With Charles Hamilton, Director International Client Relations at Pearson VUE

Pearson VUE runs more than 5,000 test centers in 180 countries providing computer-based certifications program for Microsoft, Adobe, HP, VMware, Cisco, Oracle, COMPTIA and Pegasystems.

Fundamental to Pearson VUE’s adoption and exposure of online-based test programs is the representation and recognition of their programs by test centres on their websites. Pearson VUE uses Grepsr to ask and answer important questions that helps them to measure and drive insights to grow their program penetration rate.

The Challenge

Although Pearson VUE authorized test centers will say they recognize test A or test B and they will put that on their websites. However, to find and assess the level at which these programs are recognized and listed – as new centers are added and the structure of webpages changes is not easy.

The scope to analyse is vast and complex. There are over 5000 of Pearson VUE test centers websites with hundreds of thousands of webpages, sub-paragraphs, image to scan, compare and evaluate on a frequent and recurring basis. In addition, many test centers websites’ displays required information only upon search, interrelationships and links that also change unpredictably.

“We needed a benchmark that we could use as a YOY indicator to assess our team’s performance and get listed on these institution websites. It was a business performance metric that we were really missing!”

Charles Hamilton, Pearson VUE

Pearson VUE’s Director of International Client Relations, Charles Hamilton, “translates” this information to build targets for his team to drive further penetration and adoption of their test programs. The challenge for Charles is to quickly sift through the overwhelming volume of content to deliver targeted information and timely insights.

The Solution

Before using Grepsr, Pearson VUE’s client relations team spent many hours every day going through test centers’ websites, scanning through thousands of webpages, downloading brochures, and classifying and storing hundreds of thousands of metadata for analysis, but they are all happening in the wrongs places and are siloed. The process was inefficient, inconsistent, and not scalable to meet demand and left them with little time to evaluate relevancy and provide new services.

Pearson VUE uses Grepsr to automate the manually-intensive data collection, and pre-business development processes – more than 500 automated information flows in total. This has freed both Charles and his teams’ time for deeper analysis and other domain-related tasks. Now Charles and his team are able to track their performance quicker, and more efficiently, accurately and consistently.

Using Grepsr to automate the error-prone manual metadata collection process significantly reduced the overall turnaround time by over 5 times. This also enabled Charles to establish a business performance metric that allowed him to quickly build targets for his teams in different countries, conduct annual assessment of their performance, and feed that into their bonus and incentives.

The Result

High-quality metadata and reliable data capture mechanisms are essential to drive visibility around information that supports progress or identifies challenges. Thanks to the ability to assimilate, organize and transform data into insights from a single platform, Pearson VUE has turned what used to be a “loose kind of approach” into a more formal, accurate and sustainable business development process.

Now high-value solutions delivered by Grepsr alerts Pearson VUE’s client relations team to high-priority test centers, which test programs are relevant to them and — relative to the test centers own business –  where specifically they reference and promote which test programs are more in demand. These enhanced services are a huge success for Pearson VUE.