Cardinal Print Program Tackles Printing Challenges

Stanford Procurement and University IT (UIT) are joining forces to bring Stanford a better printing experience.

The Cardinal Print Program will result in a new centrally-managed service for local printing. When it rolls out next year, it will be available to the entire university — including the new Stanford Redwood City campus — and to Stanford Health Care.

“This will be a huge win for Stanford that will both enable a better print experience and likely result in significant savings,” said Noel Hirst, the finance and facilities assistant vice president for Business Affairs and executive sponsor of the project.

Benefits and goals

“There’s a lot of inefficiency and waste when a large institution like Stanford addresses a campus-wide need with many local purchases and support agreements,” said Kim Seidler, executive director of consulting services in UIT. “From technology, support, sustainability, and cost perspectives, printing is a service with many opportunities for improvement.”

Seidler, and Kathy Chea, client and relationship manager in Procurement are leading the Cardinal Print Program. Among the goals they identify for the new service are to:

• Strengthen support: provide a service tailored to most of Stanford with proactive monitoring and maintenance, and responsive help
• Advance sustainability: reduce consumption and decreased environmental impact
• Improve efficiency: build consistent, hassle-free processes for initial purchasing and setup, ongoing monitoring and maintenance, and billing and record-keeping
• Enhance security: increased compliance with security requirements without the need for local management
• Reduce costs: save money by centralizing hardware, maintenance, and supplies expenses through a strategic master agreement

Chea uses a few metrics to drive home the scope of the opportunities.

“Stanford has approximately 8000 printers on campus; a majority of them are inkjet printers. We spend over $1.2M on purchasing, operating, and maintenance of inkjet printers. Also, Stanford purchases about 38 million sheets of paper annually, which translates to 4600 trees.”

Project scope and timeline

The Program defines print services to include desktop and shared printers, multi-function devices (i.e, copiers/printers/scanners), and all the ancillary needs such as toner, ink, paper, and maintenance.

The future service will be a campus-wide offering managed by Procurement and UIT, and will deliver a consistent, full-featured printing experience — from purchasing through replacement — all of which relieves local staff of managing those tasks.

A vendor evaluation is currently underway. A few already identified “early adopters” will pilot the service starting this summer. An introduction to the rest of campus is expected in 2019.

What can you do now?

Anyone responsible for an ongoing vendor contract for printer maintenance and supplies may want to avoid any long-term contracts. Procurement is ready to help you navigate your print needs over the next year until this new service is in place.

Learn more

The Cardinal Print Program is part of the Procure to Pay (P2P) Spend Management Implementation initiative, which is identifying and acting upon opportunities to increase efficiencies, improve user experience, and save money.

For questions about this project, email the project team.