College aims to cut printing output

A County Durham college is using the expertise of a software firm to slash its annual printing output by up to 5%.

Darlington College has set a target of reducing the number of copier paper it uses by 75,000 in the next year.

It will be assisted in this effort by the Active Dashboard software installed by Solihull-based company Dynistics.

The dashboard carries a "Green IT" tab which gives a graphical representation of printing usage by staff during the academic year.

According to IT manager Jeremy Mussell, the college has used about one million pieces of paper and £5,654 worth of printer cartridges since the start of the academic year in September.

He said: "Based on the figures represented in the dashboard, we've been able to identify areas where we can make savings in printing - enough to initially reduce our printing output by 5%.

"Every member of staff can now see the printer usage giving page counts for each networked printer since the start of the academic year; the total paper count across all the college's printers; print costs per month and printing expenditure for the year.

Printer use information is one among the many functions of the software, which has primarily been installed to help the college measure and evaluate student admissions targets, identify trends and improve performance.

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