Lowering Costs at Marquette with Blackboard and Pharos® Systems
Blackboard and Pharos Systems have teamed-up to generate significant cost savings on college campuses through the Pharos Solution Suite, which includes Pharos Uniprint®, Off-the-Glass, and Signup. The Pharos Solution Suite is available to all Blackboard Transaction System™ clients and integrates to Blackboard via a Transaction Integration Agent (TIA).
The Pharos Solution Suite provides Blackboard clients the ability to achieve significant savings and operational efficiencies, among other key benefits:
- Pay for Print and Copy: Tracks and reports on printing and copying activity, maximizes cost recovery, and facilitates print monitoring, print tracking, and print security.
- Eliminate Recycling Bins: Remove these bins for good from print/copy labs.
- Cost Recovery: Recover as much as 30-50% of printing and copying costs and reduce waste by 50-80%.
- Maintain Document Security: Keep important information confidential via print management and print control.
- Ensure Equity: Create equitable access to library and lab PCs, satisfied students, and relaxed administrators.
Pharos Uniprint is time-tested software that helps Blackboard campuses recover printing costs, drastically reduce waste, and virtually eliminate printing abuse by transferring printing accountability to students. At the same time, Uniprint empowers faculty and staff to charge back printing to specific budgetary centers, so schools can make informed decisions regarding their document output strategies.
One of Pharos’s greatest campus success stories is long-time Blackboard Transaction System user Marquette University. In 1998, the university implemented Uniprint using their PrintWise system across the campus, and significantly reduced waste and lowered costs. When their common area printer contract came up for renewal in June of 2005, Marquette University saw an opportunity to consolidate printing and copying services—both in terms of organization and physical devices—to further reduce costs while increasing the available services.
Nearly half of Marquette’s common area print locations also offered copy services, and ironically also sported an unconnected printer. The obvious question was why the printers and copiers should themselves remain separated. Bringing the two services together and integrating them within the PrintWise program would achieve increased cost savings and better, more effective services for campus users.
With the proposal to roll the copiers into the pay-for-print program and make every common area printer location also a copying one, it made sense to centralize copier management. Not only would this process reduce the number of devices, but combining revenues would also allow the higher volume areas to offset those less used, so the operation as a whole would run closer to break-even.
With this decision made, IT moved on to finding a hardware solution that could best deliver these integrated services to the public. The sophisticated Pharos Omega network terminal, with its large, state-of-the-art, color touch-screen together with the student, faculty, or employee Blackboard card fit the bill.
“The Omega is intuitive for users,” says Thomas Seney, Application Lead – Card Services, IT Services, for Marquette University. “We can brand the screen, we can reboot and upgrade it remotely, and now there’s only one type of device for IT Services to support,” Seney says. Marquette would move to integrated printing and copying services using Pharos Omega terminals attached to common area MFPs.
A site audit determined where IT Services could combine devices and where to best position the new devices offering combined print and copy services.. Some underutilized locations were removed and more support was added in high-demand areas.
Students have found the Omega terminals easy to use, allowing them to take full advantage of these improved facilities. The switch to new devices went smoothly, and users needed no instruction on how to use the Omega. The device’s small footprint means it fits neatly on the security cabinet in which each MFP is housed, although Marquette is designing an L-shaped metal bracket to present it at a more convenient angle for users.
When releasing print jobs using the Omega, users see only their own jobs. When users send a job from their PC to the printer, they type in their nine-digit ID via popups. At the Omega, they swipe their card and the device displays their jobs.
The revenue from copying is now helping the pay-for-print program break even, and Marquette is interested in expanding the chargeback options. Currently, a few departments on campus do utilize the chargeback. As Marquette learns more about assigning users and accounts, and about the best way to report the data, the University may offer this opportunity to additional departments.
For more information on the Pharos Solution Suite, visit the Pharos Systems website at www.pharos.com, contact your Blackboard sales representative, or visit Pharos Systems at the Connected Campus booth at BbWorld 2007 in Carefree, AZ April 15-18.