for replacement.

The school had a demanding workload that the printing and copying fleet had to deal with. They needed machines that could cope with a high volume; the teaching staff regularly had to prepare teaching materials and copy examination papers for mock exams.

Quality was also important to the School, a lot of printed material finds its way into parent hands and the standards have to be commensurate with the standard of service expected from a high fee paying school.

Also the machines had to be user friendly, with a simple interface that everyone could easily navigate around and use without any problems.

These were the top priorities of the school when they went through their procurement process. Kyocera were one of four companies , competing against Rank, Xerox and HP during the contract renewal process.

John said: “We chose Kyocera over the other manufacturers because of their reputation. Swift Digital had no hesitation in recommending Kyocera to us. Both Swift Digital and Kyocera have provided us with excellent service, with minimum call-outs needed.”

“We measured them against competitor’s offerings in order to be able to make an informed decision and Kyocera came out on top on price and performance.”

The School has installed four MFDs (multifunctional devices), which have replaced the former stand alone machines. KM-4050s, KM-3050 and a KM-3035 have been introduced throughout the departments.

The school have already reaped the benefits of the new machines. John said: “The devices have improved efficiency most definitely and the staff are very pleased with the machines. The ability to print and scan documents from your desktop is excellent, as is the ability to send large print jobs to unique trays.”

In the area of printing and copying, we are seeing increased demand for software that can identify the frequency of use and costs attributable to particular users or departments and hence allow us to budget and monitor costs more effectively.

The school uses a combination of Pcounter (by Altman Technologies) for network printer account management and Kyocera’s KM-NET Admin for copier account management.  Combined, this gives the IT team in the School complete usage statistics by department (on the devices) and per user (through Pcounter), as well as being able to set quotas and job types through the solution software.  They also analyse the print traffic type through each device to see how the load distributes throughout the school.

The school have been so impressed with the Kyocera MFDs that they are looking to further replace some HP devices with Kyocera models. At the time of writing, the School has added four FS-C5025N, three FS-C4000DNs and two FS-C8100DN’s to their fleet.

John said: “We are delighted at how the Kyocera machines have eased the workload for staff throughout the school. Our operations are now more efficient and we have reduced the amount of money we spend on consumables through the academic year. And with the minimum service calls and disruption, we would recommend Kyocera to anyone.”