American University optimizes print experience and sustainability for 18,000+ users

Cutting to the chase

Problem

Evolving campus outgrew library pay-for-print model

Solution

New fleet with a campus-wide rollout of PaperCut MF

Outcome

Visibility, waste reduction, and ease of use for entire campus

Founded in 1893, American University is a private research college located in Washington, D.C. Their alumni include multiple Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winners.

Home to more than 14,000 students and 4,500 staff members across 50 buildings, American University required a campus-wide print management solution. They coupled this with refreshing their entire device fleet.

Part of a top-down initiative, the university’s IT team Brian Blair and Tony Loffredo needed a solution that would boost their infrastructure’s efficiency, while achieving their sustainability goals, and shrinking costs.

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Overall, it is one of the nicer pieces of software to administrate."

- Tony Loffredo,

Assistant Director, Academic Technology

Problem

Evolving campus outgrew library pay-for-print model

American University’s library was using a limited print management solution which didn’t match the speed of evolving student and staff printing needs.

Their pay-for-print infrastructure was wasteful with a suite of efficiency problems: “Having to install soft client software and packages – 80% of troubleshooting centered around that piece of operations,” says Tony Loffredo, Assistant Director, Academic Technology.

The university required a campus-wide solution. On top of a larger scale, feature-rich print management platform, they also needed to migrate their hardware fleet. With five different vendors and no centralized management, they sought a solution for approximately 220 MFDs, 1,500 printers, and 18,000+ users.

In addition to transforming their infrastructure, they also aimed to reduce their carbon footprint and printing costs.

Solution

New fleet with a campus-wide rollout of PaperCut MF

American University engaged their Reseller for an entire fleet of new devices in conjunction with a campus-wide rollout of PaperCut MF.

This combination resulted in a single centralized solution that provided access and control to a previously decentralized environment. This solved American University’s infrastructure issues, explains Tony: “It provided a single solution and support structure to resolve issues in a quick and timely manner with on-campus support and remote support when needed.”

PaperCut MF instantly provided visibility into American University’s printing environment. This data identified exactly how much of their fleet was underutilized. As a result, they reduced their hardware from 1,500 to a couple hundred printers.

Outcome

Visibility, waste reduction, and ease of use for entire campus

With PaperCut MF and their more efficient hardware fleet, American University implemented a centralized billing approach for all departments and users.

This offered the insights they needed to achieve their green initiatives: “It has had a huge environmental impact. The department of sustainability consistently pulls reports on the number of trees saved, carbon footprint reduction, energy saved, etc,” says Brian Blair, Senior Director, Contracts Management.

A mixture of this reporting functionality and inventory management enabled American University to boost the efficiency of their entire campus’s printing environment. “Requests for help from students are going way down, and staff have had very few printing troubleshooting request over the last year,” says Tony.