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CASE STUDYBarcode Inventory System Helps Accurately Track School District Assets and ‘One Laptop Per Child’ Initiative

BALSZ SCHOOL DISTRICT

“CHILDREN FIRST!”Balsz School District, located in Phoenix, Arizona, consists of five school campuses with approximately 2,900 students enrolled. Balz School District looks to nurture the unique skills and abilities of all learners by empowering students to be globally competitive and innovative thinkers who contribute to their community’s sustainability. To this end, they provide their students with an ample amount of technological equipment.

“OOur district was in the midst of implementing a ‘one laptop per child’ initiative and needed an inventory management program that could track several thousand computers.

our existing inventory software was outdated and not designed for mobility,” says Hazen Kor, network Engineer at Balsz School District.

The district needed an easy-to-use and menu-driven asset tracking system to accurately track educational resources using barcode technology to save time and money, as well as to have complete control over the movement of their equipment.

THE CHALLENGE

The need for a more efficiently organized system to promote growth.With an endless flow of students and faculty, it can be easy to misplace

COMPANY:

Balsz School Districtwww.balsz.org/

INDUSTRY:

Education

BUSINESS CHALLENGE:

Efficiently track and control approximately 9,000 educational resources including hi-tech equipment, furniture, and school records, as they are distributed to students and locations within five school campuses.

SOLUTION:

Passport AssetsPassport MobileMotorola Barcode ScannersZebra Printers

BENEFITS:

• Mobile barcode-scanning ability at multiple campuses• Check in/out educational resources to students• Real-time access to asset location

Case Study Overview

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ASAP Systems | Inventory Management and Asset Tracking

CASE STUDY

books and school supplies. For the school district, this problem was compounded by the fact that their school supplies included pricey technological equipment such as desktops, laptops, LCD monitors, VoIP phones, projectors, SMART boards, cameras, servers and networking equipment along with the need to track simple items like chairs, desks and school records. As the school district grew even larger and planned to add another 2,000-3,000 assets in the following eighteen months, it became crucial to replace their old system of tracking their assets with a new system that had the capability of keeping up with these needs. It had to address a number of existing problems.

Faculty members or students borrowed valuables from time to time, but then failed to return those items in a timely fashion or in the condition they were taken. In the application of the “one laptop per child” initiative, Kor saw the failure to return the laptops as a problem increasing in severity that they could no longer ignore.

It was also a challenge keeping a detailed overview on the current location of equipment throughout multiple school buildings. In planning for a larger set of assets in the coming months, Balsz saw this problem growing as well.

“Our existing inventory software was outdated and not designed for mobility. We needed an effective inventory tracking system to track various amount of school equipment,” says Kor.

Kor had two goals in mind: he wanted to provide his students the technical equipment to give them the ability to learn rapidly in an increasingly innovative world, yet make sure his “one laptop per child” initiative was cost-efficient; in addition, he had to combine the ability to check out-in laptops to students and keep track of all the other assets floating around the school district buildings.

They needed an asset tracking system that would allow them to:

• Assign asset categories.

• Track whether an asset is active or inactive.

• Improve security of expensive assets being moved.

• Control assets over multiple school locations.

• Grant immediate access to asset location.

• Account for lost and misplaced equipment.

• Generate reports to track cost on all assets.

• Check out-Check in laptops to students.

THE SEARCH FOR A SYSTEM TO FIT THEIR NEEDS

The search began online for an asset tracking system that could easily integrate with their current active directory network and simultaneously possess the functionality of an efficient check out-check in system.

Balsz School District needed a robust asset tracking solution allowing them to:

• Provide updated information regarding the location, cost, and movement of assets.

• Track assets by location and multiple locations.

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CASE STUDY

For more information on ASAP Systems’ inventory and asset tracking solutions, visit www.asapsystems.com

or contact at sales@asapsystems.com

• Function on mobile barcode scanners.

• Print barcodes and catalogs.

• Generate management reports and records to auditing purposes.

• Integrate their active directory network into the system.

GETTING STARTED

ASAP Systems’ asset tracking software, Passport, stood out as the best solution due to its easy-to-use functionality, active directory, and sequel server integration with the school district’s network.

After finding the ideal asset tracking solution, getting it up and running was smooth and straightforward, meaning it only took about two hours from start to finish—installing the software, importing the data, and then configuring interface fields for importing users into Passport. Additionally, only after an hour of training, the staff was using the system with mobile barcode scanners without an issue.

ASAP Systems recommended a solution that included:

• Passport Asset tracking software including mobile licenses with few concurrent users.

• Passport online installation and online training.

• A couple of Motorola barcode scanners as well as a few barcode printers.

• Silver support package for customer support.

THE SOLUTION

The need for a more efficiently organized system to promote growth.

In the past, their old system caused too much

equipment-loss, and it was not configurable nor designed for mobility.

Around 9,000 pieces of equipment are now being tracked making sure the “one laptop per child” initiative is running successfully with firm visibility over assets located throughout all locations.

This was done by adding and importing every asset into the sequel server database of Passport, then giving each piece an asset number and an asset barcode tracking tag. When a laptop is assigned to a student, it is simply scanned and assigned to the student who will be using it; then, the data is quickly synchronized back to the centralized database. This gives staff real-time tracking capability and the ability to easily configure and generate reports that give an up-to-date picture of who possesses a laptop or where it is located.

“Being a public school district, we often have unique software requirements that most private businesses don’t have. Passport has done a wonderful job adapting to our requirements to make our lives easier and to make Passport a better product overall,” says Kor.

Saving time and money

Using ASAP Systems’ Passport asset tracking barcode software provided Balz School District with the tools needed to successfully track and control school resources as they continue to grow. The day-to-day task of checking out and checking in these items was quickly and accurately accomplished by use of barcode labels and mobile scanners and tethered barcode printers.

Efficiency, improve security, and achieve completeness of an asset management system was achieved using ASAP Systems’ Passport asset tracking system. Task redundancy was eliminated, inactive inventory reduced, and the return on investment was quickly achieved.de

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