Servicing Students: A Strategic Win at Villanova

FOR 10 YEARS, copying services at Villanova University School of Law were provided by Xerox under a facilities management contract. There were, however, some strings attached. The university had to supply the toner. And students had to bring their own paper.

This didn't seem like a very good deal to Michael George, director of Central Services at Villanova University—especially not for the students. But there was little he could do about it. His 20-employee print and mail operation serves the main university, a separate entity from the law school. Still, when the law school announced plans to put up a new building, George saw an opportunity to get more involved.

"I approached the administration and I said, 'We'd certainly like an opportunity to come in and help you save some money by taking over the Xerox contract,' " he recalls. He stressed that his in-plant could provide better service for the students while reducing costs for the law school.

"When you step back and you look at this," George says, "you had an enormous amount of money going off campus."

As a result of his efforts, Central Services recently opened a new 1,100-square-foot copy center in the law school, equipped with a monochrome Canon imageRUNNER 7095 and a color imageRUNNER C5185. So far the center has been very busy printing and binding handouts, syllabi, court reviews, exams and more. A Canon service and supplies contract now covers the toner cartridges, and the law school supplies students with paper.

Student Printing Benefits In-plant

This expansion into the law school has increased the in-plant's access to student printing, which has been one of George's goals.

"We've been striving to get a toe hold on student print because it's a population that's constantly refreshed, and there's always a need there—and we are seeing a decline in faulty/staff printing," he reports. "When you're servicing students, it strengthens your position." After all, students are the whole reason a university exists.

To make life even easier for students, Central Services has implemented the Pharos Systems print management suite. Now law students can submit print jobs from their laptops from anywhere inside the law building. To retrieve them, they simply go to any of the 10 multi-function Canon devices in the building, swipe their student IDs (called Wildcards) and the job will be printed on the spot. Each law student gets 1,000 "free" prints a year.

Of course faculty and staff do occasionally try to print large runs on these MFDs, so the copy center uses Canon's NetSpot Accountant tool to monitor all the devices. On the morning of IPG's recent visit, Jennifer Leatherman, who runs the copy center, noticed one of the law school's hallway MFDs running a very large job. She ran upstairs to pay a friendly visit to the staff member at the machine, convincing the person to let her run that job more cost effectively in the copy center. The message George wants to send is this: "Why run a copier when you can run to lunch?"

University Pride

George has overseen Campus Services at Villanova for 10 years now, and he's obviously proud of what he and his staff have accomplished. On a recent fall day he drove IPG's editor around campus to show off Central Service's three satellite print shops and its main offset facility. Autumn color was just beginning to creep into the leaves on the tree-covered campus, providing a vibrant counterpoint to the stone building facades at this 167-year-old university, a half hour from Philadelphia.

The offset facility is located in a converted house on campus, with each major piece of equipment occupying a different room. This includes a two-color Presstek/ABDick 9982 press, a Xerox DocuColor 5000AP, and a Presstek Vector TX52 CTP system. George says wide-format printing, done on a Canon imagePROGRAF W8400, has really started to take off.

In the main Bartley Print Center, situated just inside the entrance of the Villanova School of Business, resides most of the digital production equipment, including a Canon imageRUNNER 110.

The in-plant has been using WebCRD, from Rochester Software Associates, for five years now for online job submission and automated production. Thanks to a partnership between RSA and The CBORD Group, provider of the school's Wildcards, students can now pay for print jobs with their cards. The university provides students with an annual $60 print allowance. When they exceed that—or when they submit any job more complex than black-and-white printing on white paper—payment is deducted from their Wildcard.

Online Reduces Long Line

Prior to this semester, students could only use their university print allowance by physically showing up at Bartley Print Center and using the print lab there. Long lines have been a common sight, George says. Now, students can log into iPRINT (the in-house name for WebCRD), upload their file, select extras like binding, view a price breakdown and submit. Simple black-and-white jobs are printed right away, even in the middle of the night, by the Canon imageRUNNER 7095 so they are ready for pickup in the morning.

"WebCRD talks to our production printer, tells it what the job specs are, and it rolls right through," says George. More complex overnight jobs are released for printing when staff arrives.

To ensure jobs print correctly regardless of the native application or fonts, the in-plant uses SurePDF, RSA's PDF print driver, to convert files to PDF. George has been very pleased with how well SurePDF works and how simple it is to use.

Bonnie Lyons, coordinator of printing services, reports that 4,643 jobs were submitted through iPRINT in September, up from 2,621 last September. Many of them, George adds, were from students.

George concedes that, because of the university print allowance, his shop has not seen much revenue from students this early in the semester.

"However, it gives us a chance to get to the students and sell wide-format...color print...punch and bind, and some of the other premium print services," he says.

More importantly, though, he hastens to add, the in-plant is providing a convenient service for students, so they can spend less time printing and more time studying. IPG