Modernize your school’s print fleet with managed print services
4 min read
Although classes are currently being held online, schools will be back in session before we know it. After this extended break, there will be no better time to ask, “When was the last time you took inventory of your school’s print environment?” For IT pros in higher education settings who constantly grapple with seemingly self-propagating to-do lists and lean budgetary resources, it’s common to have expired inventory taking up space in closets or aging, underperforming tech still chugging away in classrooms.
Here’s how teaming up with a managed print services provider like Novatech can help your organization achieve a more flexible and efficient print environment while increasing your capacity for future tech innovation.
Stop firefighting for an aging print fleet
In today’s fast-paced educational environment, your printer fleet may not seem like a top issue. Students are consuming greater quantities of bandwidth at all hours of the day and night, professors are adapting to new technological innovations in the classroom, and worrisome threats are cropping up in the security landscape. At the same time, your IT budget may be much thinner than you’d prefer.
To make ends meet, old printers may be pressed into service long past their prime—only catching someone’s attention when they break down. And when they do, your IT team has to shift into firefighting mode, which sinks precious staff time and money into troubleshooting the problem.
But the costs of maintaining an aging printer fleet don’t end there. With a mix of printers from various manufacturers deployed across your organization, you may be dealing with surprisingly high expenses as you try to stay fully stocked to meet your printers’ varied needs.
If you’re stuck in reactive mode while tending to the creaks and groans of aging tech, the idea of modernizing your print fleet and bringing everything up to date may seem like a pipe dream. However, the need for an upgrade isn’t going away. Fortunately, as EdTech Magazine reports, many campus IT pros are rising to this type of challenge by tapping smart solutions for IT tasks that can free up time and extend their capabilities—and you can, too.
Modernize your printers with managed print services
By partnering with an experienced managed print services provider, your IT team can upgrade its printer fleet, reduce overhead expenses associated with maintaining and troubleshooting, strengthen security, and even tap analytics insights to plan proactively for your future needs.
An MPS partner will typically start by assessing your current usage and determining what it costs to keep your setup running. This can help you build a case for modernizing your organization’s fleet. Chances are good that they’ll be able to spot any inefficiencies and identify smart ways for you to reduce waste in your print environment—saving you money and improving your organization’s environmental sustainability in the process.
Armed with an understanding of your current print usage, you can then map out a procurement plan for retiring and upgrading older assets with an eye toward steadily lowering your costs and better serving students, faculty, and administrative staff. Of course, any type of technology upgrade requires implementation assistance and training to be successful.
Here, too, an MPS partner like Novatech can give you a valuable assist by helping to make sure that the right equipment is installed in the right locations on campus, with end-users receiving full training. This would leave your tech up-to-date and allow your colleagues and their students to print with ease, enjoying greater productivity as a result. Another likely result is fewer calls to the help desk. Altogether, partnerships with managed service providers are typically win-win arrangements.
Increase your efficiency and capacity for tech innovation
Beyond upped reliability and basic cost savings, MPS can grant new efficiencies by digitizing and automating document-intensive processes. Potential applications for integrated workflows span the entire structure of your institution, from enrollment to academic administration to alumni relations. With MPS workflow solutions for education information and records are readily available to those who need them most.
This kind of connected tech within your workflows generates constant streams of data from which to draw actionable insights, such as trends and patterns in usage, helping you to evaluate your institution’s security posture and know whether devices are adhering to the policies intended to protect them. As your print environment changes, such insights can help you plan necessary enhancements or adjustments.
Security-wise, the innovation of MPS goes beyond just data breach prevention—think of the renewed confidence of the stakeholders, the eased regulatory compliance, and the avoidance of costly and frustrating print downtime. Multiple factors determine your organization’s overall operational posture, so consider all benefits when evaluating MPS as an option.
Strategically partnering with managed service providers to tackle your printing concerns can give your team access to expertise on demand and free up capital to fund new, innovative services for the school community. And with a little more room on your plate, you can focus on higher-level strategic priorities to keep your organization competitive. By taking advantage of these enhanced resources and the increased agility they tend to create, your IT team can look to spend less time wrestling technology and more time innovating.
Reach out to the Managed Print Specialists at Novetech for an assessment and you’ll be sitting at the front of the class.
Novatech is a proud Premier Partner First Managed Print Specialist
