Equipment checkout: Important benefits of understanding stock levels

As anyone involved in equipment lending will tell you, it’s important to know the volumes of what’s available at any time. It enables staff to plan and develop services to everyone’s benefit in a number of important ways.

We’re always delighted to hear from our connect2 equipment checkout customers about examples where this intelligence has supported playing a greater, more integrated role in students’ academic success. Not least, connect2’s data supports liaison with faculty and other internal ‘customers’, facilitating lesson planning to include use of the equipment ranges provided. When there’s confidence in what you can reserve and supply at any time, there’s inevitably greater reliance placed on the services available.

This is what we heard from Swinburne University, Australia, which is one of our more recent customers. They’re finding connect2 facilitates a more practical, hands-on lesson design, with multiple equipment items easily supplied to support competency building in handling and using the kit during classes.

It makes sense that equipment training begins in the classroom, preparing students for their assignments. It’s a great place to start building their confidence in use of specialized and often fragile cameras and other hardware.

And there are further benefits to be had, such as the opportunity to support the development of students’ organizational skills. This is a useful outcome of providing software with an online self-service reservation facility. Students are encouraged to book items ahead of use, so they are prepared and confident for completing their assignments. It’s yet another boost to how media lending services contribute to student success.

Further good news is that this ability to plan ahead more easily drives greater usage of equipment overall. This becomes a virtuous circle with connect2, as detailed usage analytics help staff secure funding for further resources, which in turn supports more hands-on learning. As our customer at Swinburne University says:

“We use connect2 for inventory stock taking and also to get an idea of equipment utilisation. So we know what’s actually being used, and what makes sense to get more of. With the usage data from connect2, we’ve secured more funding to expand our inventory. It enables us to build a strong business case based on our exact requirements… We can be certain that we will have enough equipment to go round.”

To read the Swinburne University case study, please visit here.

Planning ahead

So connect2 helps you plan for greater success in meeting all needs, whether it’s for next week’s lessons, the next semester or next academic year. Bulk bookings of items can be made for lessons in advance - days, weeks or months ahead - so there can be complete confidence in planning lessons involving equipment use.

For longer time frames, you can plan services based on previous usage of items – connect2 provides invaluable data to help you do just that. You’re able to understand demands on your inventory and where you need to invest in more kit. To explain further, connect2 shows you how often each item or collection was used at full capacity, together with booking levels for the time ahead. You can easily download and export resource usage reports, which is great for future budgeting and also for quickly understanding how well existing investments are paying off.

What’s more, status summaries of resource collections tell you what quantities are available for student or staff use, in maintenance, broken or lost at any time. So you don’t need to wait for the next stock take to understand your department’s resource levels - all inventory statistics are available at a glance. 

When you use connect2 to manage student equipment lending, the benefits go far beyond improving access and management of loanable inventory. The time savings and detailed analytics are also invaluable. Without it, you risk being limited to reacting to needs when your service could be doing so much more to plan ahead.

To find out more about connect2, why not take our tour? It’s available here.