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Scantron to Test Education Market at Conference

Most anyone who’s taken a multiple-choice test with a No. 2 pencil has heard of the name Scantron.

The company that offers assessment technology, Scantron Corp., will be one of more than 500 exhibitors demonstrating their wares at the National Educational Computing Conference from July 5 to 7 in San Diego.

The conference will be held at the San Diego Convention Center, within walking distance of Scantron’s Testing & Assessment Division on West A Street.

Division President Tim Loomer said the Irvine-based company seeks to meet other technology companies and will arrange demonstrations for educators at its multiple exhibit stations.

Scantron will demonstrate two of its Web-based products, The Performance Series and The Achievement Series.

The Performance Series is a computer-adapted test that’s used as a benchmark tool to pinpoint a student’s level on the learning continuum. The results are used to help place students in similar knowledge-based groups.

The Achievement Series is a district-wide assessment tool that is used to analyze results of different tests, including teacher-generated tests and others developed by diverse publishing agencies.

Loomer described its products as “instruction enablers,” meaning Scantron focuses on giving educators the capabilities to build their own tests and on analyzing test results.

“Through technology we’re able to provide educators with on-the-spot results they can use to guide instruction,” Loomer said. “We give educators information in a rapid and accurate fashion so they can do their job.”

The 35-year-old company has created a recognizable brand for itself by adapting to changing needs and assessment methods. It has grown into a company of 650 employees with annual gross revenues of $120 million by providing plain-paper scanning, optical mark scanning, and online services. Locally, Loomer anticipates gross revenues of $43 million for 2006 at his 125-employee division.

“We’re known as an assessment company, but a lot of people are starting to think of us as the technology assessment company,” Loomer said.

In the San Diego region, Scantron provides services to some schools in the San Diego Unified School District and the Sweetwater Union High School District.

“We can go into a very small district of 1,000 students or go into a district with hundreds of thousands of students,” he said. “It’s the same technology. It makes us very agile.”

The National Educational Computing Conference is being sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education. ISTE is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that advances effective use of technology in grades pre-kindergarten through 12 and in teacher education.

More than 12,000 teachers, technology coordinators, policy-makers and administrators are expected to attend the conference to learn about industry trends, hardware, software and services.

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Shrinking The Paper Flow:

Inforaise Technologies USA has the luxury of choosing clients from an endless number of industries.

The Carmel Valley-based software solutions provider has worked with customers in diverse fields from health care to corporate real estate. Most recently it devoted a year to developing a streamlined workflow process for an insurance-related firm.

Inforaise President Sanjiv Prabhakaran, 47, said he was looking for a way to apply his 20 years of experience in the software industry to a variety of projects when he founded the company in October 2000.

“My primary motivation was to be independent and kind of grow the company in a mold where we could service a lot of different clients,” Prabhakaran said. “At the same time I had built a relationship with a team in India. That helped drive the model to service different companies with different needs and focus on different types of applications.”

The foreign partnership has led to the formation of a counterpart firm in Hyderabad in South Central India, called Inforaise Technologies India.

The partnership expands the company’s work force significantly. With only Prabhakaran and a part-time marketing staff member in the United States, the firm has access to 27 employees in India. The local office conducts technical assessments for clients, and relies on architects and engineers in India to design a strategy.

The additional manpower enabled Inforaise to devote 20 employees to developing software for a midsize corporate real estate firm involved in managing store operations for large clients such as Home Depot and Good Guys electronics. The software tracked maintenance operations and processes at new store outlets.

Inforaise has recently been working on a contract valued at nearly $60,000 for the San Diego-based DMA Insurance Housing Assistants.

Inforaise recently completed the second phase of converting DMA’s manual processes and spreadsheets into a custom workflow process using a database and Web-based application. DMA’s local staff and remote sales staff use the streamlined system to help the insurance industry relocate families who have property loss claims due to fire, flood and wind damage.

“They’re always looking for enhancements so I’m sure there will be a third phase very soon,” said Prabhakaran, who declined to disclose the private company’s revenues.


Send technology news to Julie Gallant at

jgallant@sdbj.com

, or call her at (858) 277-6359.

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