Will Your Customer Be the Next Winner of an IT Makeover?

We know you’ve seen them. Those unsightly (or unsafe!) IT rooms and closets with servers, routers, and switches sitting on desks, makeshift air handlers held together by duct tape, or the dreaded nest of cables that make troubleshooting a battle. Help your customers with these less-than-optimal environments (and budget constraints) to make some big improvements in 2021.

Since 2016, APC by Schneider Electric has offered its K-12 Makeover Contest to help schools clean up their IT gear and deliver on their promise of giving kids a high-quality, interactive learning experience.

As trusted partners and advisors to their clients, partners like you have “nominated” their customers. They’ve sent pictures or videos of problem IT areas that keep K-12 customers from efficiently delivering on that promise. And each year, choosing just one recipient to win the $10,000 award to add or refresh technology has not been easy.

Think you’ve got a customer or prospect who would be a strong entry? Check out our deserving winners from the last three years below and see how yours compare.

Past K-12 Makeover Contest winners

Forest Hills School District – APC by Schneider Electric partner Forward Edge—the largest K-12 education technology provider in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky—nominated this Cincinnati, Ohio school district. They, in turn, thought Turpin High School and their outdated server room was most deserving after their IT budget was cut. The high school used its $10,000 prize to upgrade IT equipment to improve Internet connectivity and reliability.

St. Matthew School – Nominated by longtime volunteer and APC by Schneider Electric partner Terry Lemke of Lemke Consulting, this K-8 school in rural Wisconsin used its prize to:

• Replace 10-year-old computers,
• Acquire several LCD monitors and a projector,
• Purchase a cloud-enabled APC Smart-UPS with SmartConnect Battery Backup, and
• Renew their security and threat protection service.

The school can now focus on raising funds for new textbooks, STEM gear, or new programs instead of trying to fix or work around old equipment.

New Haven Public Schools – Serving New Haven, Connecticut, this school district with more than 30,000 pre-K through 12 students, staff, and teachers struggled to fund the management and maintenance of its IT infrastructure distributed across 50+ buildings. The district used its prize to replace two UPS units from 2003 with eight APC Smart-UPS systems with Network Cards, fulfilling its Network Services Supervisor’s 10-year-old wish list.

Extra credit: Doubling down on education

In addition to donating prize money, we see so much potential in these schools and districts that we’ve felt compelled to throw in a bonus or two. For example, one school received a new wall-mount server rack to replace a home-built wooden rack, while a district received EcoStruxure IT software with Monitoring & Dispatch Services to remotely manage their UPS systems and minimize class downtime.

Now it’s time to raise the stakes and provide even more IT help for your customers!

New year, bigger prize…enter now!

A recent survey suggests that educators can use help with home connectivity for students (63%), remote learning technology (34%), and deeply discounted devices (29%), so we’re feeling optimistic about 2021 and are ready to review more photos and videos. Even better? The award for this year’s IT Makeover Contest has been raised to $25,000!

If your K-12 customer can benefit from some IT modernization, take a moment to enter them into the contest. Any U.S. K-12 school—big or small, public or private—with any space that houses IT equipment may enter. All entries submitted between January 1 and October 31, 2021, will be eligible for consideration.