Customer Profile: Springfield Public Schools

Springfield Public Schools (SPS) began as Springfield School District #19 back in 1854. Today, it is the second largest employer in the area. Just 5 miles from Eugene Oregon, it covers over 185 square miles serving Springfield and East/Central Lane County. There are approximately 10,600 students served by 22 schools, including 12 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, 5 high schools and some charter schools.

The District is committed to upholding the dream of opportunity for each of Springfield’s children and stands behind their vision of “Every Student a Graduate Prepared for a Bright and Successful Future.”

Doug Darling, the Production Manager of SPS Print and Design Services, has been with the District for eight years. He joined the District with nearly 30 years of printing experience. Doug hails from a family of printers and has been working in the print industry since accepting his first full-time job in a print shop following his high school graduation.

SPS Print and Design Services

SPS Print and Design Services is a full-service print shop for internal district and school clients as well as select non-profit and governmental organizations whose goal is to provide printed material in support of educational programs in an efficient, professional, timely and cost effective manner.

The District has three different print centers that, combined, provide services to 22 schools, 800 teaching staff and 400 administrators and support staff. Additionally, they serve approximately 375 users from city, county or park districts and nonprofit education foundations.

SPS Print and Design Services processes approximately 2,000 job tickets each month, with nearly 100% of all print requests being submitted online through Print Shop Pro® Webdesk.

The shop has just taken delivery of new Konica Minolta equipment to include 2 black & white and 1 color high-speed, digital production level copiers. There are 2 presses operating in the shop’s offset department. The shop offers wide format printing up to 42 inches. Additionally, they have full-service bindery options for booklets, coil binding, folding, cutting, saddle stitching, and 3-hole drilling and laminating.

SPS Print and Design has a staff of 5 full-time employees and 3 cooperative work experience students during school in-session months, and 3 full-time employees and 3 cooperative work experience students during months that school is not in session. The cooperative work experience students, in addition to being paid, earn educational credits. In addition to the variety of materials produced for teachers and staff, they provide full design and production services for Memory Books at the elementary level schools, Student Planners for the middle schools and newsletters for all grade levels.

Print Shop Pro® Changes the Game

Prior to implementing Print Shop Pro®, the shop’s entire process was manual. They were handwriting job tickets, manually calculating costs and entering job details into a database for billing. Doug commented, “It was garbage in – garbage out. We never knew what we had printed, or when…or if it was billed correctly. We learned we were losing between $7,000 and $12,000 in revenue over a period of a year.” Depending on the volume of orders, billing sometimes took 2 or 3 months to be completed.

They realized they needed a better way to manage workflow, quickly price jobs, consistently receive accurate pricing information, and eliminate the labor necessary for their intensive billing process. This led to a year-long investigation into print management software solutions.

Doug’s initial web search led him to edu Business Solutions, and a few other vendors offering print management solutions. He also connected with some local companies that had developed their own in-house programs that were willing to share with the District. Doug and others in the organization evaluated four other solutions; some via web demo and some were site visits to see the software in operation.

Doug recalls the web demonstration was well received and they quickly identified Print Shop Pro® as having been built to handle both their account number structure and the large number of users they would need to support. And, learning that Print Shop Pro® was developed specifically for a cost neutral print operation gave him additional incentive to see if the software would fit into his operation. Doug stated, “No other system was like that. Print Shop Pro® was the only system that had the feature sets we needed to get the job done.”

Key Differentiators

Doug outlined the key differentiators that led him to choose Print Shop Pro® :

• PSP had everything they needed in one fully integrated program
• PSP was the only system that supported their budget codes and offered a drop down list for customers to easily choose the appropriate budget code
• PSP Webdesk had a user-friendly online order process that would support improving their turn around time and raise the level of service provided to their customers
• PSP offered a solution for managing both offset presses and copiers
• PSP Webdesk would allow customers to check job status and look up previous jobs online
• PSP’s exportable Charge Back Report eliminated the time-consuming, manual data entry to complete the billing

Once the purchase of Print Shop Pro® was finalized, a 2-day onsite training session was conducted. Doug recalls that the training was outstanding and, at the conclusion of the training, the system was up and operational. While Doug continued to work on the system’s configuration, he
was pleased with the ongoing support he received from edu’s support team.

Unlike some in-plant operations, SPS Print and Design is self-supporting. They pay 100% of their operational costs from their printing revenue. Customer satisfaction is key to their success and keeps them focused on an extremely customer service oriented operation. In order to become proficient and knowledgeable about every aspect of the system and be prepared to best serve their customers’ needs, the print staff entered all orders into Print Shop Pro® during the first year.

They then opened up PSP Webdesk to four pilot schools to begin submitting their orders online. They met with the staff several times during the pilot period to address all questions, provide training…”whatever they needed to be successful.”

In support of a strategic decision they made to get as much buy in as possible and not alienate their customers, they devoted about 5 months to training 100% of their internal users. Laptops in hand, they went to each school to conduct training sessions with the users following along, completing the registration process and submitting orders. Doug said, “We were aiming for 80% online ordering within 5 months. But due to all the interaction and support we provided, the results were 93%.”

Printed guidelines and online video presentations on how to register and enter orders have been created and are available to users. SPS Print and Design customers are encouraged to call with every question to be sure all questions are answered and every customer is comfortable with the process.

“We’ve tripled our output by immediately assigning jobs to our 3 different print centers. What used to take 3 days is done in about 3 minutes with the electronic job flow tools.”

Doug has a few favorite features including:

• PSP Webdesk’s online job submission has improved the print shop’s turn-around time and ability to manage workflow. “We’ve tripled our output by immediately assigning jobs to our 3 different print centers. What used to take 3 days is done in about 3 minutes with the electronic job flow tools.”
• Customers can independently check job status and look up previous jobs. “I felt like I was a telephone operator before implementing Print Shop Pro®.
  Now, when they do call, I can provide immediate detailed information.”
• The integrated email/template feature improves communication and customer service should there be any problems, concerns or a missing attachment.
• The ability to plug in job details while on the phone with a customer and provide pricing in real time for different scenarios or specs.
• The improved turn-around time for standard photocopy jobs from 5 days to next day service for jobs submitted online by 2:00 PM.
• PSP’s built-in approval process provides increased accountability and ensures payment for printing services provided.

Doug shared that edu’s willingness and commitment to continually update and enhance Print Shop Pro® has been constant over the 4-plus years the District has been a customer. Doug has in the past and continues to be happy to recommend Print Shop Pro® and edu Business Solutions as a vendor.