Education Case Study
Passing with Flying Colors
Xerox adds cost-effective color to the classroom,
saving a school district 20% in print costs.
Some purchased supplies for their own printers.
Others brought in old HP inkjet printers from
home, which put added pressure on the IT
department to fix them. All of this created a
situation that was out of control in terms of cost
management and accountability. That’s when
the district’s IT director turned to Xerox for help.
The Solution
Industry:
Education
Solution:
Replaced standalone black and white
copiers, faxes and printers with:
• 46 Xerox® ConnectKey® ColorQube®
8900 and 9301 Multifunction Printers
•2
9 Xerox® WorkCentre® 5150 and 7545
Multifunction Printers
•P
counter software solution from
A.N.D. Technologies
• Xerox® Managed Print Services
The Challenge
In a time of severe financial hardship, a North
Carolina School district’s large fleet of black and
white HP® desktop printers was only adding to
the problem. Printers were scattered everywhere
and the district couldn’t determine how much
these devices were really costing them. Many
were broken or running heavy volumes, had little
or no toner and had very poor print quality. Still,
teachers desperately needed to print and found
creative ways to keep the devices running.
Using the Xerox methodology of assess, design,
implement and manage, the Xerox team went to
work, first doing a complete volume, cost and
quality assessment of the district’s print fleet.
The 60-day assessment gave Xerox a true picture
of the print volumes being run on the district’s
55 copiers, 40 network printers and 440
classroom HP desktop printers. Xerox discovered
that the district’s monthly cost to manage and
maintain all of these devices was extremely high.
Xerox then proposed a strategy to consolidate
the standalone black and white devices with
Xerox® MFPs, which would give the teachers the
ability to print in color and the incentive to move
away from the classroom printers. To help reduce
the cost of printing in color, Xerox® ColorQube
technology was used with its three-tier pricing.
This gave the teachers the ability to add color
and highlight text on their lesson plans for less
than the cost of printing on their classroom HP
printers. Pcounter software was also added to
the mix, giving teachers the freedom to print
from any MFP on campus, while allowing the
district to centrally manage its costs down to the
individual user and device.
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of Xerox Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. 10/13 BENMA-115 BR8082
The Results
Xerox was able to offer three-tiered pricing for
the ColorQube devices, allowing teachers to have
highlight color in their lesson plans for the cost of
black and white. This ultimately provided the
incentive for the teachers to move away from the
expensive and time-consuming HP classroom
printers, which were later removed entirely from
the district.
Pcounter provided the functionality for the IT
department to centrally manage the 400+
teachers and control the cost of color printing. IT
now had the tools to monitor and control the
costs and justify the strategy to the school board
and administration. The strategy ultimately
resulted in a 20% savings and eliminated a
$60,000 line item in the budget for classroom
printer toner. Additionally, the IT staff is no
longer chasing printer problems and can
concentrate on more important and productive
issues. The immediate cost savings helped in a
very tight budget environment, and the teachers
are providing more colorful and interesting
lesson plans to the students.