If there’s one thing that every primary school knows, it’s that classrooms go through an endless amount of paper. Here’s how schools can take back control of printing costs
Between printing out worksheets, homework and quizzes, school printers are in constant use. And with such a high volume of printing, it can be a struggle for IT teams and leadership to stay on top of who is printing what.
The best way to gain full visibility over school printing is to implement a robust print management solution. By leveraging tracking tools and reporting capabilities, you can optimise your print infrastructure, reduce waste, keep costs low and promote responsible printing behaviour.
How to Track and Manage Printing Effectively
Managing print activity in schools is an ongoing challenge for IT teams and administrators. By centralising control of the entire school print environment, you can get end-to-end visibility into printing behaviours and expenditures.
Cloud-based print management solutions allow you to track and analyse print usage across departments, logging individual print jobs to generate a detailed audit trail. Through automated reporting capabilities, they gather and interpret all print activity by user, printer and department. This allows IT teams to spot excessive printing and inefficiencies and adapt their print policies to department needs.
Another effective tracking strategy is to deploy user authentication methods such as PIN codes or ID badges. These can be used in tandem with a Secure Print Release feature, which requires users to identify themselves at the printer before the document is released.
With a print management solution, visibility also extends beyond the print log to the printed document itself. This can be as simple as a watermark with the date and username on each page, to as advanced as a digital signature. As a bonus, because the origin of the print job is always visible, staff are likely to take greater care in ensuring sensitive information isn’t left lying around.
Cutting Costs With Smarter Print Tracking
One of the most significant advantages of a print tracking solution is the ability to manage your print budget more effectively. With comprehensive visibility into print usage, schools can better allocate print resources and identify areas where waste (and therefore costs) can be reduced.
Real-time dashboards and automated reports make it easy for IT admins to monitor high-usage individuals and departments and adjust their print policies accordingly. Schools can set print quotas for different departments, holding teachers and staff accountable for their printing behaviours. These quotas can even be customised based on things like grade level and subject area.
Primary schools can also use print management solutions to enforce sustainable printing practices, like restricting colour printing and setting double-sided printing by default. And with Secure Print Release preventing unnecessary and duplicate print jobs, the result is a significant reduction in paper, ink, toner and energy consumption – helping keep printing costs under control.
Key Metrics For Print Tracking
For more efficient print management, IT teams should focus on specific tracking metrics that can be used to optimise school printing practices, reduce waste and control costs. These include:
Print volume – the total number of pages printed over a specific period, helping identify trends and peak usage times
Cost per page – the cost associated with printing each page, including paper, ink and toner
Colour vs black-and-white printing – the proportion of print jobs that are printed in colour, which is more expensive than black-and-white printing
Duplex printing rate – the percentage of print jobs that use both sides of the paper, which can halve paper consumption
Printer utilisation – the amount of time a printing device is being actively used compared to its idle time
Print waste – the number of pages printed but not collected, indicating inefficient or unnecessary printing
Environmental impact – how print jobs impact the environment in terms of water, energy and carbon footprint
Department/user printing activity – a breakdown of costs by department or individual user, enabling schools to set quotas and adjust print policies
Measuring The Cost Savings and ROI
While a print management solution requires an upfront investment, it can deliver substantial cost savings over the long-term. To calculate the ROI, primary schools should first determine the total cost of printing before implementing tracking solutions, including paper, toner, maintenance and energy usage.
You can then consider all potential cost savings through reduction in print volume and wasted prints due to restrictions and user authentication, decreased paper usage from default duplex printing, reduced wear and tear on printers and lower energy consumption in an optimised print environment.
Many of PaperCut’s educational partners have managed to cut their printing costs by up to 70% after implementing tracking and reporting tools.
For example, Brentwood School in England has over 1,500 students, almost 150 staff and over a hundred printers across its massive campus. With spiralling printing costs, the IT team lacked visibility into who was printing, how much they were printing and why.
To address these pain points, the school implemented PaperCut’s print management solution which delivered greater visibility. Detailed print reporting not only enabled the IT department to gain control of the print environment but also showed users the raw cost each time they hit “print”. This created a culture of accountability, which translated into reduced print volume and significant budget savings.
So, by leveraging the print tracking and reporting tools in cloud print management, primary schools can finally answer the age-old question: “Where does all that paper go?” Better yet, this granular level of visibility empowers IT teams to take control of the print environment – helping schools allocate resources more effectively, reducing waste, saving money and making a lasting impact on both their budgets and the environment.
This is a sponsored article, brought to you by PaperCut
To find out more about PaperCut products and services, visit: https://www.papercut.com/
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