Three years later Avow was founded. With a meaning “to declare assuredly”, Avow was well suited to the assurances that come from the certified PDF they pioneered. Growing in parallel tracks, Docufide and Avow came together as Parchment in 2012.

Today we launch the Parchment Exchange, which we describe as the best of both worlds – and it truly is. While Docufide was initially focused on the exchange of transcripts from high schools to colleges and universities, Avow developed its solution focused solely on the needs of higher education. While Docufide acted as a trusted intermediary, building a receiver network that delivered transcripts in the receivers preferred format, whether electronic image, standards-based data, or mailed on security paper; Avow developed its patented secure document technologies, to deliver certified PDF’s that carried the trust of the institution right in the digital signature embedded in the transcript.

As our marketing campaign for the launch of the Parchment Exchange points out so well, like peanut butter and jelly, coffee and donuts, Docufide and Avow go together.

Today these two transcript exchanges, created independently of one another unite as one as the Parchment Exchange, and with this launch the Docufide and Avow names will be retired. When I first met Matthew Pittinsky weeks before starting as our CEO, he asked about my attachment to the name “Docufide” knowing I was its creator. Matthew long had a vision for a credentials management platform, and part of that vision was to transform Docufide to Parchment, named after the material traditionally used for diplomas.

At the time, I told Matthew that I was attached not to the name Docufide, but to our mission to transform how transcripts are exchanged, to empower students while creating efficiencies that help schools do more with less.  I immediately liked the name Parchment, and appreciated how it rooted us in the history of academic credentials as we transform what was once a paper (or Parchment) process, into an electronic one; also I was sick of Docufide being misspelled as Docufied.

Today, nearly 10 years after the founding of Docufide, more than 2 years since we became Parchment and less than a year after merging Docufide with Avow, the Parchment Exchange is born as eTranscripts 2.0, the next generation in eTranscript exchange.

During my research I quickly came across “A Business Case for the Electronic Exchange of Student Records.” The AACRAO SPEEDE Committee published this report in 1997 and was immensely valuable in helping us to demonstrate the expected operational efficiencies and cost savings the e-Transcripts promised. I revisited this study numerous times over the years, adjusting the numbers for inflation, as there was no further research available.

Since the SPEEDE business case was published, much has changed; e- Transcripts are no longer seen as something a school ‘may’ do, but is now a matter of ‘when’ they will adopt an e-Transcript solution, if they haven’t already.  Today more than 7,000 high schools and colleges are exchanging e-Transcripts as active members in the Parchment network, with more colleges and universities joining every day. Despite this rapid migration from paper to an electronic exchange, there had not been an updated study documenting the real benefits that schools across the country were experiencing daily. Seeing this void, Parchment commissioned Eduventures, the industry leader in higher education research colleges experiences in adopting e-Transcripts.

That paper, titled Electronic Transcript Exchange: Benefits and Experiences of Early Postsecondary Adopters, was published in October 2012 with support from PESC, the standards-setting organization developing the standards that drive electronic transcripts.

The white paper summarizes the reasons why colleges decided to adopt e-Transcripts and the benefits that they achieved, which includes

• Cost Savings, with savings coming from reduced overtime and a decreased need for student workers to process inbound transcripts.
• Operational Process Efficiencies, with admission staff redeployed to higher priority functions, and weeks cut from the time taken to process applications.
• Improved Student Satisfaction, coming from reduced turnaround times to process transcript requests (from 3-5 days to less than 24 hours) while eliminating expedite fees that were no longer necessary.

Rusty Hartley, principal analyst at Eduventures noted that while “there are multiple reasons for schools to adopt electronic transcript exchange technology, the benefits extend throughout the educational value chain and far surpass simple cost savings.”

The white paper can be downloaded here.

Electronic Transcript (eTranscript) Exchange goes far beyond allowing students and alumni to order transcripts online.

