Case Study: Consolidating requests for publications received via Spectrum — a bulletin of educational materials

Spectrum was a monthly listing of publications available to all schools, the objective of which was to enable schools to request publications that had not been directly targeted at their particular category of school, but which they nevertheless felt were of interest to them. Following an innovation by ABC, it came to form an integral part of the monthly ‘batched’ mailings to all schools undertaken by the Department for Education.

When Spectrum was originally envisaged, there was a wide range of publications available from a variety of sources; the department itself, other government departments and a number of non-departmental public bodies or institutions involved in education. Stocks of these publications were therefore held by a disparate range of fulfilment points or mailing houses. ABC was asked to conceive a way for schools to be able to request those publications relevant to them, in a simple, quick and effortless manner.

ABC proposed that it act as a ‘clearing house’ for all these requests. This enabled schools to make a single ‘composite’ request — by e-mail, fax or Freepost, and for their requests to be processed speedily in one place. ABC then batched up these requests and transferred them to each fulfilment point in a form that made for far greater efficiency than had they received these piecemeal.

Subsequently, the flow of information to schools increased still further. However, while the department was keen to improve the user-friendliness of its circulars, guidance and other publications it also, crucially, wished to ensure that communications with schools did not become a burden. Spectrum, originally a ‘stand-alone’ mailing to all schools, therefore needed to become part of a consolidated distribution whereby each school was proactively sent all those publications that were directly targeted at it, but none of those that weren’t. A scheme for the monthly ‘batching’ of documents targeted at schools was the logical solution to this problem, which ABC implemented as a further refinement to the existing Spectrum process.

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Since ABC managed the schools & colleges mailing database, publications were already being effectively targeted at often highly specialised groups of schools. However, since there are many parameters against which schools might be classified (LEA, foundation, independent; primary, secondary, special needs; boys, girls, mixed; beacon schools, specialist schools eg. arts, sports, technology or language colleges; etc), the number of permutations of different batches of publications was potentially huge. ABC was asked to conceive a process which translated perhaps a dozen or more publications each month into these permutations, and the resulting system was implemented quickly and effectively. As a result, the number of separate communications with schools, and thus the department’s postage bill, was substantially reduced.

Commenting on the advantages that stemmed first from the ‘funnelling’ of Spectrum requests and then the batching of documents, Rosanna King, of the DFE’s School Communications Unit, commented: “Our objective then, as now, was to reduce the bureaucratic burden on teachers, while still communicating information as comprehensively as possible. ABC helped us to achieve that aim in a professional and efficient manner. By having a thorough understanding of what was needed they were able to implement the necessary solutions quickly and cost-effectively.”

The bottom line for this project was:

• using Spectrum, the department’s stakeholders (primarily, though not exclusively, schools and colleges) had to be able to seek information in a way that was simple and straightforward for them, and both time- and labour-saving for the department and the various publication sources and fulfilment points
  
• batching had to be implemented without any hiatus, and each recipient had to perceive (by means of a tailored contents page) that the batch they had received contained material that was entirely appropriate to them ie. it was not a obviously generic collection, including inappropriate items
  
• in dealing with ABC, the department’s stakeholders should also perceive themselves to be dealing with either the department itself, or a satellite of it, rather than a third-party, commercial organisation

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