Hillview School for Girls keeps an eye on its assets

Background

Hillview School for Girls located in Tonbridge Kent, caters for 1,207 11 to 18 year olds.

When the school gained a specialism in performing arts in 2001, a fully equipped studio theatre was installed. September 2005 saw further construction on the school site, including a £5 million building project to provide 22 classrooms, sixth form and staff accommodation and a new administration area. Now complete, the school grounds comprise four separate buildings, boasting an extensive list of top quality equipment and education software and hardware.

Challenges

Such a large school campus and enormous portfolio of ICT and non-ICT assets creates a substantial and timely job, as Jason Visram, ICT support manager explained: “When I started my role in 2006, our inventory was all over the place and it was extremely hard to assess what we owned and which assets were approaching warranty expiry dates. Creating an accurate log of our entire ownership was highly time-consuming and such a laborious task. Along with my two technicians we spent between two to three months walking around the whole school listing each individual asset. We had a paper based system where we would log each serial number and its location, and once back in the office we would then manually input this onto an Excel spreadsheet.”

Jason's team was recording thousands of assets such as stage equipment, microphones, digital cameras and numerous educational software titles. There were numerous obstacles however; the Excel spreadsheet was proving to be a false reflection of the school's total ownership. They found that as soon as they logged the necessary details, an asset may be moved from theatre to classroom, and therefore was inaccurate in terms of location.

An additional problem existed when tracking the school's software licences, as Jason revealed: “All software titles were stored in a folder on the ICT support computer. Once all hardware had been manually inputted into the spreadsheet, we then had the arduous task of adding all software title details. This included information such as the name, date of upload, date of licence expiry and if there were duplicates on the system.”

“Although at the time we felt that this system was providing us with an accurate audit of software titles, if the school was struck by fire or theft and we lost use of this computer, we would then be unable to access our records,” summarised Jason.

A solution was needed immediately to ensure that the school remained confident of its entire ownership and that it remained compliant with regards to software licensing. Effective budget forecasting was also essential in order for the school to offer its students the finest academic opportunities.

Solution

In April 2007 Hillview School implemented Parago and ParagoMobile. This was as a result of BETT 2007, where Jason was won over by the Parago Software team and its offering. Jason commented: “We were very impressed by Parago and how well it catered for our needs. We looked at other systems, but Parago was streaks ahead in terms of design, especially for the education sector.”

Parago implementation took just two weeks. “The transition onto Parago was so simple. Myself and my two technicians completed the online Parago training which only took one hour. Easy to access and understand, the training provided us with everything we needed to know to get started with our asset management. Within two weeks we had all assets logged and represented on the system.” said Jason.

Benefits

A school of this size and array of top quality equipment, hardware and software requires a methodical approach to asset management. And Parago gives it just that.

A complete overview of the school can be accessed on the Parago system. Hillview has created its own visual representation of the school campus including icons for all types of buildings, classrooms or offices and a breadth of resources such as laptops, equipment trolleys and interactive whiteboards.

The school has also benefitted from mobile asset tracking through the use of ParagoMobile. Each school asset can be identified with a unique bar code or radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag making the audit process far simpler and straightforward. Through a wireless connection, details of each asset are then uploaded, in real time, onto the central store of asset information. Jason confirmed: “ParagoMobile has proven to be highly useful as we have over 1,000 assets in our four buildings. With the PDA we can track and record all of our assets from printers to projectors.”

Jason explained further benefits of the Parago system. “It really has substantially reduced man-hours. No longer do we need to walk around the school logging every single asset; a task that was extremely unproductive. Now we have the time to complete jobs such as fixing network problems, demonstrating software or answering any queries from staff and students.”

Jason continued: “I am so confident with the Parago system that I now give full responsibility to my two technicians. I am able to complete my work as ICT support manager and if necessary I can log onto the system to see an overview of our assets.”

Looking forward

Jason plans to introduce the school's premises manager, Roger Hines, into the world of Parago within the next few months: “I think Roger would benefit a great deal through the use of Parago. As it is so easy to use icons to track and record locations of assets such as chairs, tables, clocks and kettles, I am confident that he will find the system advantageous to his role. We will recommend that he completes the online training so that he can get to grips with the system.”

“It really does what it says on the tin,” confirmed Jason. “Parago provides us with heightened confidence that our data is safe and secure in one central source. Hosted off-site, we have complete peace of mind that if the worst was to occur and the school was tragically burnt down or targeted by thieves, we would be able to access all of our records. Clearly, our paper-based reports and Excel spreadsheets were not keeping an up-to-date or accurate account of our entire ownership.”