The right partner allows you to outsource as much of your transcript processing as you’d like. Features such as:

• Online ordering
• Setting custom eCommerce prices
• Sending secure PDF transcripts
• Maintaining your institutional brand
• Transmitting PESC-XML certified data
• Printing and mailing paper transcripts

This new guide will help you find the right questions to ask.

Download the guide here.

To use this guide, set the weight for each question according to how important it is to you. Then as you research apply a 1-5 score. The spreadsheet will automatically calculate the rank of each vendor.

We hope this guide will help you in selecting the perfect partner for you!

eTranscript California, a statewide electronic transcript exchange supports e-Transcript request and delivery across the state’s postsecondary systems. With this first phase of support, eTranscript California participants within the Parchment network can now send transcripts in a format consistent to eTranscript California receiving colleges, while utilizing the full benefits of the Docufide platform. Transcripts are delivered in the EDI standard developed by the AACRAO SPEEDE committee, providing standards-based transcript data that helps there colleges streamline the admissions process by unlocking valuable data.

With our next major release, we plan to expand support for eTranscript California to provide full integration to Parchment members participating in the initiative.

For more information about our support for eTranscript California please download the paper titled “Support for the California Electronic Transcript Standard” prepared by Louis Delzompo, Parchment’s Chief Technology Officer.

Stored in student information systems, transcripts were nearly always printed, stamped, signed, and placed into an envelope before being dropped in the mail. When the transcript arrived, much of this process was reversed, with the document opened and often keypunched or scanned and brought back to a digital form.  From data to paper and back again, solving this inefficiency was the reason that I co-founded Parchment (then called Docufide) with John Reese and Jeffrey Harris.

This was 2003, and the students graduating high school were not only comfortable with ecommerce and submitting forms online, this was how they expected to get things done. They registered for the SAT online, researched colleges online and were increasingly completing their applications online.  At the same time, admissions professionals were talking of a paper-free admission office, which was rapidly becoming real with one notable holdout, the transcript.

We set out to design our services with a singular focus on transcript exchange, with an emphasis on building a true exchange network.  A network comprised of senders and receivers, high schools and colleges, scholarship organizations and employers.  Our founding CEO, and current Executive Chairman, John Reese described this stage as “laying the tracks”, building the exchange network as the infrastructure upon which the proverbial train of new benefits and services would later run.

During these years the company and the network grew. We designed our services to be flexible, providing schools with a consistent method to fulfill transcript requests regardless of the format in which they were delivered. The exchange network was developed to be secure, authenticating each institutional member while leveraging bank-level online security protocols. New high schools and colleges were added weekly, and our growth was fueled by the addition of state agencies, regional education compacts and organizations like the NCAA and the Common App.

When Matthew Pittinsky joined us at the end of 2010, he arrived with the resources and vision to accelerate our growth and we got to work transforming Docufide into Parchment. As we began to assemble the team that would help us realize our vision for what a transcript exchange network can be, I found myself describing Parchment to candidates as “best of both worlds”; both a successful ed-tech company with a now nine year history and a start-up in terms of growth, opportunity and energy. I am proud to be part of a dynamic, entrepreneurial-minded team, a diverse group made up of experienced software developers, ed-tech professionals, ex-Registrars and Admissions Officers working together to change how we interact with transcripts.

With the team now in place, joined by Avow perfectly complimenting what we had built with Docufide, and the benefits that come from the exchange of e-Transcripts well established; we enter 2013 poised to show the industry what it means to be a part of an e-Transcript exchange network.  With 35% of the US high schools and 1,900 colleges sending and/or receiving transcripts through Parchment, $6 million in annual R&D we are putting the trains on the tracks. Trains that ride the exchange network to bring schools the ability to automate the receipt of transcripts from a variety of institutions, services and formats, to the fulfillment of transcript requests in a fully automated manner to any destination worldwide. Bringing analytics and intelligence that leverage the network to help schools better understand where their students are coming from, where they are going, and how they stack up to their peers.  Bringing colleges the standards-based data that could be used to build learner profiles that may be used to improve student outcomes.