Managing print infrastructure in higher education can be complex, with institutions facing challenges related to cost control, environmental impact, and user experience.
The Challenge
Higher education institutions typically manage large campuses with thousands of students and staff, requiring an efficient and cost-effective print infrastructure. In some cases, Higher Education groups of colleges have been formed and the challenge is greater here where students and staff are spread across multiple campuses.
As Rob Cottrell, Group Director of IT & Digital Innovation at Inspire Education Group, explains
“We needed an easy way of getting an over-arching view of the fleet across all of our three campuses. We wanted to ensure that we had the right devices in the right places, and relocate them, where appropriate, in order to spread the load, and give quicker access to devices where they were needed. We also were aiming to reduce service demands and call outs by ensuring that printers weren’t being overused.”
Common challenges include:
- Fleet Optimization: Ensuring the right devices are in the right locations to balance workload and reduce service demands.
- Cost Transparency: Difficulty in visualizing departmental print costs and ownership of expenses.
- Environmental Impact: Lack of visibility into printing’s carbon footprint, including energy consumption and paper use.
- User Experience: Reducing wait times at commonly uses devices and improving accessibility to printers for staff and students.
- Accountability: Enabling managers to monitor and adjust departmental printing behaviour.
Many institutions find that excessive printing volumes and inefficient device placements can lead to higher costs and increased environmental impact, necessitating advanced monitoring and reporting solutions.
How can Print Analytics help?
Higher education institutions can benefit from advanced print analytics (such as those provided by Intuitive for PaperCut) These solutions can help institutions achieve:
- Fleet-Wide Monitoring: A clear overview of total cost of ownership and device usage across campuses.
- Print Cost Breakdown: Detailed visual departmental reports to promote cost accountability.
- Environmental Tracking: Insights into CO2 footprint, energy consumption, and paper usage.
- Improved Accessibility: Optimized MFD locations to minimize congestion and enhance efficiency.
- Executive-Level Reporting: Easy-to-digest high level summaries for leadership to drive strategic decision-making.
“We had two big challenges to address. How could we ensure that the fleet of MFDs were located in the areas where they could be accessed by the widest range of users, and which MFDs in the fleet were under-utilised and no longer required? We also wanted to visualise the environmental impact of our printing, with the aim of improving our CO2 footprint in terms of both energy consumption and trees used.”
Rob Cottrell, Group Director of IT & Digital Innovation at Inspire Education Group
Key Benefits
1. Print Estate Optimization
By identifying underutilized and overused MFDs, institutions can redistribute devices to balance demand, reducing bottlenecks and improving availability.
2. Enhanced Staff and Student Experience
Relocating MFDs based on usage data reduces wait times and provides staff and students with quicker access to printing services.
3. Cost Ownership & Transparency
Departments gain access to detailed print cost reports, encouraging responsible usage and departmental planning to support sustainability goals.
4. Senior Leadership Visibility
Executives and senior leadership benefit from an intuitive dashboard summarizing total print costs and environmental impact. Integration with PaperCut Grows (link) further supports sustainability efforts through tree planting initiatives to offset CO2 emissions.
Conclusion
By leveraging print analytics dashboards such as Intuitive for PaperCut, higher education institutions can enhance print management, cost control, user experience, and sustainability. This solution empowers universities and colleges with data-driven decision-making, ensuring continued innovation in print infrastructure management.
Want to learn more about how Intuitive for PaperCut can transform your institution’s print management strategy? Get in touch
Our recent Case Study about Inspire Education Group is available to download here: weareintuitive.com/resources/case-study-inspire-education-group/
