Schools print a lot. School trusts spread across two English counties print even more. But with more printing comes more problems. Especially without a print management solution to administer and configure said school trust’s printing. That’s why the Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust (DNEAT) chose PaperCut to take back control of their print environment: leaving their school budgets fuller and their recycling bins nearly empty.
Before we get into all the print geekiness. A bit more about DNEAT. The Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust is a multi-site institution that provides education for children and young people in Norfolk and the Waveney Valley in Suffolk. DNEAT currently oversees 35 academies, with schools spanning from large to small, rural to urban, providing primary education for over 10,000 students.
As a multi-site organization, with no dedicated IT team, DNEAT’s printing was essentially lawless. With the large printing volume of an entire school trust and no centralized software, all of DNEAT’s print jobs were direct by default. This lead to overspending on print consumables and overflowing paper waste baskets. So they needed print management software. But the entire district didn’t have resources for onsite infrastructure. They required a cloud-only print solution.
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Wasteful printing on multiple sites without dedicated IT staff
“Obviously, being a large school, there is a huge amount of printing,” says Saul Garthwaite, Peter House Academy Year 3 Teacher and Computing Lead at Peterhouse Primary Academy, a DNEAT school. “The issues we used to have was printing would be automatically released from the printer. If you did go downstairs and you had sent a large number of print jobs (the same as everybody else) you could find yourself sorting through several hundred (sometimes several thousand) sheets of paper, in order to find your documents.”
No centralized print management solution meant limited control and cumbersome restrictions that only added to inefficient printing workflows: “The other problem that we often used to have would be if the incorrect number of sheets were sent or the wrong paper size of sheet was sent,” says Saul. “Those jobs couldn’t be deleted in situ and would still arrive. That would cause a huge amount of waste and was quite a large problem. To the point where we did have restrictions put on the amount of printing that we could actually do via limiters for each individual year group.”
This print waste was a drain on finances and resources that represented wasted opportunities for growth, says Saul: “When it comes to cost for paper, in a large school if you have 420 students and each of those students requires even one worksheet for one lesson per day: you are, already, by the time you get through one week, several thousand sheets of paper in. Paper, aside from staffing, is probably one of the biggest costs we have here. And obviously, if we can keep those costs down, that money can be better placed elsewhere, such as extra staffing or resources for the children.”
PaperCut Hive fixes printing with just an internet connection
To get on top of all this waste and runaway costs, DNEAT required a print management solution. But not just any print management solution. You may have noticed Saul’s dual job title earlier. That’s because DNEAT doesn’t have dedicated IT staff. Their only IT team is their teachers and existing staff. So software that required the purchase and management of specialized server infrastructure wasn’t an option. They needed a fully-featured cloud-only print software. Enter built-for-cloud SaaS print solution, PaperCut Hive .
“The schools are moving to a cloud offering, so we don’t have on-site servers,” says Danny Hibell, Support Consultant at RM Education, DNEAT’s MSP provider. “On some sites, we have very little technology. So any print management software requiring an on-site server wasn’t an option for us. PaperCut Hive had the option where we could use the cloud only, and we didn’t require kit on site.”
The introduction of PaperCut Hive unlocked full control of DNEAT’s printing, in a cloud-only print environment without dedicated IT workers to oversee maintenance and updates. PaperCut Hive immediately reduced the trust’s waste and costs of printing: “There’s been a massive decrease in wastage,” says Saul. “The great thing about PaperCut Hive is that it lets you delete any mistakes you’ve made pre-printing. So when you go to the machine and you sign in to the PaperCut Hive system, you can see which jobs you want to print. You don’t have to release all of them at the same time. You can release the jobs individually.”
On top of reducing expenses and eliminating paper misuse, PaperCut Hive was the perfect solution to support DNEAT’s shift to hybrid working. The solution’s cloud printing functionality enables teachers and staff with flexible remote workflows, increasing efficiency for blended learning and hybrid work: “With the introduction of PaperCut Hive,” says Danny. “Staff that roam between schools, staff that work from home, they all have the ability to print now, whereas before they didn’t.”
Less paper waste, unburdened IT, agile hybrid working
PaperCut Hive’s fully-hosted SaaS platform means schools of any size in the DNEAT trust can manage their printing environment, regardless of their printer brands - all with just an internet connection.
In the hybrid working world, that means staff and students at all DNEAT schools can now print from any device, from any location: “The fact that the system is remote allows for a nice bit of adaptability for us,” says Saul. “If we’re at home on a Sunday night, we can press print in the PaperCut Hive mobile app. We can then release the document first thing in the morning.“
This functionality of anywhere printing, provides convenience that improves hybrid workflows, while also reducing waste: “One of the main causes of wastage for teachers is sometimes forgetting that you’ve already sent a print job and you send it again,” Saul chuckles. “So it’s great that you can also see duplicate jobs at the MFD.” “One of the other bonuses that you have for the system,” says Saul, “is it often prompts you whether or not they think that it’s going to be an excessive use of paper. ‘Do you want to use that two-sided? Do you need a duplicate of this?’ That’s a really handy system to have in place. I would highly recommend getting PaperCut Hive in terms of conservation printing, and ease of use.”
