Carson-Dellosa Using - eXact learning solutions

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
Genoa • Milan • Rome
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.”
Genoa • Milan • Rome
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.
Genoa • Milan • Rome
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.
Genoa • Milan • Rome
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.
Genoa • Milan • Rome
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 2000. It was updated
in 2004. 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
16121 Genoa
Italy
Tel +39.010.81.77.500
Fax +39.010.81.77.529
Email: info@exact-learning.com
Website: www.exact-learning.com
www.lattanziogroup.eu/en