Tokoroa High School controls printing costs
The South Waikato school is saving about $300 a month through accurate recording of printing and photocopying usage thanks to Canon technology...
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For the 450 pupils and staff at Tokoroa High School, scanning and sharing information online and keeping a tighter control on printing costs has become a lot easier thanks to its partnership with Canon New Zealand. The initial task for David Balsom, sales supervisor for Canon in the Waikato region, was to provide two new multifunction devices, the iRC2880 and iR3320, to compliment the two Canon machines already on site, the iR5065 and iRC3170. “Our goal was to provide students and staff with a more effective learning website environment through the ability to scan colour, black and white and PDF documents directly on-line to the school’s intranet,” says Balsom. “This would enable more efficient sharing of information between pupils and between pupils and staff.” A significant outcome for the school was the reduction in running costs achieved by the Canon team. “We were able to save the school approximately $300 a month, which as it turned out was able to be used to make further advancements related to the accurate recording of printing and photocopying usage at the school,” he says. During discussions with the school’s principal, Elgin Edwards, Canon became aware that the school was manually recording billings for photocopiers and printers using paper dockets. These were then handed into the administration office where a staff member would have to go through and log the information from the bits of paper against the appropriate cost centre. Balsom recommended the school evaluate the uniFLOW Output Manager from Canon. uniFLOW has a unique modular design and open platform architecture that can be configured to address the specific needs of any business, from large corporate enterprises to education facilities such as high schools. It produces a wide range of detailed reports that enables accurate measuring of print device usage and costs by user, workgroup or department. “I was impressed with the ability of the accounting and statistics module of uniFLOW to accurately record usage of the machines by individuals and assign it to the appropriate cost centre,” says Edwards. Each teacher has been issued with a swipe card and before they commence a printing job they charge it to the appropriate cost centre such as department, school year and project, or if it’s for private use to their personal cost centre. At the end of each month invoices are generated for each cost centre and sent to the school Executive Officer to action. uniFLOW went live in April and while there were some initial teething problems Edwards says the school is already seeing the advantages. “uniFLOW produces such accurate reports so we now have a better understanding of the true cost of printing at the school and because we are now able to do more on-line we have reduced the amount of paper we use. Perhaps even more importantly it has enabled us to free up about approximately five hours per week of administration time and redirect that towards teaching where it is most needed,” says Edwards. “Staff at the school have welcomed the changes. If they didn’t like it I would certainly hear about it and I’ve had no negative feedback at all.” For more information Canon New Zealand 8/9/15_ex_m_h |
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