Citrus College Case Study

• Print Case Study

Customer Background/Solution Overview.

Citrus College is a community college located in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendora, California, serving 18,637 students with 750 faculty and staff. The print center has four employees; including two reprographic technicians, one mail room specialist, and one supervisor. They handle 327 orders and 500 jobs per months totaling 830,000 impressions; more than 80% of these orders now come in online.

Serving both faculty and staff, approximately 70% of the print shop’s output is handouts, tests and other classroom educational materials with the balance being administrative forms, reports, brochures and other outreach materials.

Better input is the key to better output for Citrus College.

In the past, Citrus College’s manual submission process led to errors, delays and the need for excessive back and forth communication. All requests had to be manually entered into third-party software, bad copy quality on hard-copy input caused additional confusion, request forms often only included generic, incomplete requests for number of copies, paper stock and bindery instructions and failed to include budget codes. This meant the print shop had to communicate back and forth with faxes, phone calls and emails to get usable specifications.

With WebCRD, customers electronically submit complete requests and setup is automated. Production staff appreciates the digital solution. With fewer walk-ins there are fewer interruptions to the workflow. Even phone calls have been reduced because so much information, including specific job status, is available online. “Customers have found that they can get job status by logging into WebCRD,” says Reynolds. “And they love getting automatic emails that jobs were received.”

Citrus College tried other Web to print solutions before discovering WebCRD.

In 2003, Citrus College first went to Web to print with a startup. They had been told a PDF maker was just around the corner, but after three years it was still was not available. Then in 2006 they purchased a digital printer that came with its own Web to print solution. “It never really worked right and wasn’t as easy to use as we had been told,” explains Reynolds. “And they got us excited about templates and hot folders for customization, but those never really worked as promised.” In 2010, Citrus College moved to WebCRD and got the features they had been looking for all along, with an easy-to-use interface including PDF conversion and hot folders.

The only “problem” with WebCRD is increased customer expectations.

“We didn’t offer same-day turnaround until we started using WebCRD,” says Rocky Reynolds, Supervisor, Reprographics/Mail at Citrus College. He adds with a smile, “Now, unfortunately, we have customers who expect it every time. Except for the start of the semester when we have a tremendous increase in orders, we do our best to deliver.” In fact, because of the ease of Web submission and efficiency of WebCRD ticketing, the Print shop regularly receives orders at 2:00 am and can have them available by 10:00 am that day. That’s a 50% improvement in job turnaround. They’ve also been able to increase volumes 17% without adding staff.

Citrus College delivers one clear message to their customers over and over.

The print shop appreciates features like the customizable login page, an online calendar of their working hours, configurable permissions and drag-and-drop reports. And they love being able to offer customers features like print driver file submission, user self registration, catalog access and job status by email and always available online.

What really matters to their customers is ease of submission and accuracy of output. “We tell them all the time,” explains Reynolds. “They can push work to us 24/7/365 and send files from anywhere. They can order or reorder from their phone, tablet, laptop, daytime and night time.”

Marketing and training make all the difference for a successful move to Web to print.

Citrus College sends post cards to their customers three times a year reminding them of that 24/7/365 message. They’ve produced full color brochures about their capabilities and educational floor signs that walk users through the WebCRD system. First, they invited all faculty to take a tour and now they offer tours to new hires. Visitors see the floor signs and are handed a packet including the brochure. “The truth is, our customers need less and less actual instruction,” says Reynolds. “They’ve all shopped online before at this point.”

The college says it’s also important to involve customers throughout implementation. “We held focus groups with heavy users to get their input,” says Reynolds. “We invited our worst critics, and these focus groups told us exactly what they were looking for. It also gave us an opportunity to explain specifically how WebCRD could meet their needs.” These focus groups helped the print shop simplify their instructions and processes to make things most understandable.

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