Hachette Learning: Powering the Next Generation of Digital Assessment
Hachette Learning (formerly Hodder Education) is a leading provider of learning resources, serving over 4,000 schools and regularly processing more than 3 million assessments each year for over 845,000 pupils. Their products span print and digital, supporting teachers worldwide with high-quality assessment and learning tools.
The Challenge
Hachette’s legacy assessment platform (MARK) was a commercial success but had hit a technical ceiling. It processed millions of tests annually. but its architecture was limiting product evolution, user experience, and operational efficiency.
To unlock future growth, Hachette Learning needed a full rebuild:
- Cloud-native, scalable and secure
- Flexible enough to support a wide range of assessment models
- Capable of real-time analytics and integration with other platforms
- All without disrupting thousands of active schools
But this wasn’t a lift-and-shift. It required rethinking assessment delivery from the ground up, underpinned by deep educational and technical understanding.
How We Helped
Hachette partnered with Talk Think Do to deliver end-to-end strategy and software delivery for their new assessment platform - Boost Insights.
We brought clarity to complexity, aligning stakeholders around a clear, executable roadmap and rapidly translating this into a production-grade system using Learnosity and Azure.
We led:
- Technical architecture aligned to enterprise-grade security, performance, and scale
- Product shaping, balancing user needs, commercial goals, and operational realities
- Integration strategy across Learnosity, legacy systems, data sources, and Hachette’s digital estate
- Incremental delivery across pilot, trial, and live environments, with zero disruption to schools
- Support model design to ensure resilience post-launch
Outcomes & Impact
- A modern cloud-native assessment platform built using Learnosity SDK and Azure
- Interoperability with Hachette’s ecosystem
- Automated data migration, real-time reporting, and role-based user access
- Accessible design and scalability to support 1M+ users
- Supports over 4,000 schools, processing 3 million tests annually for 845,000+ pupils
- Enables live reporting and analytics to inform teaching decisions instantly
Value Added
| TTD Capability | Impact at Hachette |
| Enterprise Azure architecture | Fast, scalable and secure assessment engine |
| Learnosity integration | Interactive assessment with rich question types |
| Agile delivery in a complex org | Aligning stakeholders and accelerating delivery |
| Risk-aware technical strategy | Avoided disruption to live products or school experience |
| Change-responsive backlog |
Evolved with the client’s roadmap, not constrained by it |
Client Feedback
“Talk Think Do were exceptionally organised, knowledgeable and pragmatic in helping us take the idea through discovery and build. Communication was clear, and every team member brought a can-do, supportive approach.”
- Katie Blainey, Director, Assessment Product, Learning Design and Professional Development
What This Means For You
This wasn’t just a build. It was a transformation project that redefined how a major education publisher delivers value to schools through data-driven assessment.
Talk Think Do wasn’t just a vendor - we were the partner trusted to deliver clarity, quality, and certainty from day one.
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