Pat Harold

Pat Harold is a Senior Consultant at Spectrum Business Solutions, which offers one of the broadest ranges of support services for Remark data collection software available today. Spectrum’s services are tailored to meet the specific needs of government and education, and include installation, form design, end-user training and systems integration. Spectrum started to offer Remark Office OMR® integrated with document scanners in 2007. Typical solutions provided by Pat’s company include student assessments, tests, student surveys and civil service exams.

Recently, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) implemented human resource shared service initiatives at the MTA’s new Business Service Center and at New York City Transit’s HR Department. As part of this effort both groups now provide pre-employment and promotion exam services for multiple agencies. The consolidated work required a more efficient process to collect data from answer forms, score exams, provide a complete statistical analysis, upload the results to the existing PeopleSoft® database and archive completed forms.

Spectrum Business Solutions responded to RFPs from both NYCT and the MTA. Spectrum was then selected by each group to implement a new approach that allowed older proprietary data collection systems to be retired and to help combine exam operations. In winning the bid, Spectrum was selected over other well-known competitors with similar solutions. The Spectrum solution incorporates the Remark Office OMR software and allows each group to offer new capabilities including custom forms, surveys, faster turnaround and more robust analytics.

The solution highlights include:

• Standard or custom exam answer forms are now designed using Microsoft Word® and laser printed on plain copy paper; as many as are needed when they are needed
• Completed forms are scanned locally with document scanners
• Immediate reports include session score and sub-scores, a complete item analysis and exam statistics
• Exam images are automatically indexed and stored electronically for easy retrieval
• Results are formatted for export to the existing database
• An open and scalable solution can be sized to meet any volume
• New data collection offerings – poll and survey forms can be scanned, tabulated and analyzed

When asked what Pat likes most about the Remark software he says, “it’s a flexible tool set that allows cost effective, easy to use and scalable solutions to be custom built to meet specific data collection needs.” Here at Gravic, we have been amazed at Pat’s ability to learn Remark inside and out and find niches for the product. His continual communication with us has allowed us to better understand his markets and he has given us many ideas for practical improvements to the product… for that we are most grateful.