Listening to specifics & concerns

“NPC was in another state, almost 400 miles away. We hadn’t worked with them before. Would their quality be what we were used to?” explains Deborah Hartman, a district administrator.

By erasing geographical and quality concerns early on, we knew that we could establish a working trust level and hit the ground running. NPC worked closely with test administrators to gain greater insight into their specific requirements and unique logistical challenges before addressing the project itself.

Understanding the greater context

The printing portion of this project was pretty straightforward: producing test forms, answer sheets and 12- to 36-page test booklets. On the flip side, there was significant complexity in the varying page counts, different test versions for multiple subjects and grade levels, as well as generating distribution labels for delivery to multiple testing locations.

For the test distribution, we initially received a thorough yet elaborate spreadsheet outlining all test versions, page counts, test locations and delivery routes. But the supplied information did not seamlessly import into our data management systems. The data transfer was burdened by manual processes. We kept each of these special considerations top of mind as we developed the right process to solve their challenge.

Delivering the most effective solution

Our software engineers took a proactive approach, developing a custom program to automate the data transfer process. “We used a lot of creative thinking to make this work in the most effective way possible with the least amount of confusion for our customer,” recounts Christie Bonfanti, NPC Preship Specialist. “We updated the address preparation from a manual process to a much more automated system.”

All of the testing materials were delivered to one centralized warehouse location within the school district. We labeled each box on two different sides so that the school name and delivery route were clearly visible to package handlers. Boxes were stacked in the most logical order, based on delivery routes. This helped make distribution to multiple schools within the district as efficient as possible.

The administrators at the school district discovered that the entire process was more efficient than it had ever been.