Real Talk With Tulane University

“What students want from a university now is significantly different than it was just two or three years ago. So any change that helps our students, our university constituents, our faculty, our staff and the community is vital to our existence.”

Higher Education

— Mike Britt, Assistant Vice President for University Services, Tulane University

Our Challenge“We’re always changing. And the students we deal with change on a regular basis. We need to keep up with change at every level, but in a way that’s more effective, more efficient and more cost-conscious than ever before. That means we’re always looking for places where we can leverage commonalities and gain efficiencies of scale.”

Our Solution “Through our Document Services Center and workflow applications, we can easily and securely capture, manage, print and distribute digital and printed documents for students, faculty and staff. We’re also improving productivity by remotely configuring more than 125 state-of- the-art networked printers and multi- function devices with a single operating system. And we’re saving $1 million in the process.”

Our Results • $1 million in savings over the life of

the contract

• Full range of black and white and color printing services for more than 11,000 students and 4,400 faculty and staff

• Greater efficiency and productivity through a single operating platform and remote configuration of all networked print devices

• Enhanced document and device security and greater environmental efficiencies

• New freedom, enabling staff to focus on education and operations, not print support

• Introduced secure mobile printing to support growing use of smartphones and tablets on campus

©2014 Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved. Xerox®, Xerox and Design®, Ready For Real Business®, and ConnectKey® are trademarks of Xerox Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. BR8800

— Mike Britt, Assistant Vice President for University Services, Tulane University

“We’re 178 years old, so sometimes people will say we don’t need to change or reinvent ourselves now. But the fact is, change is very important to us because we want to be 180 or 280 years old.”

Collaborating to Leverage Educational Change“We never stop changing,” says Mike Britt, Assistant Vice President for University Services at Tulane University in New Orleans.

“We’re building a new dorm and a new football stadium. We’ve extended our undergraduate public health program. We’ve had record numbers of undergraduate applications in the last few years. And we’re continually facing changes in student technology.”

While others might view change simply as inevitable, Britt realizes it’s also invaluable. Yet keeping up with change can be a challenge, particularly when the shifts are rapid but the budget increases aren’t. Therefore, explains Britt:

“Our changes need to make us more cost-efficient and more productive. We’re continually looking for ways to gain economies of scale from operational areas that span all of our schools.”One such area is print production, where Britt and his team run a centralized Document Services Center with the help of Xerox. Thanks to the center, Tulane’s document management is not only more efficient, but on track to deliver $1 million in savings.

Sharing in Tulane’s Vision Founded in 1834, Tulane is one of the South’s oldest institutions of higher education, having braved everything from the Civil War to Hurricane Katrina. The latter flooded more than two-thirds of the university’s campus, forcing Britt and Xerox to rebuild Tulane’s entire print operation in only three months.

“Xerox has been an incredible partner for the university,” Britt notes. “They always buy into our changes, including our current focus on mobility and downsizing.”

“A good partner, like Xerox, is somebody that’s in the boat with us, that shares our vision.”

Security for Mobile Learners One key component of Tulane’s strategy is security, driven by students’ growing use of mobile technology, which Britt calls “one of the most significant differences we see.”

“Security is a very serious issue. In addition to the guidelines around student data, we have a medical school and we’re a research institution, so data protection is key.”

To that end, Tulane has implemented the Xerox® ConnectKey® operating platform. Embedded in Xerox® multifunction devices, ConnectKey enables documents to travel securely from one device to another in today’s mobile world.

The platform provides “whitelisting,” which runs only preapproved files and prevents devices from being used as network entry points. Says Britt:

“Secure mobile printing is critical in all departments.Everybody I know who uses it loves it.”Whiteboard Ideas to Stay in the Black “My favorite place to come up with new ideas is in a whiteboard room where everybody takes off their coat and tie and talks about what is it we need and how we get there,” says Britt.

“Xerox has proven they can hang with us in the room. And they’re great at integrating their pieces with pieces from our partners.”

“With the Xerox infrastructure, we’re able to provide a robust document service. Things we used to print and copy and file, we now print once or make an electronic print and an electronic file. It’s significantly faster, environmentally efficient, economical, dependable and more secure.

“Ten years ago, we implemented our solution in a way that we could build on it. Today, we’re still building on it.”