Can your IT budgets go further this school year? You can take steps to reduce your workload and make the most of your IT budget. School budgets are always hard-fought. With ESSER III set to expire in September of this year, there is plenty of pressure on district budgets.
Today on the blog, we’ll look at four significant areas that can help you make your IT budgets go further and lighten your workload, too. Specifically, we’ll explore how to reduce device losses, reduce repairs, focus on device lifecycle planning, and automate repetitive tasks. You’ll also hear about VIZOR and how they help schools and districts support this work.
4 Ways to Make IT Budgets Go Further
Let’s look at four ways to make IT budgets go further, with connections to VIZOR’s solution for school and district device management.
Reduce Device Losses
What exactly is device loss? Although students might lose a device issued to them, at the school and district level, device losses can occur when there isn’t a straightforward or effective system for managing inventory. Device loss can cost a school or district money – and can significantly impact your IT budget.
How can you address device loss? One strategy to help you tackle device loss is to link SIS and Google Admin console with an IT asset management solution, such as VIZOR. Using VIZOR, districts can combine student data from their SIS and device data from Google. This allows districts to easily identify devices assigned to withdrawn students, ensuring that leaver devices are returned. Furthermore, schools can identify students which have swapped their device by reconciling user logins with device allocation in their inventory. These are just two examples of how school’s can reduce device losses and save IT budgets.
Learn more about VIZOR on this page >>
Reduce Repairs
Device repairs can affect a school’s IT budget due to the time allocated to fix devices and the cost of parts. Having a clear repair policy for school devices can be a critical factor in reducing the number of repairs that occur. Making sure that this policy is effectively communicated across districts is an essential component of ensuring students take greater responsibility for their devices.
One way to reduce repairs and save money is to identify repair trends. You can use a repair ticketing solution such as VIZOR to identify repair trends in your school and district. For example, you can track trends for “Lemon devices,” to identify models frequently requiring repair. Similarly, you can identify the most durable devices in your school community that can withstand wear and tear. Such tools can also help you identify students who have had an excessive number of device repairs, providing an opportunity for device care training.
VIZOR also makes it easy for students to report repairs, too. Self-service portals and auto-converting repair emails to service tickets make it easier for students (and staff) to report a repair, so your school can address repairs when they occur rather than swamping IT and draining budgets at the end of the year.
Device Lifecycle Planning
Planning for the lifecycle of devices your students (and staff) use can reduce the costs associated with a district’s one-to-one device program. You can use the information to align device refresh cycles across schools and ensure they correspond to budget and funding availability. Aligning device refresh cycles across multiple schools helps districts negotiate lower prices for greater volume purchases.
IT asset management solutions, such as VIZOR, can help schools and districts determine device end-of-life (EOL) dates based on a device’s expected lifespan. Lifecycle planning can help schools leverage funding resources, such as E-rate and Title, by aligning device end of support dates and the availability of funds.
Automate Repetitive Tasks
School districts can make significant cost savings and reduce workload by automating repetitive device management tasks. A school or district can automate many tasks, including “power washing” Chromebooks at the end of the school year to factory reset a device and reset user profiles. You can also automate repetitive tasks like creating a repair ticket when a student brings a device in for repair.
A tool like VIZOR can support schools and districts by automating repetitive tasks, moving a Chromebook device in the Google Admin Console to the correct profile for new students, and automatically notifying students and their families that they’ve received a new device. You can set up automatic notifications like reminding students and families when a device is due back, where to drop it off, and where to collect a replacement.
Using VIZOR to Make IT Budgets Go Further
How can VIZOR reduce your workload this school year? This platform can reduce the overall workload of technical staff by removing the need to affect change in the lifecycle management of devices manually. In addition to saving your school and district staff time, it can help you save money on device repairs and replacements.
Earlier this school year, I chatted with Jeff Lalonde from the VIZOR team to discuss how VIZOR optimizes device management and can help improve communication. If you’re curious about what VIZOR can do for schools, check out this episode or head to their website. That’s where you can learn more about how VIZOR can help your district save money and reduce workload by optimizing IT.
Readers of the blog also qualify for up to 20% off VIZOR. You must head to this landing page to learn more and schedule a demo. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about VIZOR and how it has impacted your budget (and workload) this school year!
