An average K-12 school can spend up to 10% of its annual budget on printing, but as digital as the world has become, paper isn’t going away anytime soon.
As such, principals are faced with the challenge of making sure that their printing costs are as low as possible while not sacrificing the quality of important administrative functions.
Below, The Educator speaks to Gurbaksh Singh, product marketing manager at Konica Minolta, to find out how the company is helping schools in this area.
TE: In your view, what are some common challenges for schools when it comes to print management?
GS: Schools struggle to reduce printing costs and eliminate sources of inconvenience that increase operating expenses. In addition, schools are leading in green initiatives and want to avoid unnecessary printing. With mobile devices becoming a common part of the education experience, students and staff, want to print from their own devices irrespective of their location. The challenge for schools is to integrate BYOD print support into their existing environment to track printing and control cost. Another important challenge is the need to protect the security and confidentiality of documents. Protecting user data and controlling access to protect privacy is a high priority.
TE: How much money do schools typically spend on printing, and how much can they save through effective print management?
GS: Konica Minolta print management solution can help schools reduce printing expenses by up to 30% and improve their environmental impact. An effective print management solution can significantly enhance the print outcomes for staff and students and let schools monitor usage at the user level. Secure printing using swipe card authentication means the chance of printing things users don’t need are reduced. Once implemented the solution can continually help to achieve operational efficiencies and financial benefits.
TE: Can you tell us about the ways in which Konica Minolta are helping schools reduce costs with print management?
GS: Schools want staff and students to focus on their work and studies with easy access to printing facilities while reducing printing cost. Konica Minolta’s print management solution provides secure printing for students and staff. The use of swipe cards or PIN codes protects unauthorised access to the multifunction device. Authentication lets the user select the desired print job and delete jobs sent to the printer that are no longer needed hence reducing wastage. The mobile print functionality supports BYOD printing in a multi-campus network without expensive infrastructure providing highest level of security. The reporting capability provides true data to schools to monitor, track and allocate costs to users and charge back to generate revenue. Further cost savings can be achieved by creating print policies. These policies can be set to reduce costs related to paper waste, toner usage and printer usage efficiencies. Common rules that can save significant costs include converting a single-page document into a duplex document.
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