An exam delivery platform runs an exam on behalf of the body that sets it: it schedules each candidate, delivers the test at a test centre or online, supervises it, and reports the scores. Its main customers are certification bodies, the organisations that test and certify professionals. Universities, regulators and employers use it too. The body writes the questions and decides the pass mark. The platform delivers the exam.
Why is this a separate business? Running an exam safely is hard. Thousands of candidates must sit it in many cities, or from home. Each one must be the person who registered. Nobody must see the questions before the exam. And every candidate's answers must be stored and scored without a single error.
Take, for example, a professional body in India that certifies financial planners. It holds its exam four times a year, for about 6,000 candidates each time, and it hands the delivery to a platform. A candidate in Dehradun registers, pays and picks a 10 a.m. slot on a Saturday at a test centre in his city. Other candidates choose to sit the exam from home.
On the day, the platform checks each candidate's identity. At the centre, its staff match the candidate's face and ID card with the photo he uploaded. At home, identity verification software does the same through the webcam. The platform then delivers the test in a locked browser that blocks every other app. Each candidate gets a different mix of questions from the body's pool of questions, at the same overall difficulty, so copying from the next desk does not help. Candidates at home are supervised by online proctoring.
After the exam, the platform scores each test and sends the results to the body. It also sends statistics on each question. For example, if almost every candidate got one question wrong, it may be badly written, and the body may remove it before it declares the results.
Most candidates prepare first, with professional certification training or test prep for GRE, GMAT and licensing exams. In India, several large entrance exams, such as JEE Main, are also taken on computers at test centres.
How is it different from a coding assessment platform? An employer uses a coding assessment to decide whom to interview. An exam delivery platform runs a formal exam whose result is a certificate, a licence or an admission.