Managing your printer fleet – how MyFleet from Toshiba is helping schools to get a handle on how their MFDs are performing
Printing is an essential service within a school – for teachers, to create learning materials, for students to print assignments and for the school managers to operate the business side of education.
Investing in printing
Printing usually represents a significant investment in technology assets, and expenditure needs to be managed as part of the overall budget. Printers and Multi-Function Devices (MFDs) have to be maintained to ensure optimum performance, and supplies of consumables such as paper, toner and staples tracked and managed. Then of course, there’s the environmental considerations – printing contributes to a school’s overall carbon footprint, something that just about all educational institutions are trying to reduce.
Tracking the fleet
Keeping tabs on printing can be a time-consuming process – tracking usage on each machine, trying to balance workloads between devices, monitoring service requested and performed, ensuring that budgets are not exceeded, and planning for new devices when current ones reach the end of their life. School administrators often rely on a series of different reports, or even worse, are ‘working blind’ without the critical information they need to manage their MFD fleet.
Toshiba understands the issue, and has launched MyFleet to help schools address these issues and manage their printer fleets more efficiently.
MyFleet is a web portal that shows a school everything it needs to know about its printer or MFD fleet, all in one, convenient, easy-to-access place. The school simply logs into the portal to securely access all their fleet information, in real time:
Assets - Schools can see all the assets in their fleet – every printer, with its location, and whether it has been relocated.
Usage – With MyFleet, schools can see the usage of each and every printer: number of pages printed, by which users or departments, and whether the printing was mono or colour.
Environmental – Being able to see the amount of paper and toner used, schools can calculate the environmental impact of their print operations.
Service – through MyFleet, schools can see which machines have been serviced, service calls placed and responded to, and full service history.
Payments – schools’ finance departments can use MyFleet to view statements and see past expenditure, pay current invoices, and even see upcoming payments due, helping them to plan budgets and cashflow.
Making a difference in school management
MyFleet can really make a difference to the way that schools not only manage their MFD fleet, but can enhance their strategic procurement planning and their environmental management. For example:
- Reports showing the usage of every device allows schools to move and swap device locations, to balance the usage between machines and manage and extend the lifetime of machines.
- Understanding departmental (or even individual) usage of the devices, helps to develop charge back plans, and can also contribute to initiatives to reduce print volumes.
- Service history information can help schools to spot any ongoing or repeating issues or trends and take proactive steps before any issues escalate.
- Usage information is useful in helping to plan when devices are likely to reach end of life and need replacement – this in turn feeds into longer term budgetary planning and strategic procurement decisions.
- Understanding the school’s printing profile is essential input to calculating the school’s carbon footprint. Understanding how the school is using power, paper and toner is the starting point for reducing consumption and environmental impact.
Measure to manage
‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’, goes the famous saying, and it’s as true of printing devices as of anything. For schools, where printing represents a significant cost, both in financial and environmental terms, monitoring is key. With MyFleet, that monitoring activity no longer needs to be time-consuming and difficult, involving accessing multiple reports and systems. Toshiba MyFleet brings all of a school’s essential MFD management information into a single place, helping them to manage devices, costs, and carbon footprint for a more efficient, cost-effective and planet-friendly school.
For more information about MyFleet for schools, call Toshiba on 1300 794 202, or visit Toshiba-business.com.au/myfleet
