Grand Canyon University

Inside the modern asset-management workflows powering a 100,000+ student university ecosystem

Grand Canyon University is one of the largest private universities in the country, and behind the scenes, a small team manages thousands of assets across multiple departments, an onsite help desk, and a busy warehouse operation.

Karla Cervantes is at the center of it. She started as a student worker and worked her way up to a full-time role overseeing asset management, the onsite help desk team, and warehouse coordination. Today, she helps manage equipment needs, workflows, and user groups across a broader ecosystem of three separate companies—a structure she runs inside Reftab as three distinct tenants, including Grand Canyon University.

Supporting all three means the IT team often switches between separate environments, each with its own workflows and asset inventory.

The cracks that finally surfaced

The old system was creating drag everywhere—and as asset volume grew, so did the pain.

Grand Canyon University operates a main campus in Phoenix, multiple accelerated nursing sites across several states, and a large online education program. That means the asset team must support both on-campus and remote/field equipment workflows. As operational complexity increased, they found themselves outgrowing their existing tool at the exact moment they needed it most.

Switching between machines was painfully slow.

“It would take about 30 to 40 seconds, but 30 to 40 seconds adds up when it’s a hundred different machines or in a hundred different people touching different processes,” says Karla. “So it did slow us down. And with that, we also didn’t have the app on our phones where we could just scan and assign something or move something from a location or from a person or any of that.”

Without a mobile app, every update required lugging a laptop around campus—or writing things down to enter later.

She adds, “We used to take notes on our little notepad or a sticky note and go back to our desk and then do it.”

And the problems didn’t stop there. Reporting wasn’t flexible or fast. Filtering for what mattered wasn’t reliable. Kit workflows were manual. The warehouse layout didn’t match the digital system. And with no integrations, they were constantly connecting data across systems by hand.

The breaking point

At GCU’s scale, manual workflows weren’t just slow—they were risky. When COVID pushed the university toward hybrid and remote learning, things got even harder. The onsite team was stretched thin, balancing scheduled appointments with walk-ins and urgent issues popping up across campus.

Nothing synced in real time. Every process had friction baked in. It became clear the team needed a system designed for fast-moving, multi-campus IT operations.

Switching to Reftab

“We went from Station Wagon to now we have this cool race car. This nice Ferrari has a lot of buttons and a lot of integrations.”

The biggest immediate workflow upgrade was ease of use.

The team gained immediate access to recent scans, pending verification emails, lifecycle history, and inventory levels.

“The biggest thing was just the speed of being able to move between each different tenant and being able to access the equipment based on what use cases we were looking at for that moment. So that was the biggest feedback is ease of use, how quickly everything loads, and just the endless possibilities of integrations.”

The next biggest was being able to scan stuff on their phones. Technicians no longer had to walk back to a desk or hunt down data. They could update assignments, locations, maintenance notes, and verification steps on the spot.

Standardized kit workflows

Reftab’s Kits feature became central to their warehouse and field operations.

Across the organization, different groups track everything from everyday employee laptops and monitors to specialized medical equipment and accessory kits used by remote sites

Karla says, “We import all of the equipment that goes into the kit, assign a name to it, and then reserve it for the site… When the day comes, we update the kit from reserved to checked out, send it to the loanee site, and check it back in once it returns.”

Using reports to make data-driven decisions

They also rely on Reftab’s reports to keep hardware lifecycle planning tight and avoid unnecessary replacements. The team runs monthly reports to track which assets have been decommissioned, recycled, or reused. They also use reports to see how many devices of a specific type are still in circulation, where those devices are located, and whether they’re out on loan or sitting in the warehouse.

That visibility helps them decide when aging machines can be re-imaged and redeployed instead of retired. Devices that are technically out of warranty but still fully functional get reassigned to lighter-use scenarios, such as temporary setups or sign-up stations. The reports give them a clear picture of what they can still use, how long equipment can stay in rotation, and where different asset types can be most effectively placed.

This means less waste, more reuse, and more confident decisions about hardware lifecycle management.

The moment the team could finally think beyond the day-to-day

With Reftab, the team stopped thinking reactively and started thinking strategically. Ideas that used to feel impossible suddenly became plausible to even start exploring like: 

The team finally had a platform that matched their ambition. They knew they wanted to expand automation, including CDW for procurement, FedEx for shipping, Intune/Jamf for mobile device management, Google Workspace for Chromebooks. Their previous tool couldn’t support any of it.

And the shift was reinforced by the quality of Reftab’s support.

Karla says, “I think the biggest thing is just the support from the company. If there’s any type of issue that I’m having, if it’s with importing assets, if it’s one of the dreams that I have for integrating or if something is being looked at for some type of development, I know that there’s a team behind us that can help us throughout that path. So I think that’s the biggest, just to know that you guys are there supporting us.” 

For a large-scale institution this size, the switch to a mobile-first, integrated asset platform not only reduced friction, but enabled scale-ready workflows that can match their team’s growth ambitions.