The Cost of Waiting: A Higher Ed Tale of Fragmentation and Rebuild

Every print shop in the higher education space wants to modernize print and mailing. But few realize how urgent it is to make changes. For some, they may not realize until it’s too late.

Our team recently met with a large university located in the southeastern United States. This university was interested in modernizing its print processes, developing new tools, and creating add-ins to make the print production process smoother across campus. However, once we got talking with them, we discovered that their needs ran much deeper. 

A Crisis of Control

The university was in the early stages of trying to centralize the control of printing and mailing across its campus. The problem? They waited too long to start. 

When we met with them, they had reached a crisis of control. Their departments were: 

• Lacking central governance, with departments independently sourcing print vendors as needed. 
• Routing jobs around the campus post office.
• Using manual processes for billing, including business reply permit reconciliation!
• Fragmenting brand control across different providers.

You can’t force consolidation, and the job of streamlining processes had become much more complex. Instead of optimizing in-place processes, it turned into finding a way to stitch together a web of disparate services (such as mailbox rentals, shipping, print, and more) into one front-end experience—but without having the backend authority or infrastructure to support it. 

When a Plug-in Becomes a Rebuild

PageDNA stands out in building user-friendly hubs that tie together everything related to print and mail: shipping, permits, mailbox rentals, and more. But the reality for this university was that its solution wouldn’t be this simple. Instead of an evolution, it was going to require a revolution. 

The consequences of ongoing decentralization resulted in: 

• A lack of reporting and future-forward thinking
• Brand inconsistency across departments
• Missed cost savings 
• Administrative teams burdened with tasks such as manual billing

This university came to us for a fix. And while we’re always happy to support and provide guidance, they needed more than just optimized processes. They needed a complete rebuild, including new policies, processes, and mandates for departments. Unfortunately, they were unable to obtain leadership approval for these significant changes, and we had to part ways.  

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

Are you starting to notice similar patterns unfolding in your organization? Don’t let this be you! Now is the time to act. If you don’t get ahead of your supply chain, your institution and its departments will design it for you…and you may not like what they build. 

Take the first step today by booking a consultation with our sales team by emailing sales@PageDNA.com. We’ll provide a free demo of our feature-rich platform and show you how to optimize your processes before it’s too late.