Compugen helped an Ontario school board replace thousands of aging Chromebooks without overwhelming its IT team during the busy back-to-school season.
By delivering 5,000 configured, enrolled, asset-tagged Chromebooks before students returned, Compugen saved the board’s IT staff weeks of preparation and helped ensure reliable technology was ready for the first day of class.
For K-12 education IT teams, a device refresh is about much more than ordering hardware. Thousands of devices need to be sourced, configured, enrolled, tagged, staged, and delivered, often against a firm deadline.
The school board needed to replace a large number of aging Chromebooks without disrupting learning or adding to the workload of its IT team.
The first day of school created a firm deadline. At the same time, supply constraints made it difficult to know whether 5,000 devices could be secured and delivered when needed.
Getting the Chromebooks through the door was only one part of the job. Before they could reach students, each device had to be asset tagged, configured, enrolled, staged, and prepared for distribution across the board.
Handling all of that work internally would have taken weeks. It also would have pulled IT staff away from supporting schools, educators, and other important back-to-school priorities.
The board needed a partner that could manage the work from procurement through preparation and delivery, ensuring the devices arrived ready for the classroom.
The upcoming school year made the project urgent, but it also gave the board a chance to take a better approach to its Chromebook refresh.
Instead of managing procurement, configuration, and logistics as separate projects, the board could bring everything together under one partner. That would mean fewer handoffs, less coordination for the IT team, and greater confidence in the rollout schedule.
With experience supporting education customers and the capacity to prepare devices at scale, Compugen could take much of the work off the board’s plate. As the customer’s Technology Ally, Compugen would be accountable for delivering a complete, deployment-ready solution rather than simply supplying the hardware.
Compugen secured 5,000 Acer Chromebooks despite continued supply uncertainty. Each one was then prepared through the Compugen Configuration Centre before it reached the customer.
A classroom-ready Chromebook is configured, enrolled, asset tagged, staged, and prepared for distribution before delivery. Completing this work in advance reduced the manual effort required from the board’s IT team.
For this project, Compugen:
Applied the board’s asset tags
Configured the devices to its requirements
Enrolled each Chromebook in the customer’s environment
Staged the devices for deployment
Coordinated the planning and delivery of approximately 35 pallets of equipment
Bringing these services together made a complex project easier for the board to manage. Its IT team did not have to coordinate several vendors or spend weeks opening boxes and preparing devices by hand.
Instead, the Chromebooks arrived ready to be distributed across the school system. It was experience by design, built around the board’s timeline, resources, and responsibility to its students.
Compugen delivered all 5,000 classroom-ready Chromebooks in time for the new school year.
Completing the asset tagging, configuration, enrollment, and staging work before delivery saved the board’s IT team weeks of preparation. Staff could stay focused on supporting schools and handling other technology needs during one of their busiest times of the year.
The coordinated approach also helped the board replace aging devices on schedule, reduce the strain on internal resources, and simplify distribution across multiple schools.
Most importantly, students and educators had reliable technology ready when classes began. The board could start the school year focused on learning rather than a device preparation backlog.
The success of the project has led to discussions about a possible second refresh involving approximately 5,000 more devices.
It has also given the board a proven approach for future technology refreshes. Configuration, enrollment, IT asset management, staging, and deployment services can be considered from the beginning rather than managed after the hardware arrives.
With support across the device lifecycle, the board can continue modernizing its device environment while making future refreshes easier for its IT team to plan and deliver.
What made the relationship work was Compugen’s willingness to take responsibility for the full project.
The school board had one Technology Ally coordinating the devices, technical preparation, and logistics. That reduced complexity and gave its IT leaders confidence that everything would arrive ready and on time.
For education IT teams working with limited resources and fixed school-year deadlines, that support can make the difference between buying new technology and getting it into students’ hands when they need it.
Planning a large-scale Chromebook refresh?
Start with Compugen’s 10-step Chromebook refresh checklist to identify the work, risks, and timelines involved.
If your refresh is already taking shape, speak with a Compugen expert about delivering devices ready for your schools, students, and IT environment. You can reduce the workload on your team, manage deployment risk, and realize new possibilities for students and educators.