Queen Elizabeth’s School – a Print Management Case Study

This School has really learned the benefits of using PrinterOn

Founded in 1573, the Queen Elizabeth’s School is a Grammar School for boys aged between 11 and 18, with an established reputation for academic excellence. While mindful of its illustrious past and long-held traditions, The School actively embraces forward-thinking leadership, combined with the latest in technology.

QE-School

This progressive mindset ensures that every generation of students are able to excel by benefiting from the exceptional teaching upon which its reputation is built.

In order to cope with a growing print requirement, The School installed a fleet of networked Canon MFP devices. Alongside this, to reduce print volumes and keep costs to a minimum, Equitrac Office software was implemented, allowing centralised management and control of all print jobs within The School.

With Equitrac in place, each print or copy made by students or staff is handled through their personal print account, bringing cost recovery, print control and detailed reporting about print patterns and usage to The School. Furthermore, biometric technology authenticates users, ensuring that documents sent to a print device are only released to those authorised to retrieve them from the printer.

To increase functionality further, a mobile print solution was sought. This would allow all users to print not only from computers within the campus, but also from the ever increasing number of mobile devices in use by staff and students. PrinterOn was chosen due to it’s existing integration with Equitrac and the extra functionality available when compared to competitive products.

“The new configuration has the potential for mobile print functionality which will enable users to print from mobile devices, like Smartphones, tablets and laptops. Furthermore, students will be able to send homework from their home PCs to print at school, so the print job can be released and collected at the chosen device the following day. In a school like ours with a very broad socioeconomic mix of students, this is another equaliser.”

Printing from PrinterOn is very simple and users can print from wherever they are, regardless of connection – in this case they need not be connected to The School’s network. Using a pre-configured app on a tablet or phone, or via email (each printer can have it’s own email address if required), the document is delivered to the correct printer ready for secure release when the user is at the device. So, Queen Elizabeth’s students are now able to complete homework at home and email the document(s) to school, ready to collect the next day. Similarly, staff can create handouts and other documents at home and collect the print-outs at school the following morning.

Allowing print in this manner not only simplifies print management but also avoids the security headaches of users bringing in their own devices or usb drives to connect to The School network. And because all print jobs are authenticated against registered users, an accurate audit can be kept and print costs kept to the absolute minimum.