St Paul's Academy

With an exciting move to a new build Academy in January 2010, St Paul's has implemented Parago Software to ensure a concise register and reporting system of all ICT and non-ICT assets. Reaping numerous benefits from the solution and recently renewing its contract with the company, St Paul's testified: “Parago really does provide the Academy with substantial cost savings; the cost of a member of staff to be exact.”

Background

St Paul's Academy, located in Abbey Wood, London, caters for 780 11-16 year old boys and girls. Specialising in sport and enterprise, the Academy has a large offering of both ICT and non ICT assets. For this very reason, asset management is high on the agenda at St Paul's.

Challenge

The Academy was trying to monitor all of its assets manually which was proving to be a highly time consuming task. The Excel spreadsheet and paper based reports that were being produced did not provide the ICT technicians with a concise register; nor did they provide the Academy with confidence that its reports were continually up to date. This challenge needed to be addressed immediately.

Claire Viner, finance director of St Paul's explained: “We were keen to find out exactly how old our computers were, the software titles installed on the computers and also when the licences needed renewing. But it was taking a huge amount of time to locate this depth of information and we needed a solution that saved us time, costs and ensured an organised and effective approach to asset management.”

The Academy required easy to access reports so that if risk assessments or audits were needed, reports could be accessed and printed immediately. Claire was highly aware of the risk of fire and theft that schools face, as she explained: “With Excel spreadsheets and paper based reports, we were increasingly worried about the risk of fire and theft. If the worst was to occur, we would have no record of our ICT and non ICT assets. This was an issue of great concern that needed answering.”

Solution

XMA, an authorised partner of Parago Software, recommended that St Paul's consider the PC discovery and software asset management solution. The Academy very quickly realised the potential and simplicity of Parago, so in 2006, it made what was to be a very successful decision, to implement the highly flexible, education specific and cost effective asset management system.

Claire Viner revealed: “Once set up, Parago is simple to use. It was an efficient implementation and we soon began to exploit its full potential. We have the whole school layout mirrored on the Parago system, making use of all the icons to make the screens as visually aesthetically pleasing as possible. Training was an in depth procedure, but one that was highly valuable. The end product completely outweighs the initial training that has to be performed.”

Claire continued: “The system is very reliable; we can log on whenever we need to and access all reports and audits at the click of a button. Having reaped numerous benefits in our first year with the company, we have just renewed our contract with Parago Software.”

Benefits

An array of benefits has been reaped from Parago, notably cost and time savings.

“Without Parago I would require another ICT technician to look after tasks such as asset reporting and general inventory audits. The solution really does provide the Academy with substantial cost savings; the cost of a member of staff to be exact. With just one member of staff being solely in charge of the Academy's asset management, as finance director, I do not need to worry or even think about the issue. This allows me to focus on my other responsibilities while still having peace of mind with licence compliancy,” said Claire Viner.

With a large ICT suite offering the students and staff state of the art facilities, the Academy now has a well organised asset inventory and reporting system. The ICT technician can easily check the type of hardware and software that the Academy owns and whether or not they need replacing. Claire Viner revealed: “Parago saves time and money and has truly organised the Academy. As a leading Academy, I feel it is absolutely essential that we are aware of licence and warranty expiry dates and also the software titles on our computers. Parago looks after it all for us.”

Looking Forward

January 2010 sees the Academy move to a new build location in Abbey Wood. With a proposed intake of 1,200 students, the Academy will own a larger number of ICT and non ICT assets and Claire admits that Parago will make this transition much simpler: “From an accounting perspective, Parago makes life much easier. When we move to our new location, although we will need to redesign the iconic layout of the screens, it will be a much smoother and more effective process. Parago provides me with peace of mind that we will have a concise register of both new and old assets as well as up-to-date licences.”