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GenevaLogic Case Study: Print-Limit Pro - Continued

In the world of higher education the cost of doing business is under constant scrutiny. All colleges and universities endeavor to streamline operating costs to keep tuition and fees from skyrocketing. At Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Ind., the desire to manage paper and toner expenses from student printing led to the implementation of Print-Limit® Pro from GenevaLogic.

Adjacent to the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s is a small liberal-arts college and offers undergraduate degrees and pre-professional studies to a student body of 1,500 women.

Urgent Need for Print Management Software
“We were hemorrhaging paper,” said Kathy Hausmann, coordinator of student computing. “There was no accountability for student printing in place, so they printed anything and everything, in multiple copies. That cost us a lot.”

While Saint Mary’s had long been aware of the need for a print management solution, like many small colleges it had lacked the manpower and time to determine how much the school would benefit from the implementation. “We knew printing accountability was an issue for a long time, but we simply didn’t have staff available to look into it,” said Hausmann. “Once I was able to start tracking paper use, with student workers recording how often they refilled the printers, we knew we had to do something. The data showed that we were expending far too much paper and toner.”

Finding the Right Product
Identifying the need for printing management software was just the beginning of a long journey for Saint Mary’s. Finding a cost-effective solution that would be easy to implement and to use proved to be a challenge.

“Some colleges might switch from one print accounting software to another, but one of the challenges we faced was a student body that had never had to account for its printing activities,” said Merideth Williamson, desktop support specialist.

Under the direction of Keith Fowlkes, chief information officer at Saint Mary’s, Hausmann and Williamson were testing another software solution when chance brought Print-Limit Pro to their attention. “We had been testing this product for four months, and had horrible trouble with it. We liked the interface, but we couldn’t get it to run in our network,” Hausmann said. “Then one day I got a postcard from GenevaLogic about Print-Limit Pro. We tried it, and got it up and running in one day. That’s what really sold us.”

Williamson added, “While the other company’s tech support was good, the development wasn’t there for what we wanted to do. And the price difference between the two products was huge.”
Saint Mary’s installed Print-Limit Pro for a two-week trial in spring 2006, to give students a preview of things to come. “Print-Limit Pro was easy to install and worked with our existing infrastructure,” said Hausmann. “The trial was very successful, it works well within our system. It’s doing exactly what we wanted to do.”

Chief Information Officer Fowlkes is happy with Print-Limit Pro’s price, ease of use and special features, such as the print card. “Since we began using Print-Limit Pro software, our heaviest-use printer on campus has printed on average one-third less than it did over the same time last academic year,” he said. “Print-Limit Pro has been problem-free during our most hectic time of year, and GenevaLogic’s tech support has been very responsive. We are thrilled about this, to say the least.”

Students Adjust Easily to Print-Limit Pro
Print-Limit Pro was rolled out at the beginning of the academic year. “Because we’re a small college we’re all extremely busy at the beginning of the school year. It’s not the easiest time to implement a major change across campus,” said Hausmann. “We implemented Print-Limit Pro in August, then welcomed the students back. It was running in the background while we helped students connect their PCs and got the computer labs up and running, and it didn’t cause us any problems. That says a lot about the quality of the software, how well it’s written and how easy it is to implement.”

Accountability has made students more aware and careful about their printing activity. Saint Mary’s issues each student a printing quota of 1,000 pages per academic year. After that amount is used up, students must purchase print cards to replenish their printing accounts. Each time a student logs in to a public computer in campus, a Print-Limit Pro pop-up window reminds them of the balance remaining in their printing account.

“The pop-up window keeps students aware of how much they’re printing,” said Williamson. “Our main goal with this software was to make students more accountable and aware of the printing costs. It keeps it in the forefront of their minds.”

This new awareness has led to a paradigm shift in how students use the school printers. Gone are the days when students would heedlessly print and reprint PowerPoint slide shows and Web pages. “Now that they’re financially responsible for their printing and aware of their accountability, they’re trying to print less,” said Hausmann. “A number of students who didn’t know how to print double-sided want to learn now. I’ve shown them how to do multiple pages on a single side, reduce print size. The students are really interested in doing that.”

Further economies are encouraged with the use of duplex printing. “We strongly encourage students to print double-sided to keep costs down,” she said. “They get a 50 percent discount on their Print-Limit Pro accounts if they print double sided.”

Immediate Payoff for Saint Mary’s
The contrast in printer use between fall semester 2005 and fall semester 2006 tells a story of significant cost savings.

The most heavily used printer in the student computer clusters, which is the only one with a duplexing capability, has seen a decrease of more than 26,000 pages in three months. Two other printers in the student computer labs have each seen a decrease of approximately 17,000 pages in the same space of time.

With the success that Print-Limit Pro has shown in curtailing students’ excessive printing, it’s not surprising that the college is considering expanding it to administrative and staff printers. “Faculty and staff are assigned quotas, but no charges are levied against departments for overages,” Williamson said. “That may change in the future.”

Saint Mary’s has found Print-Limit Pro to be an excellent fit for its print management needs. “The numbers say it all. The software is doing exactly what we wanted to do,” said Hausmann. “We wanted to make students aware of what they’re printing and stop the incredible waste of paper. And that’s happening.”

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