Flexibility and Efficiency – Why Swansea Council Libraries chose Princh

Swansea Council Libraries is a public library service in South Wales, UK. It serves a resident population of about 246,000 via 16 community libraries and a city center library; all staffed by Council employees. We offer the Princh Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) printing service in 16 of our libraries currently.

We wanted to offer the means for our customers to print directly from their own devices, whereas previously they would have needed to do this via the use of a public PC in the library. We needed to identify a solution that was within our budget, met local ICT security requirements, was easy to implement, and required minimal technical resources to maintain the service locally. We also wanted to implement a BYOD solution fairly quickly as this was the number one customer demand, we had not met in terms of digital services.

We had not been able to provide a BYOD printing solution previously, but we had been liaising with our corporate ICT support colleagues as to a potential solution that would work within the resources available to us.

We found that Princh provided a solution that met our criteria and provided a very flexible cloud-based annual subscription option that was scalable. This helped us manage within our available funds and allowed us to trial the solution in a limited way with customers before rolling out service wide. The experience of several long-established reference sites of similar type was also helpful in our decision. The administration and support interface, staff and customer guidance and promotional materials Princh offered were also attractive to us.

It has been a huge positive to be able to offer a BYOD printing solution whereby occasional users can print with little (if any) support, once they are directed to the Princh site and posters for the printer IDs. The service has proved very reliable, and when we encounter an issue, it is nearly always caused by local connectivity issues rather than the Princh service itself. There are some formats and document types that have caused problems at some point, but the Princh team have taken steps to address them when they arise or have noted them for their development work.

Reportedly the ease of use and availability of a browser-based interface is popular as it does not require downloading an app. The ability to pay online is also very beneficial, as some of our libraries do not take card payments in person. The fact that the service does not rely on a library membership has also helped facilitate a smoother and quicker service for occasional users who may not use the library for any other purpose. The lack of a Welsh printing interface is a downside but the willingness of Princh to make the public materials available in Welsh is appreciated.

Editor’s note: Since the writing of this testimonial, Princh has added the Welsh language into both the Web app and PC printing interface.

We have found the Princh team to be very accessible and responsive to both requests from the support desk and general feedback on the product. Frontline staff are enabled to deal directly with the support team which helps with getting swift and localised solutions to issues as they are identified on the ground. This also helps building staff confidence and engagement with the product. The Princh team have also worked well with our colleagues in technical support to maintain the availability and effectiveness of the service.