Did you ever work with a company and wonder what their secret sauce was —  or ‘how the soup was made?’ Often, companies create proprietary systems that enable them to do more, work faster, and with greater efficiency than one could do independently. Companies without the subject matter experience often struggle to achieve the same efficiencies, no matter how hard they try to reproduce the effort. The development of processes, technology enhancements, and gathering teams of subject matter experts are just some of the ways companies can set themselves apart, and become the ‘go-to’ resource for their particular craft.

At EdGate, we are often asked how we create alignments so efficiently, with such a high degree of accuracy, or perform Third-Party review work so quickly. There is no magic bullet. Our success in Education Standards and Standards Alignment is a result of several key factors.

1. Time:  EdGate has been in the business of Standards since 1996 — and our focus has only grown stronger during that time.
    
2. Process:  From the beginning, the team realized how complex Alignments were, and how essential it would be to create processes around the work we were doing. This led to the EdGate Taxonomy, which has been awarded six U.S. Patents over the years, and is at the heart of our work to this day.
    
3. Technology:  Once we had the process worked out, we began looking for ways to automate pieces so we could speed up the rate of completion without sacrificing quality. This last part is critical — EdGate never has, and never will sacrifice quality for speed. We take great pride in the work we do for our clients, and will not launch a new technology if it means sacrificing or skimping on the quality of the end product. There is lots of talk of AI-driven solutions today, but they are only as good as the end result — speed cannot replace quality.
    
4. Team: From the onset, EdGate has been focused on building a team of subject matter experts — people who are passionate about the topics they cover, who have spent time in the classroom and had real world experiences that positively impacted their work, and who have the mindset of continual improvement and customer-first service.

For us, success didn’t happen overnight; it came through a long-term commitment to our client’s success. As we look ahead, we can see more places where technology will impact our systems and processes. One area where we see this occurring is with CTE (Career and Technical Education) Standards. While we are able to align CTE Standards via our traditional methodologies, utilizing the EdGate Taxonomy, there are complications that render this approach too time consuming for practical use. There are approximately seven CTE Standards to every one education standard — which means there are far too many to process by hand. To increase the speed of aligning CTE standards, we have spent over two years of research and development time to solve this problem. As we prepare to roll out our new solution, it’s only once we are convinced that the new process is as accurate ( or more accurate) than what we were able to achieve previously that we will be satisfied it is ready for prime time. Early indications are good. So far the numbers show an improvement in alignment accuracy coupled with a speed increase that will far outpace our original expectations.

From our perspective, technology is not a panacea for everything, but a tool to be leveraged and molded only once the hard work of building a use case, defining a process, and rigorous testing has been done. It’s been said that the ‘devil is in the detail’, which is where we believe the secret sauce is made.