Camosun College Case Study

• Print Case Study

Customer Background/Solutions Overview

Camosun College has two campuses in Victoria, British Columbia. About 30 minutes apart by car, each campus has a print shop with six employees total between them. “We were already using WebCRD for electronic, web to print job submission when I came on board, and the entire staff still raves about it,” says Laura-Lea Berna, Manager of Ancillary Services at Camosun. For the last year, Berna has been overseeing the bookstore and print center on both campuses as well as facility rentals, a campus cashier and recently began overseeing graphic services school wide.

The print shops are not expected to earn a profit, but they are required to break even — bringing in as much through interdepartmental chargebacks as they cost the school through their operating budget. Their $550,000 budget is fairly consistent from year to year, but like so many campus print centers, they’ve recently been asked to accomplish even more with the same funding.

“Our employees have nothing but positive things to say about WebCRD,” says Berna. “We’re currently running version 9.1, and we are looking forward to some of the upgrades we’ve seen in version 9.3. Shop staff are excited about features that help automate workflow, and we think that the order placers will really like the new shopping cart features.”

Self-Published Course Packs are “Bread and Butter” for the Camosun Print Shop

“We produce what you’d expect in a campus print center,” explains Berna. “Exams, student handouts, marketing materials, even wide format signage and banners; that all comes into the print shop through WebCRD. But the lion share of our work is self-published course packs the instructors create for their classes.” These course packs come into the print shop on paper requisition forms for two critical reasons. First, there is no reliable way for instructors to know how many copies of previously printed materials are still available in the book store. Second, all course pack orders must be reviewed by a copyright advisor working in the library to ensure they are compliant with “fair dealings” within Canadian copyright laws. “Once the order is approved, our accounts clerk enters the job from the paper requisition form into WebCRD. Users can then see the status of the order online.”

Ready to Get Even More from WebCRD Over Time

“I come from the world of software development, and I can see WebCRD has many capabilities we have yet to fully use,” says Berna. Camosun uses the catalog feature for items such as envelopes and raw paper, but now they are looking into building out a stable of predesigned marketing materials that users will be able to select and personalize. “Producing business cards for example is hugely time consuming for us,” explains Berna. “Each card has to be touched by a graphic designer when that just shouldn’t be necessary for the vast majority of cards. Using a template for this would be a huge time saver for us. WebCRD’s Dynamics module can automate this for us and we are looking at this as a future addition.”

Sometimes Campus Print Center Opportunities are Off Campus

While Camosun is sensitive to the business owners in Victoria and does not actively pursue private print business in their community, Victoria is the capital of British Columbia and home to many public institutions and government agencies that can benefit from the Camosun campus print shops. WebCRD can be a convenient portal to Camosun’s print centers for external, public clients.

“It’s a win/win,” says Berna. “If we can generate revenue from outside customers, we’ll be better able to afford future upgrades to our installation that benefit all users on campus and out in the community. We are also looking at introducing two sets of price cards- one for internal customers and one for external- as well as introducing tiered pricing for all orders. Our customers should be able to save more per piece on large volume orders.”

Even Camosun’s Print Center Marketing has a Personal Touch

“We have made huge strides in marketing our capabilities to the school by participating in marketing showcases, but we share our messages across campus every day,” says Berna. “Personal ambassadorship is key. The print shop and bookstore employees are ambassadors, too. We now have a mini print shop inside the book store. It’s a huge win for the college community for us to be able to bring services right to our customers.”

Laura-Lea is well known and connected to other departments through her work on campus and brings the print shop message with her wherever she goes. “Of course, we’re still finding people using resources in odd ways, such as printing thousands of copies on distributed printers or paying freight and delivery when a job could be produced right in the campus print center. When we step in, educate them about our capabilities, and they let us demonstrate them, all we hear is, ‘this is how I’m doing it from now on.’”

© 2014 Rochester Software Associates, Inc. All brands and product names are registered trademarks of their respective companies. 3/2014