Konica Minolta Saves California School District $60K Annually with State of the Art Multifunctional Printers

INDUSTRY: Education

CUSTOMER GOAL: Ensure that each of the 22 district schools have reliable and quality printing capabilities while reducing overall print costs and simplifying printer maintenance.

PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS:

NSI Autostore
Nuance eCopy PDF Pro Office
bizhub® 25 Black & White Multifunction Printer
bizhub 283 Black & White Multifunction Printer
bizhub 423 Black & White Multifunction Printer
bizhub 652 Black & White Multifunction Printer
bizhub 654 Black & White Multifunction Printer
bizhub 754 Black & White Multifunction Printer
bizhub PRO 950 Black & White Production Print System
bizhub C35 Color Multifunction Printer
bizhub C364 Color Multifunction Printer
bizhub C454 Color Multifunction Printer
bizhub C554 Color Multifunction Printer
bizhub C654 Color Multifunction Printer
bizhub C754 Color Multifunction Printer

BACKGROUND: Serving over 20,000 students, the Alvord Unified School District located in Riverside, CA is comprised of 14 elementary schools, four middle schools, four high schools and four district office service centers. Like so many schools across the country, Alvord Unified School District had tightened its operational budgets due to limited state and federal aid.

For the 22 schools, this meant maintaining and supporting an aging printer fleet that consisted of 130 copiers and desktop printers from multiple vendors. As a result, the Assistant Superintendent often heard from teachers and staff how copiers were broken for long periods of time and produced poor quality copies that required teachers to fill in missing information on each sheet. It was clear that the district’s patchwork printing approach was no longer effective for the individual schools, teachers and staff.

Working with the Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta) sales representative, the Assistant Superintendent set out analyze each school’s print usage and resources. The district learned that schools were outsourcing more and more of their print jobs to local vendors including all color print jobs, test booklets, student handbooks, calendars and reading booklets.

The district also identified that most copiers were not networked and did not include scanning capabilities. In some cases, staff had to use home-based printers to scan in materials. The lack of networked scanning capabilities made processes such as purchase order approvals more cumbersome and time consuming.

SOLUTION: Based on the analysis, Konica Minolta provided a detailed proposal for replacing the district’s 140 copiers with 114 networked bizhub Multifunctional Printers (MFPs). The proposal included NSI Autostore and Nuance eCopy PDF Pro software from Konica Minolta’s EnvisionIT Education solution portfolio to help streamline document capture. Most importantly, the proposal outlined how the district would save over $60,000 annually while providing each school with award-winning color and black and white print and scanning functionality.

The schools and administrative offices of Alvord Unified now have access to reliable printing to ensure that classroom and school materials can be printed quickly and professionally. In addition, every school has at least one color bizhub MFP. This has reduced the district’s print outsourcing costs by printing test or reading booklets, certificates,school programs, and calendars onsite. For example, the district needed to reprint and distribute updated school calendars for every student in a matter of days. The cost of outsourcing this project was $10,000 with a 10 day turnaround time. With the new bizhub color MFPs, the district was able to e-mail an updated color PDF calendar to the schools since they now have the ability to print them onsite for distribution to the students that morning. The total printing cost to the district was $1,300, easily reimbursed to the schools by simple transfer.

The addition of scanning capabilities and document capture and processing software from NSI Autostore allows the district to better comply with security requirements regarding student records and Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). Teachers evaluating students for special services can now scan in test results from the bizhub MFP and select the student ID number and the name of the test being administered, directly from the control panel of the MFP. The documents are then tagged with the information and sent directly to the teacher’s computer and iPad. This ensures that IEPs and tests are kept confidential and adhere to state and federal governance requirements.

To minimize the expense of printing and storing school forms, the district implemented Nuance eCopy PDF Pro Office. The school scanned in all forms and turned them into fillable PDF forms that are now stored online and can be accessed by school administrators. The forms can be downloaded and filled out electronically without the need for printing. They can also be quickly printed onsite if needed. The district also has the ability to quickly update form templates to ensure that are always current and available.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS:

“In talking with teachers, it was clear our schools needed more reliable printing resources, but our School Board was reluctant to make any new equipment investments fearing higher operational costs. Konica Minolta was able to demonstrate how the district could save valuable budget resources while providing our schools advanced printing capabilities. It was a win-win value proposition. We now have easy ordering of supplies, dedicated service technicians and a consistent printer environment. More importantly, teacher feedback has been extremely positive and they are now able to spend more time in the classroom without having to worry about their printed materials.”

-Herb Calderon, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, Alvord Unified School District

Click here to view the PDF of this case study from Konica Minolta