Revitalizing a Kansas school district

“Restructuring and re-tasking the print center has had a positive impact on our consumables costs and helped the print center be more focused and efficient,” said Lane.
Going forward, Ricoh and SMSD are exploring Syncplicity file sharing to make accessing information anytime, anywhere, from any device even easier. Currently, SMSD stores its data using a traditional shared drive model, which sequesters data behind the district’s firewall and prevents it from being readily available outside the network.

This discourages collaboration because unlocking data outside the network requires a trip to the SMSD IT department, filling out forms, establishing a shared drive and IT intervention to maintain the shared drive and add users. With Syncplicity, users who originate data get to decide who can and can’t see the data—and the data remains secure.
“You get the security of a shared drive, but the freedom for mobile users to share with who they want to—without having to wait for our technology team to enable that,” said Lane.

The Results

The payoff from the partnership between SMSD and Ricoh has been impressive. For starters, comments about the shift to a digital learning environment from faculty and staff have been overwhelmingly positive. “About 95 percent of the comments have been positive. Our faculty and staff really like the convenience and how well all the technology works,” said Lane.

There has been an overall reduction in printing across the district since Ricoh helped SMSD make the transition to digital. Hard cost savings are real. Environmental benefits are evident. And the print center is now a thriving asset.

“Ricoh has aligned perfectly with our one-to-one initiative enabling electronic information in each school,” said Deb Zila, former school board president at SMSD. “And if something needs to be printed, we have a resource that teachers can count on.”

Less Printing, Significant Cost Savings

While becoming a digital learning environment was priority one, reducing costs placed a close second. Dramatic cuts in the printing fleet has led to dramatic reductions in print volumes throughout the district—as well as sizeable cost savings.

In the first year of the program, SMSD saw a nearly 50 percent drop in printing and Lane expects another 50 percent reduction in the second full year. There were more than 44 million fewer clicks during the first year. Hard costs savings in year one totaled $600,000 plus another $150,000 in paper savings.

“We know at some point the print reduction and cost savings will level off—or even tick up a bit as our student body grows or class sizes increase,” said Lane. “But we now have the ability to see where those clicks come from and make decisions based on that information.”

Reduced Print Support, Smart Labor Force

The year prior to the shift to the digital learning environment, there were 3,264 calls to SMSD’s help desk related to printers. Those calls have been reduced by 90 percent, as Ricoh provides full support for the MFPs.

Lifting this burden has allowed SMSD’s IT department to shift its focus to supporting the digital learning environment and concentrating on student and teacher mobile device support. “We’re still busy, but we’re not worrying about printers anymore,” said Lane. “We used to have 45 people in the department dealing with printers and now we have just two or three that make sure Equitrac and TRAC are working. They don’t even need to involve me anymore. They call Ricoh directly and any issues are resolved quickly.”

Environmental Advantages, Security Gains

While environmental and security gains weren’t primary drivers for the transition to a digital learning environment, SMSD counts them among the significant perks of the initiative. By reducing clicks and paper usage, SMSD estimates it has saved approximately 5,281 trees in the first year as well as reduced the energy required to process trees and paper. Also, there are far fewer printers consuming energy across the district, resulting in a 90 percent carbon footprint reduction.

Security benefits certainly can’t be ignored. Now that users have to badge into the MFPs to authenticate and retrieve printed materials, SMSD has greater assurance that sensitive district information is protected.

“If a print job isn’t picked up at the MFP of the user’s choosing within 24 hours, it gets erased from the system,” said Lane. This greatly reduces the chance of information leaking out.”

Focused Print Center, Digital Learning

The revitalized, more focused print center stands out as a shining example of the partnership’s success. Prior to refocusing the print center, 70 percent of the district’s faculty didn’t even know the print center existed. Now, more than 70 percent of the faculty uses the center.

The district’s print center is now a centralized printing hub and vital resource for the district, run seamlessly by Ricoh Managed Services. It’s no longer operating at a loss and costing the district money. In fact, volume at the center skyrocketed from 1,700 jobs before the shift to more than 12,000 jobs in 2014. Turnaround times have also dramatically improved. It used to take the print center, on average, nearly 7 days to complete a job. Now, delivery times are two days or less—with 99.3 percent completed on time or ahead of the requested delivery date.

“Going forward, we’re looking at more ways to use the print center—like shifting large jobs printed at the building level to the print shop. We could implement rules at the MFPs to help prompt that,” said Lane.

“Even more so, we want our people to really look at whether they need to even generate the click. Instead, can they do what they need to do in a digital format?” said Lane. “That’s the core of our digital learning initiative and so far, it’s been a great success.”

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