Parallel has once again demonstrated its values of being a customer-led managed print services provider by acquiring a new client in the education sector, Langley Hall Primary Academy.

Langley Hall is a free school established in 2011 with three sites across Langley in Berkshire.

Print volumes can be substantial in education, and the organisation’s previous solution wasn’t meeting these demanding needs – one of the biggest challenges was the lack of print management software, explains their IT manager, Cezary:-

“We know we have high print volumes, but without accurate reporting, it was impossible to understand how we could control these numbers; we needed a robust solution in place that gives us back this control and allows us to put the right rules in place for cost saving.” 

A mix of units across the sites made consumable delivery difficult, resulting in unnecessary downtime for units while they were waiting for the correct toner or waste unit. The uptime of the print operation was being further impacted by the supplier missing service level agreements for the repair, and having units off-line was impacting the productivity of their team.

Parallel conducted a full print audit across the sites and quickly discovered that the incumbent supplier had specified a massively oversubscribed fleet. It became clear that many units hadn’t been installed in the right locations for maximum efficiency.

Upon being awarded the contract, Parallel removed 24 printers and specified and installed 19 new units, plus some more specialist units requested by the Academy.

“We always say it’s our goal to say yes! Langley Hall also required an ID card printer, a photo printer and two state-of-the-art 3D printers, which we were successfully able to source and install as part of the bigger rollout,” explains Gavin Auckland, Managing Director at Parallel.

In a further display of providing the right solution for their clients, the management team were keen that any new install didn’t disturb the school day, so Parallel arranged for all the units to be configured and installed on a Saturday morning; incredibly, the team installed all 19 units in just two and a half hours!

The addition of the Papercut software started to impact Langley Hall within days of the installation.

“With colour printing costing significantly more than mono, our experience knew that the lack of management software in place was making it impossible for the Langley Hall team to control who was printing what and whether it was mono or colour. We knew immediately that PaperCut Print Management software would rectify this issue and deliver massive cost savings,” says Gavin Auckland, Parallel Managing Director.

Alongside colour volumes, there were also some big problems with wasted print – this was another great benefit to installing PaperCut as follow-me printing allowed users to pull their printing from any device and delete unneeded documents in real-time.

“We estimated that across the three sites, up to 26% of print was being wasted – when you consider this next to the high colour costs, it was clear that the print volumes were costing a lot more than they needed to be”, continues Gavin.

Within weeks of the installation, the wasted print figure had decreased significantly, and Parallel was able to reduce the colour output by 33%.

Papercut allows network-wide rules to be put in place that make a massive difference to the colour volumes in any organisation; these rules include allowing certain documents (e.g. emails) to only be printed in mono and the ability to use double-sided printing to reduce paper consumption.

“Very quickly, we were able to see our volumes dropping – we have real-time data from Parallel which shows how many pages we are printing daily – seeing these numbers fall so quickly showed us how unsuitable our previous solution was,” explains Cezary.

Since entering the contract earlier this year, Langley Hall has saved 54% on their previous agreement and reduced their colour volumes by a third.

“Being able to make such significant cost savings as an education establishment is so important; every penny we save on printing can be utilised elsewhere to further improve our provision for our students. Working with Parallel has been seamless – from our Saturday morning installation to the provision of the specialist units. Our network visibility through Printanista has enabled us to reach fleet uptimes of around 99%. We’d recommend them to any educational institution who aren’t getting the support they need from their current provider”.

 We knew immediately that PaperCut Print Management Software would rectify this issue and deliver massive cost savings