A task easily accomplished by the Zebra P330i, the latest generation of the company's most popular card printer

Global-ID, a Portugal-based specialist provider of plastic card solutions, and Zebra Card Printer reseller since 2004, has supplied Zebra Card Printers as part of an ID solution to Lusofona University in Lisbon. The university is now able to print its own encoded student ID cards to boost campus security and facilities management for the university's 10,000 card holders.

The University is part of the Lisbon University Core and is made up of a number of education establishments. Students have access to a variety of educational and recreational facilities – such as the library, laboratories, workshops, IT rooms, and lecture halls – to which access needs to be controlled. In all, Lusofona University has taken nine Zebra P330i id card printers with the capacity to encode additional information in the magnetic stripe, and seven Zebra P205 units to produce visitor cards.

Background

The need for public buildings to be accessed only by those authorised to do so is now commonplace in every major town and city across the world. Nowhere is this requirement more acute than on university campuses where opening hours for facilities often extend into the evening to meet the study requirements and leisure lifestyles of students. Lusofona University has more than 9000 students, 1000 academic staff, and they needed to tighten security by producing encoded cards on site.

The University contacted Global ID a few months ahead of their intended purchase to review the available printer options. Although this was a competitive tendering situation the customer was already using Zebra Card Printers, but recognised the need to expand their internal card printing capability if they were to manage student ID the way they wanted. After reviewing the available options, the University settled on Zebra card printers as the best solution for printing student ID cards with an encoded magnetic stripe.
This task is easily accomplished by the Zebra P330i, the latest generation of the company's most popular card printer.

Solution

In all, Global-ID supplied Lusofona University with nine Zebra P330i card printers and seven Zebra P205 card printers together with all necessary ribbons and cards.

The P330i is particularly geared to reliable high-volume card production and has expansion options for networking and card encoding. It also features the benefits of i series functionality designed to make card printing simple for all users; whilst the University is using the Zebra P205 to produce visitor cards.

Lilia Bounab Channel Manager Southern Europe says, "We understand the decision to buy Zebra Card Printers was based on a key requirement for the new equipment to be able to reliably create ID cards on site, rather than outsourcing this requirement in Lisbon. With the numbers of IDs required regularly on campus, buying in from outside was never going to be a manageable option. The university thought that it would take too long and the cost-per-card would be too expensive.

The magnetic stripe for the P330i allows encoded information to be used in the internal net of the University to access the internal database much more quickly and easily. "We pride ourselves on the support we provide our partners at a local level. On large implementations such as these, where 16 units have been introduced across multiple sites, initial set up can be a concern for customers, but Zebra and our partners are always on hand to sort any issues out," said Lilia Bounab, Channel Manager Southern Europe, Zebra Card Printer Solutions.

Benefits

For the University, Zebra Card Printers have completely fulfilled its requirements. The university has a much quicker turnaround in issuing ID cards, which is especially useful at the start of the university year and even on a daily basis dealing with requests to replace lost cards. It means students and staff need never be without the means of using the university facilities they need whereas, previously, there would have been some inconvenience before a new card could be issued. The university also now has the vital management information to know who accessed its facilities and how often.

Case study courtesy Zebra Card - USA

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