Marian University

Marian University case study provided by Cannon IV, a Flex Technology Group company

PREVIOUS SITUATION

Students like to print. This simple but true reality yields an abundance of challenges for nearly every educational institution. Marian University, a rapidly growing campus in the Indianapolis area, is no exception to this rule. With student and faculty numbers approaching 4,000 individuals, the need for a structured and managed print environment has become more important than ever when considering costs and security.

Marian University prides itself on supplying students with every opportunity to succeed. Already utilizing the latest in student-focused technology and programs, Marian University’s IT department understood the need for a comprehensive yet flexible solution that would help control the print environment in various facets with the goal of freeing up departmental budgets and contributing to waste reduction and convenient and secure printing campuswide. Marian University has a mix of HP, Sharp and Xerox devices in its fleet of printers, copiers, and MFPs. Marian University needed a print managed software application that could support and manage its entire fleet of devices.

CHALLENGE

When students and faculty have gotten used to an institution that allows the luxury of being able to print whatever they want, whenever they want, it is important to take into consideration that users generally don’t like change. Marian needed a non-intrusive solution that could be designed to be phased into production. For this specific implementation, integration was key. Marian officials wanted it to be a smooth procedure and wanted to be able to replicate those smooth procedures going forward. Cannon IV addressed these concerns by rolling out PaperCut MF in phases without disrupting the workflow of staff and students.

Another challenge that Marian University IT was running into was improper use of printing resources, especially in the Mother Theresa Hackelmeier Memorial Library. This included guests visiting the library and students and faculty printing non-school related materials. Without the ability to validate users and review print behaviors, Marian University was susceptible to users abusing their printing and copying privileges. This lack of monitoring and control was contributing significantly to the rising costs of printing and had the help desk at Marian at full capacity. Marian IT recognized this and knew it was time for a solution that helped them manage their systems in a way that would be effective with the budget and reduce the workload of the help desk.

Throughout the entire process of planning the implementation of PaperCut MF, Marian IT was very conscious of the fact that, above all other things, they needed to plan for continued growth of the university. This meant implementing a scalable solution. As enrollment numbers increased they wanted to ensure the ability to onboard students, manage identities and ID cards, and manage their accounts and credentials seamlessly. Because of a well-executed investment in infrastructure and technology, Marian University was ready to take full advantage of PaperCut MF’s breadth of capabilities.

OUR SOLUTIONS

Previously, Marian had invested a considerable amount of money into a different print management software solution. The previous print management software was too expensive and hard to administer to scale across the entire university campus. However, the need for a flexible, cost-effective, print management solution still remained.

When Cannon IV first approached the school with PaperCut MF, Marian IT was immediately impressed by its reporting capabilities. The ability to capture who prints what and how much, as well as the ability to generate cost savings reports instantly caught the eye of the IT department as a way to validate and measure print-related processes within the organization. This meant the ability to track excessive and sometimes unwarranted printing on all devices on campus by user application. This gave the IT department the ability to measure, then manage their print volumes. A significant portion of wasted printing came from a student or faculty member sending a print job to a printer and it getting lost before they got to the printer to pick it up. The university needed a way of implementing a secure print release process by leveraging campus ID cards.

Representatives from Cannon IV and Marian IT came together and mapped out a plan for implementation. Each party came together to make this happen in a seamless manner, and were able to flip the switch on PaperCut MF without disrupting everyday processes related to the on-campus print environment.

RESULTS

Marian University was pushing six million pages per year by 2013 campus-wide. However, in 2014, the secure print release feature of PaperCut MF Find-Me printing alone saved over 119,000 pages in the library. No longer are departmental budgets being monopolized by paper costs and the amount of waste stacking up around printers in the library has been drastically reduced.

Marian University wasted no time taking full advantage of the reporting that comes out of PaperCut MF. The help desk on campus uses the PaperCut MF archiving feature to save print jobs that can be reviewed later when necessary. For example, when a student is printing higher than normal volumes the help desk is able to contact the student in order to help them understand different academic technology tools they could be utilizing. The detailed reports also aid in recognizing peak print volume patterns allowing Marian’s infrastructure group to ramp up and plan for those times. And as a school with many green initiatives, it even lets Marian see how many trees they have saved!

In correspondence with the implementation of PaperCut MF, Cannon IV helped Marian refresh and right-size its fleet of printers/copiers/ MFPs while effectively leveraging existing printers on campus. According to Doug Curran, “Because we can track printer usage we have been able to direct printers to areas that could benefit from additional capacity.” On the same topic, Williams adds, “The implementation of PaperCut MF Follow-Me printing has taken a lot of focus off of one specific device. If one device goes down you can go to a different one to pull your print.” This can be achieved because every device on campus at Marian University now successfully utilizes PaperCut MF.

OUTCOME AND KEY BENEFITS

Marian University would be the first to agree that the combination of devices, software and Cannon IV MPS professional services has been instrumental in the continued improvement of operational efficiencies, cost saving initiatives and student-focused solutions.

Business Benefits

• Print volume decreased
• Reduced cost of supplies
• Minimized waste / saves trees
• Increased document security
• Bring Your Own Device support
• Self-maintaining
• Short ROI – Pays for itself