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Founded in 1573, the Herts-based Queen Elizabeth's School is a Grammar School with a reputation for academic excellence. While mindful of its illustrious past and long-held traditions, it actively embraces forward-thinking leadership, combined with the latest in technology.

This progressive mindset ensures that every generation of students is able to excel by benefitting from the exceptional teaching upon which its reputation is founded. The school is now using Equitrac Office, Nuance Communication's intelligent print management and cost recovery solution, to optimise the lives of the school's 1,200 pupils and 130 staff by making it easier for them to print securely.

A STORY THAT STARTS IN A LIBRARY
The school's journey to broader Equitrac Office deployment began with the desire to replicate the implementation in its new state-of-the-art library across the whole school, via a fleet of Canon MFDs compatible with Equitrac Office. This move would bring a consistent user experience, as well as management and control, to printing throughout the school in order to reduce print volumes and control costs.

It also brought the staff and student payment process for printing and copying in line with the school's use of ParentPay, the income management and catering administration application which enables parents and pupils to add credit online for use within the school's canteen and on-site store. Queen Elizabeth's is a cashless school, so Equitrac's alignment to these systems was essential.

With Equitrac Office in place, each print or copy made by students or staff is deducted from their online 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.

Equitrac Office's reporting functionality has given the school a detailed insight into its printing habits: it can not only identify and charge costs, it is now also able to analyse printing trends to enable continued improvements. The ease with which this reporting can be done has saved the school's Print Room hours of time and enabled more timely and regular analysis of printing and copying habits around the school.

FLEXIBLE PRINT FOR CHANGING NEEDS
Emi Aghdiran, Assistant Head (Business Manager) at Queen Elizabeth's School, points to another benefit of the school's print strategy: ""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 can 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 socio-economic mix of students, this is another equaliser."" As to why Equitrac Office was the favoured solution for the school, the company's longevity in the market was an important factor, as well as the fact that other schools and print manufacturers had endorsed the approach.

Equitrac Office's flexibility ensures that rules have been set in place to default to mono and duplex printing. This further reduces print-related costs, while large print jobs can be diverted to the school's central reprographic department when necessary, to reduce paper, consumable and energy waste.

LOW IMPACT
Emi Aghdiran concludes: ""It was important the transition appeared seamless and immediately effective, as change in any organisation is difficult, especially if it impacts the students during their time with us. Equitrac has definitely made an obvious improvement to Queen Elizabeth's printing efficiency. We are much better off now we have this solution."" Given the school's pioneering use of technology and its vision, it is fair to assume this is just the start of the school's 'print revolution'.
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