Case Study: Hatboro-Horsham School District
Ricoh partners with Hatboro-Horsham School District to modernize its print environment.
About the customer
Hatboro-Horsham School District is located in suburban Philadelphia and is a forward-thinking, progressive educational organization with a history of academic excellence. Serving approximately 5,000 students, the district provides education to students from grades K-12. It has received blue ribbon honors from both the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the United States Department of Education. Recently, Hatboro-Horsham was awarded the Pennsylvania Department of Education Classroom for the Future Grant to enhance technology integration and computer access in all of its high school classes. Together with its school board, parents, teachers and staff, the district is committed to moving into the 21st Century of education.
"It's been a total win-win with Ricoh. We've been able to improve our services and the functionality is so much better — and our costs went down."
Robert Reichert
Director of Business Affairs at Hatboro-Horsham School District
Challenge
Need to lower costs yet accommodate population shifts
Inefficient printing processes
IT over-burdened with break-fix and printer maintenance
Inability to make smarter, data-driven decisions
Hatboro-Horsham needed to find more cost effective ways of implementing programs to improve education for students. Often that means finding additional resources, especially as more students come in from different countries and speak different languages. But like most school districts, Hatboro-Horsham had limited funds and wanted to reduce its costs.
Hatboro-Horsham had an over-built printing fleet consisting of outdated devices and an onsite print center. There were printers scattered throughout the district, but the systems weren't reliable and frequently broke down — causing its IT department to be over-burdened with break-fix and maintenance tasks.
Just as important, Hatboro-Horsham lacked the ability to gain insight into the printing activities throughout the district. So they couldn't make data-driven decisions to determine where printers were needed and where they weren't — or know who was using the printers and for what purpose.
Solution
"In the past, we had copiers all over the district but we didn't know if they were utilized properly. Now, we have the right copiers with the right functionality in the right places."
Robert Reichert
Director of Business Affairs at Hatboro-Horsham School District
Optimized the MFP fleet and removed unneeded printers
Enabled card authentication technology to track usage
Rolled out mobile printing
Provided automatic toner replenishment and monthly reports
Following an initial device population analysis, over time Ricoh eliminated outdated, unnecessary print devices and refreshed the fleet with updated MFPs installed in the hallways and administrative areas throughout the schools. We enlisted the district's existing PaperCut™ MF authentication software and added card readers to all the MFPs so usage data could be extracted to make informed decisions — and output could be tracked to the user and type of documents printed.
In addition, we rolled out mobile printing from tablets and laptops at the high school to make printing easier and more efficient. Mobile printing will next be rolled out to the middle and elementary schools.
To ensure a smooth transition to all the new technology, we provided change management services to promote understanding and adoption. We enlisted our Ricoh Managed Services Support Center (RMSSC) for automatic toner replenishment and monthly reporting on under-utilization, over-utilization, uptime and service history. We also took over the print center and staffed it with one full-time employee to handle high-volume printing for the faculty, staff and district administrators 11 months of the year.
Results
$90,000 cumulative cost savings
Reduced fleet by 150 devices
Re-allocated IT person to higher value tasks
Decreased printer use and paper waste
Over the course of Ricoh's 15-year relationship with Hatboro-Horsham, the school district has reduced its printing costs by $90,000. Right-sizing the fleet has led to removing 150 outdated, unnecessary devices, the elimination of costly desktop printers and upgrades to more efficient MFPs with enhanced functionality.
With Ricoh taking over service of the fleet and providing auto replenishment of toner, the district has been able to re-allocate one of its IT staff to higher value work. And with mobile printing and software tracking users' printing behavior, the district has seen a decrease in printer use and paper waste.