Parago in Paris

Background

The British School of Paris is located in France, 15 km west of Paris, along the leafy banks of the river Seine. The school provides a British based education for its 800 students, from the ages of 3 through to 18. Students work towards A-level qualifications that will gain them entry into prestigious Universities world-wide. The school is currently situated on two Campuses; with the Junior School being 4 kilometres away from the Senior School. However, as of September 2010 the New Junior School, which will be situated next door to the Senior School, will be opening its doors and welcoming around 400 pupils. This new purpose built Junior School facility will comprise 7,300 square metres of usable space located in an area of over 1.2 hectares ensuring ample space for sport and activities. Our School motto is “Strength in body and mind” and following the fine traditions of independent schools in the UK, the BSP has adopted a philosophy of education which unlocks the potential of all students by identifying strengths and supporting areas of development, while having fun and enjoying strong relationships. Matthieu Goblet is the Information Systems Manager and here explains the reasons for needing an ICT Asset Management System and how it has helped them.

Challenge

Before the school implemented Parago, all ICT inventories were recorded in Excel using blank sheets of paper to walk around the school. The ICT team would then check this inventory against the licences and see if the number of computers tallied with the licence quota. ICT audits have always been the responsibility of the IT department, and it would take two weeks of personnel time to perform the inventory audit on the two school sites every year. This is only ICT equipment as currently non ICT equipment is not audited.

Solution

"Getting a proper inventory system has never been a top priority in our school," explained Matthieu, “although in the background, persistent need was there. The thing is that we never really had time to properly test one of the numerous packages on the market." The situation cleared itself when the school changed their Management Information System to Pearson e¹ and they strongly recommended Parago. "We had a look at it, and thought it was innovative and more than able to do the job," said Matthieu. "I really liked the visual aspect of the product, and the online availability was a plus. It gave the opportunity to work on each of our campuses." .

Benefit

Matthieu thought it difficult to assess the cost and time benefits, since Parago completely changed the way they worked. Matthieu states “It is definitely an improvement and the licence manager is a fantastic tool! For instance, it only takes a few clicks to see if we have the resource when a teacher asks for a software installation. We have not added much information regarding our assets as the discovery agent automatically gives us the information we need on the computers and software. I remember we had to rebuild a laptop from scratch after a user had lost his machine. Thanks to Parago we have been able to get the exact configuration and did not lose time trying to figure out the necessary software. “ The school also have Parago Mobile which proved its value for the initial inventory! They now tend to put assets in the system as they arrive. Regarding the software itself, the ICT team find Parago very easy to use, and very intuitive."It only takes seconds to get the information we want, whether it is a computer or a classroom set. This is exactly what schools need from a system. There are many systems in the commercial sector but unless you can easily see the information you want, when you need it, it does not save you time and money."

The Future

The school will now add more expensive non ICT assets to Parago later this year together with items from the new school. Matthieu has one thing on his wish list and continued "we would love to have Parago on our ‘Apple i-phones’ and I understand they are looking into having Parago Mobile working across multiple platforms. We always have our phones in our pocket with a straight internet access and it would be great to use these to perform audits. As we have no Wi-Fi in our school, we have to download the date in the device, perform the inventory, and then upload the data. A live access to Parago on our phones would change our life even more!" Matthieu summarised by saying "There is little else I can think of that is needed. The latest developments to the reports interface make it more flexible and customising a report is a lot easier. We are just starting to use the Power Consumption and CO2 Calculator and this should prove invaluable next year when we look at our costs and emissions."