Due to woeful neglect by the company running the Resource Center, St. Louis Public School’s (SLPS) district-wide print and mail center, costs kept rising and equipment constantly broke down. Plus, there were:
As a result, customers commonly suffered lost or incorrect orders, and often had to rely on outside print vendors instead. The situation wasn’t much better for the Resource Center’s mailroom, which:
Separately, SLPS sent out an RFP for 240 new MFPs to be deployed across the district in order to cut costs, improve processes and become greener. While meeting with school officials, we learned about all of the problems plaguing the Resource Center. We won the MFP contract due to our hardware and software capabilities — as well as our ideas for streamlining and improving district-wide printing operations.
Once the hardware was in place, we installed a wide array of software technology, including:
To handle the Resource Center’s issues, the Ricoh Managed Services team:
We also investigated the district’s USPS account and discovered tens of thousands of dollars in an idle return mail account. So we worked to get the funds transferred into SLPS’s account and incorporated a nonprofit permit number on the district’s indicia for future mailings.
Comprising 27,000 students and 4,000 teachers in 75 locations, plus 2 administrative offices, St. Louis Public Schools is the largest K-12 school district in Missouri.
Once in operation, the district
enjoyed faster, more sophisticated printing technology that cost 25
percent less than their previous devices. Plus, they saved
money on postage. In fact, just one 27,000-piece back-to-school mailing
netted an $8,000 savings by using a nonprofit rate instead of first
class.
Our next task for the district is implement a FortisBlue® workflow. The solution electronically captures, stores and organizes documents, data, images and audio files, which will provide easier information access, improved collaboration and more efficient business processes throughout the district.