… you may begin your work. That was gist of the message Accenture recently received from Educational Testing Services (ETS), the company responsible for administering tests like the SATs. ETS was notifying the consulting firm that it had won the contract to manage the supply chain for ETS's well-known testing products.

The five-year, $142 million deal includes the publishing, printing, warehousing , distribution, tracing and shipping of tests and test-related materials globally. Accenture will work with ETS to consolidate and simplify supply chain processes, logistics and infrastructure to improve overall operational efficiency. The company plans to use custom and off-theshelf software for forecasting, inventory planning, production planning and scheduling, warehouse management and transportation.

"By working with Accenture to manage our supply chain functions, we can place even more focus on our core mission of advancing quality and equity in education through fair and valid testing," says Kurt Landgraf, president and CEO of ETS. "We also expect that the efficiencies gained through this agreement will allow us to streamline our costs and provide world-class service to our customers and clients."

Among the ETS products that Accenture will handle are the College Board SAT and Advanced Placement tests, the Graduate Records Examination, the Test of English as a Foreign Language and numerous state K-12 tests.