Overview

As a diversified production, live-

event and marketing company,

College Bowl (www.collegebowl.com)

produces and distributes academic

competitions in America and abroad,

reaching millions of students, faculty,

alumni and family members through-

out the world. Over the past 35 years,

the award-winning, California-based

company—consisting of 11 full-time

Content management solutionsBusiness case study

College Bowl scores time and cost savings through an automated workflow solution.

Challenge

An inefficient and costly manual

content-creation process consumed

time and resources the company

needed to devote to generating

new revenue streams

Solution

An automated workflow built on

IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus

Domino software designed to

accelerate, simplify and enhance

the content-creation process

Key Benefits

– Cut overall printing and shipping

costs by US$75,000 per year

– Increased content accuracy

rate from 90 to 99.3 percent

– Reduced typical question-

creation time by 50 percent

– Decreased time required to

locate and update content from

days to minutes

– Saved and reallocated

thousands of employee-hours

to new business pursuits

“We didn’t find any com-petitive alternatives. There wasn’t [any other solution] that was even remotely competitive from a price or func-tionality standpoint.”–Mary Oberembt, general manager,

College Bowl

Pictured are students competing at The Honda Campus All-Star Challenge, a competition for America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

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and several part-time employees—has expanded to coordinate and provide

questions for three major programs: the annual College Bowl, High School Bowl

and Honda Campus All-Star Challenge competitions.

Aside from working continuously to improve question content, College Bowl

strives to globalize its questions for a broader audience, repurpose existing

content into new products and secure corporate sponsors for College Bowl

products. But as a small business constrained by an inefficient, manual

question-generation process, College Bowl had little extra time or money to

invest in new ventures.

The time-consuming question-generation process typically lasted ten weeks

per game set. Employees manually authored, categorized, edited, approved,

assembled and logged 130 files of questions per month on topics ranging from

science and current events to math and history. Relying on staff members to

catch mistakes, the process was subject to errors that undermined content

quality. Duplicate questions, an unbalanced number of topics and inaccura-

cies sometimes led to contestants challenging question content.

The cumbersome question-generation process was entirely paper-based. When

booking (assembling) games, College Bowl printed between 5,000 and 10,000

pages of questions per game to create a physical, categorized deck. From

the deck, a booker selected questions based on specific criteria to be used in

a game. The resulting preliminary game, printed on 53 sheets of paper, was

shipped to as many as eight outside reviewers. The subsequent cost of paper,

printing and shipping totaled approximately US$30,000 per year per game—a

heavy burden. To position itself for growth, College Bowl needed to improve the

efficiency, cost-effectiveness and quality control of its process.

Building an automated solution that’s ahead of the curve

Recognizing this labor-intensive, manual workflow prohibited College Bowl

from meeting its business objectives, the company decided to automate its

question-generation process. Along with replacing manual steps, the solution

“Because of the IBM technology, College Bowl is able to do things at a ten-person company that a 50- to 100-person company can do. So it’s a big win.” –John Head, enTouch offerings and

development manager, PSC

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needed to support College Bowl’s specialized document format, efficiently

store large volumes of questions and provide remote access to offsite review-

ers. College Bowl chose IBM Business Partner PSC Group, LLC to design and

build a new workflow and content management architecture. By the end of the

project, College Bowl got a lot more—a complete transformation that brought

its business process into the 21st century.

During the first few years of their partnership, PSC and College Bowl attempted

different solutions. They tried simple word-processing applications and even

built and rejected an entire application. Ultimately, they decided to switch from

an Internet-hosted Microsoft® Outlook messaging system to IBM Lotus® Notes®

and IBM Lotus Domino® software. PSC developed College Bowl’s solution grad-

ually, building on the new capabilities of each Lotus Notes and Domino

upgrade, until the content-creation process was fully automated.

The platform switch was largely due to the rich messaging and collaborative

capabilities of Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software, including integrated

instant messaging for real-time collaboration among employees and clients in

the context of their work. Stronger security capabilities that safeguard confi-

dentiality and protect against viruses. And the ability to support multiple e-mail

accounts—one for each College Bowl program. “We didn’t find any competitive

alternatives. There wasn’t [any other solution] that was even remotely competitive

from a price or functionality standpoint,” says Mary Oberembt, general manager,

College Bowl.

As part of the solution implementation, PSC and College Bowl imported some

17,000 existing questions into a newly developed Lotus Notes question data-

base. This database enables writers to post and index questions by category.

Outside reviewers can log on to the system from anywhere via a Web browser

to view, comment on and return questions electronically. Printing and shipping

are no longer required, significantly speeding the process.

