Standardising on products without compromising on quality

The Hermitage Academy, based in County Durham, is an Ofsted rated ‘outstanding’ school. With 1,000 students – aged between 11 and 18 – the school provides high quality teaching and learning, backed by first-class care and support for pupils, parents and teachers. It also has a strong reputation for innovation: technology is used to help students both enhance their learning and prepare to excel in further education and onward careers.

During a review meeting with Epson, Andrew Reynolds, leader and manager of ICT support services, highlighted the issues he was experiencing with his existing print estate. “Over the years we’d acquired different models of laser printers from a well-known manufacturer. Managing supplies was time consuming and we sometimes over-ordered. What’s more, the printers consumed a lot of power. We felt standardising on one printer would ease the situation. Epson recommended that we evaluated a WorkForce Pro WP-4015DN.”

Following a comprehensive evaluation a decision was made to replace the fleet of printers with 50 of Epson's WorkForce Pro inket printers. The printers are used in classrooms, the principal’s office, and departmental offices throughout the school. Andrew says: “The inkjet technology used in the WorkForce Pro printers delivers great print quality. The printers are competitively priced and, more importantly, are exceptionally cost-effective to run and maintain. At the same time they are highly power-efficient so we’re saving additional money and helping to reduce our environmental impact. The printers come with a 3-year warranty as standard. With many manufacturers this level of warranty would cost more than we paid for each Epson printer. By standardising on the WorkForce Pro it is also much easier too to manage ink stocks, saving us precious time that’s better spent elsewhere.”

To help Andrew manage his fleet, the printers are networked, allowing Andrew to remotely view the ink levels and status of all printers from his office.  The school also benefits from being a member of Epson’s Authorised Self Maintainer Program (ASM); a service where a stock of products or parts can be kept on site, allowing fast access to replacements and maintaining critical operations if necessary.

The school has all of their Epson products listed on a secure portal. If any equipment has a problem, Andrew can register this online and swap the product with a spare held by the school. Epson meanwhile orders a new product immediately. The service comes at no additional cost. “I’m amazed by the quality of support we receive,” observes Andrew.

The ASM service was one of the main reasons Andrew also chose to standardise the school’s fleet of projectors by purchasing 50 of Epson's EB-475W ultra-short-throw units.  Performance, ease of installation and operation were key factors too.

The projectors are wall-mounted and project 2,600 lumens of both white and Colour Light Output (CLO) delivering vivid, natural colours and deep blacks, even in daylight.  As the projectors are ultra-short-throw the teacher does not cast a shadow over the projected images or get light in their eyes. In high ambient light conditions the image is clear and easy to see throughout the classroom, with an image size of up to 100 inches. There’s also an internal speaker so there’s no need for additional equipment. The projectors are easily networked with Epson’s EasyMP™ software.  This means that Andrew can remotely manage settings to ensure the projectors automatically turn off at night. He also values the fact that the projectors are supplied with all the components required for installation.

He says: “We used to pay an AV installer to put projectors in. We can install the EB-475W projectors ourselves – it’s really easy and saves a quite a bit of money. Also, it’s great to be able to change the settings on all 50 projectors remotely too – that saves a lot of time.”

The projectors are a key teaching aid and are used in every classroom throughout the school, as well as its assembly halls.  The class can view content from the internet – controlled from the teacher's PC or laptop – HD Blu-ray players and visualisers to show books or other teaching materials.  As they are in constant use, the on-site warranty is extremely important too. This also covers replacement lamps. “It’s a well thought out service with the back-up that schools need to reduce downtime from teaching tools that we rely on heavily,” says Andrew.

The use of Epson technology within Hermitage Academy doesn’t stop with WorkForce Pro printers and ultra-short-throw projectors.  The school also wanted the ability to display examples of students’ work from art and technology and design departments around the school. “These needed to be large, so when it came to looking for a large format printer, Epson again seemed the obvious choice,” says Andrew.

The main buying considerations were print size, print quality and operating costs. The school was loaned a test unit – the Epson Stylus Pro 9890 44-inch professional printer.  Designed for photographers and fine artists it creates true-to-life prints with accurate colour at high speed. It immediately impressed.

“Print quality is jaw dropping,” comments Andrew. “With a 30m roll of paper, that’s 44-inch wide, we can print huge images. We can control access to the printer and that helps ensure that people print only what they really need.  A large format printer is obviously an investment purchase for us, but the running costs are lower than a standard printer due to the economies of scale delivered by utilising larger, high-capacity ink cartridges.  This makes the overheads more manageable for schools.

Standardising on an all-Epson solution for our day-to-day printers, projectors and large format printing needs has helped Andrew Reynolds reduce operating costs and save time that’s better spent elsewhere. He concludes: “The quality of all the Epson equipment we use is first class.  All the kit is used frequently throughout the whole school.  Thankfully problems are extremely rare but, when we do have them, the service agreement kicks in and we’ve a replacement on site quickly. The fact that the service and support is part of the deal is fantastic. It convinced me to standardise on Epson which is saving me a lot of time – and other IT managers in education will know that time in our profession is in short supply.”