Technology Lesson Learned

In addition, Redemtech substantially increased the rate of successful reclamations from the lower 60 percent range to 99 percent, Houghton said. "When we did this internally, we had five or six people in the mailroom working on this," Rigoni said. "For the reclamations letters, we would bring in temps each year, and this year we avoided that cost."

Now, K12 has only two people in the reclamations department who, rather than sending letters, get on the phone and personally close the loop with the small number of people who aren't reached in the automated reclamation process, Rigoni said. "We have less people who are more efficient and doing more value-added services," he said. "Redemtech provides a human touch for the reclamations they complete so it works out well all around."

The company also uses information culled from the Retrac system for better technology planning. For example, Redemtech provided data to K12 about the nine computer models the company was sending students, and Rigoni was quickly able to see that five of those models were performing well below average reliability. He decided to standardize with the four most reliable models. This change, along with the other improvements Redemtech made in the refurbishment and shipping processes, reduced quality problems even as equipment shipments rose 20 percent, Rigoni said.

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Redemtech's system also collected quality metrics that helped it and K12 understand and resolve issues more quickly. Redemtech provides detailed reports on all quality issues, which in turn let the company track down the root causes of problems and tweak its processes or technology to address them.

"K12 used our data over the first couple of seasons to hone their life-cycle planning and think about what equipment they wanted to send into the field," Houghton said. "They are leveraging Redemtech data to get incrementally better information each year."

The detailed reporting also allowed K12 more operational flexibility. For example, when the company realized it needed to upgrade the memory in the PCs of all its students in the field, Redemtech helped distribute the RAM with step-by-step instructions on how to install it to every family willing to do the upgrade, which saved time and money.

"Parents could call the K12 tech support and have the technicians walk them through it," Rigoni said. "We also had education expos, and when we brought the kids together, we took the opportunity to have a technician put the new RAM in. Redemtech supported us in all that."

Flying colors

K12 estimates it is saving more than $1.9 million each year in new equipment costs by improving recovery rates and increasing the efficacy of its deployment of hardware. "They help us avoid purchasing new equipment if something can be repaired, and ensure that we don't repair equipment that isn't worth repairing," Rigoni said.

Meanwhile, the students rate the quality and reliability of the equipment and their own satisfaction higher than ever before, Rigoni said.

In addition, Redemtech helped K12 figure out a number of other cost-cutting measures. For example, the solution provider helped the company realize $125,000 in savings through a rebate program for new inkjet printers, which was sponsored by Redemtech's sister company Micro Center.

By mailing shipping labels directly to the users, rather than having the shipping company provide them, the company saved another $60,000. "We used to use a FedEx call process that cost more than $7.50 each for shipping to pick up," Rigoni said. "Now, we use labels that cost 50 cents each. Redemtech helped us pay for their value-added services."

In addition, by moving users to CRTs with lighter-weight LCD panels, freight costs on the monitors were cut in half. "Since Redemtech has facilities in Ohio, Nevada and Virginia, we were also able to reduce the cost and time of shipping computers to students," Rigoni said. With all that in mind, K12 is confident it learned its lesson to focus on what it does best, while Redemtech passed the test with flying colors.