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PSC also developed other Lotus Notes databases, including an individualized

program database for each competition and a keyword database. In each program

database, employees can quickly organize questions into packets using an agent

running on Lotus Domino software that is guided by program-specific rules—

known as the pre-book process. Leveraging Lotus software automation capabilities,

the pre-book process is automated to quickly select 53 questions from the

database based on 25 criteria points, assign them to a game and pass them

along for online review.

The keyword database enables users to rapidly search for duplicate questions

and to edit multiple instances of content. Automating each step of the pro-

cess—including data searching—using Lotus Domino workflow capabilities

helps significantly reduce human error. And fewer instances of inaccurate,

unbalanced and duplicate content helps the games run more smoothly.

After game content has been verified as accurate and complete, an administrator

simply clicks a button to generate the questions in a Microsoft Word document and

save the document as a PDF—all in minutes. A rich-text connector created by PSC

maintains all formatting required for proper printing. Finally, the PDF is sent elec-

tronically either directly to a printer or to a contact at a school for final printing and

packaging. This system helps limit printing and shipping to finished products only.

Accomplishing more in less time

Implementing an automated, user-friendly workflow and distribution process

with Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software has reduced College Bowl’s

question-creation time by 50 percent and drastically shortened revision time.

For example, manually searching through a year’s worth of questions to ensure

existing questions are updated used to take three or four days. With the keyword

database, automated searches return results in about two seconds, allowing

users to update content more quickly.

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Remote access for outside reviewers has streamlined the review process by

eliminating time spent printing and shipping questions. Assembling question

packets takes only hours instead of days or weeks. Now completed game

packets are produced just weeks before their use, increasing accuracy, timeliness

of material and customer satisfaction. And any new employees the College Bowl

recruits are able to get up to speed on the automated process quickly and easily.

“Because of the IBM technology, College Bowl is able to do things at a ten-

person company that a 50- to 100-person company can do,” says John Head,

enTouch offerings and development manager, PSC. “So it’s a big win.”

Getting high marks for accuracy

The online process allows College Bowl to expand and work with international

reviewers and content providers to globalize its questions for an increasingly

diverse audience. This capability not only increases the potential for new

customers, it also helps further improve content quality. A significant reduction in

human error as a result of an automated workflow has decreased the number of

duplicate questions and helped generate optimum topic variation within game

sets. Overall, question accuracy rates have risen from about 90 percent

to 99.3 percent, virtually eliminating question protests. And with the shortened

production time, questions are shipped to and used by clients promptly—

meaning content used in competitions is up to date.

Saving money—and trees

Previously, each question was printed about eight times on its way to approval.

Electronic distribution through Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software has

eliminated the paper-based process and postponed the need to ship hard

copies until final customer delivery. The IBM and PSC solution has cut paper,

printing and shipping costs by more than US$75,000 per year. Also, by switching

to the Lotus Notes and Domino platform, College Bowl has eliminated costs

associated with hosting its e-mail externally.

“[The IBM solution and PSC applications have] absolutely revolution-ized how we do our jobs. Even the naysay-ers are saying, ‘I’d never go back.’”–Mary Oberembt, general manager,

College Bowl

Leveraging existing resources to drive business growth

The content management solution from IBM has helped College Bowl free up

thousands of employee-hours per year. Now the company can devote more time to

building its event-planning business. Attracting more corporate sponsors. Improving

question quality. And repurposing content into new question packets for different

audiences. For example, College Bowl recently launched new diversity question

packs to focus on specific categories, including African American and women’s

topics. College Bowl and PSC quickly created the diversity program database by

reusing the new IBM solution’s application architecture and copying questions from

existing program databases to the new database. Category-specific game packets

such as this one require minimal extra work or costs, and allow College Bowl to

resell content for a high margin.

Mastering a successful future

The next planned refinements to College Bowl’s system will involve introducing

more rules-based automation to further reduce duplicate content and automating

the creation of various documents to reduce clerical work. With IBM Lotus

solutions and PSC as its committed IBM Business Partner, College Bowl has

relinquished its manual operations for a fully automated, paperless business

model. As a result, the company has gained a substantial competitive edge and

is poised to retain the title of industry leader while developing innovative products

and creating new revenue streams. “[The IBM and PSC solution has] absolutely

revolutionized how we do our jobs,” declares Mary Oberembt. “Even the naysay-

ers are saying, ‘I’d never go back.’”

For more information

Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at:

ibm.com /lotus

For more information about PSC, visit:

www.psclistens.com

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2004

IBM CorporationSoftware GroupRoute 100Somers, NY 10589U.S.A.

Produced in the United States of America09-04All Rights Reserved

Domino, IBM, the IBM logo, Lotus and Lotus Notes are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.

Microsoft is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.

Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

References in this publication to IBM products and services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.

This customer story is based on information pro-vided by College Bowl and PSC and illustrates how one organization uses IBM products. Many factors may have contributed to the results and benefits described; IBM does not guarantee comparable results elsewhere.

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