Using. Carson-Dellosa. The Challenge

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1 Using Carson-Dellosa The Challenge Changing end user requirements, propelled by swiftly changing technology trends, such as mobile devices, meant that Carson-Dellosa had to rapidly adopt digital technologies for more cost effective and agile content production for both print and digital formats. At that time of adoption, all digital production was outsourced because the company lacked necessary infrastructure or processes to create and reuse digital content. The result was long and expensive development times, no ownership of unique technical intellectual property, and no synergy or efficiency across related marketing, editorial, and design processes. Our goal is to create a great educational experience for our users within the ecosystem of their choosing (be it print or digital) and personalize that experience as ecosystems - such as mobile app and ebook platforms evolve. Internally, we want to produce and market content as efficiently, cost-effectively, and quickly as we can, said Steve Griffin, the company s Chief Technology and Digital Officer. Having worked with many of the top LMS/LCMS systems for more than 20 years, in my experience no other LCMS can deliver this combination of features. The investment in exact learning solutions has enabled significant business improvements and has provided significant value to our shareholders. Steve Griffin Chief Technology and Digital Officer

2 Using The solutions The company chose exact learning solutions to be the foundation of its digital content infrastructure, providing digital asset management and educational content authoring and deployment. We selected exact learning solutions because it was the best at doing what very, very few enterprise LCMS packages can do, said Griffin. It s flexible, enterprise-scalable and able to be integrated with other systems via powerful application programming interfaces (API). It supports content reuse and is customizable without creating costly system upgrade dependencies. No other LCMS had those features as well as proven large-scale deployments. Particularly noteworthy was the ability to change the authoring environment to create highly efficient authoring processes for custom types of print and digital products. Having worked with many of the top LMS/LCMS systems for more than 20 years, in my experience no other LCMS can deliver this combination of features. The investment in exact learning solutions has enabled significant business improvements and has provided significant value to our shareholders.

3 Using Editorial ROI All editorial manuscripts are now stored within the exact learning LCMS, allowing the team to take advantage of the system s versioning capabilities. These versioning features proved especially useful in enabling Carson-Dellosa s Editorial teams to track and go back to earlier versions of manuscripts, as needed. Editorial times were reduced through ready access to projects via the repository for internal and freelance staff. Although, impacting print product process was not a key factor in selecting exact learning, a number of opportunities have since been identified to speed common content development via custom WYSIWYG authoring templates. Because exact learning s authoring and template architecture is flexible, we will be able to make these customizations without negatively impacting our upgrade path to new versions of the platform. said Griffin. Editorial also utilizes the system s commenting and review features. These features allow the editorial team to work seamlessly with the digital products team to quickly and efficiently review, provide feedback, and approve ebooks and other digital products for distribution.

4 Using Art, Design ROI The company had over five terabytes of digital assets spread across thousands of products. In the past, these assets were stored in a hierarchical file folder structure on a server. Finding information could be challenging and time-consuming. With those assets now in the exact Learning Repository, the collection can be searched via full-text and metadata, making reuse of assets more timely and reducing the number of duplicate assets being stored. The company also worked with exact learning to modify the platform s asset upload process so that a single zip archive could be uploaded into the exact learning LCMS. The system would then expand and apply common metadata to all assets contained in the archive. As a result, a packaged InDesign project that may comprise several hundred linked digital assets, can in one upload operation store all of these files as discreet, individual assets and have common metadata automatically assigned to each asset. The system was also customized to automatically extract metadata attributes contained within a digital asset s document properties. Thus, key attributes such as an asset s color mode, format, and canvas size can now be easily searched and referenced with no additional manual tagging required.

5 Using Marketing, Sales Support ROI Using the exact learning LCMS has helped Carson-Dellosa gain control over its large collection of product images that are used in marketing its products in catalogs and websites. The latest version of a product s image is always readily available to staff and applications that query the exact Learning Repository via a program interface. With the exact Learning Repository providing the latest marketing image on demand via its application programming interface, the company created a web-based image processing application that allows internal Marketing and Sales users to select products and automatically produce images to the format, size, color mode, and naming conventions required by a specific retailer or channel. We intend to extend this capability to our independent retailers so that they can quickly and easily format our product images for their website and print-based marketing needs, said Leah Sprague, the company s Vice President of Marketing. The Results The exact Learning Repository and authoring environment has enabled Carson-Dellosa to gain control over a vast collection of assets and positioned it to achieve operational efficiencies across its print and digital product development and marketing processes.

6 Using About Carson-Dellosa About Steve Griffin Carson-Dellosa Publishing is the leading supplementary educational solutions provider for both teachers and parents in the United States. Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, the company offers a wide range of products that enhance a child s learning potential at school and at home. Carson-Dellosa provides teachers, parents and children with educational materials from pre-kindergarten through the eighth grade. The company has a large and growing collection of print materials, ebooks and interactive content. It has partnered with brands such as Guinness World Records and The World of Eric Carle and publishes under many imprints including Carson-Dellosa Publishing, Learning Spot Lessons, Summer Bridge Activities, Key Education, Thinking Kids, Spectrum and Brighter Child. Its products find their market via many channels including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Google, Costco, Staples, Office Depot, Office Max, Joanns, and over 1,000 independent teacher supply stores and chains. Steve Griffin, currently Carson-Dellosa s Chief Technology and Digital Officer, was one of the co-authors of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). He was also CTO/COO of the founding executive team of IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS), a body that aims to advance technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. Its 200 or so member community develops open interoperability standards, supports adoption with technical services and encourages adoption through programs that highlight effective practices. The origins of SCORM date from the late 1990s but the first version of SCORM was published in It was updated in It came about when ADL, a research group sponsored by the United States Department of Defense (DoD), noticed that the online learning industry already had a number of standards and that each of these had merit. In an attempt to harmonize these standards, ADL produced SCORM - which tells developers how to use these standards together. Consequently, any LMS that is SCORM conformant can play any SCORM compliant content. Complying with SCORM enables learning content to communicate with an LMS and facilitates tracking learners activities. Ensuring that learning contents and systems adhere to SCORM should encourage learning and development (L&D) professionals that these things can be used with confidence. About exact learning solutions exact learning solutions is a leading, business solution provider in the field of Digital Learning Content Management. Its content lifecycle care solutions include modular and interoperable tools enabling, supporting and optimizing specific processes within a Digital Learning Content ecosystem: collaborative content creation; structured and workflow-based content management, and multiple output delivery of content in any desired format, channel, device and language, with any look & feel. The Xact learning Suite comprises a fully-fledged, enterprise-wide Learning Content Management System (exact learning LCMS), a professional template-based authoring environment, comprising an advanced, local client application and a 100% web-based tool (exact learning Packager and Online Editor) as well as an app to manage, deliver and track learning content through ios and Android-based mobile devices (exact learning Mobile). The exact learning solutions end-to-end provisioning is completed by a full set of high level professional services including consulting, training and technical support in the field of Digital Learning Content Management. exact learning solutions - Headquarters Piazza della Vittoria, 11/A Genoa Italy Tel Fax info@exact-learning.com Website: